Muhlaysia Booker, 23 (left) and Tamika Washington, 40 (right)
The Pride that we celebrate today originated from the infamous Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Inn, still in New York City’s Greenwich Village, was home to groups of queer and transgender folks normally prohibited from any other establishment. Bars that served queer and gender non-conforming customers faced denial of liquor licenses, so police regularly raided bars that welcomed these communities.
On June 28, 1969, the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn, asking customers for ID and arresting them if they could not provide adequate identification. For trans and gender non-conforming bar goers whose sex on their IDs seemed incompatible with their gendered presentation, police automatically condemned them for identity theft or sodomy. Officers then forced these folks to strip and reveal their sex assigned at birth, only to arrest them if their genitals seemed to contradict their gender presentation.
Police systematically disregarded the fact that gender and genitals do not go hand in hand, and many people continue to disregard this fact.
The graphic below, the Gender Unicorn, can help us better understand the spectrum of masculinities and femininities in the western world.
The exploitative physical, sexual and psychological assault of people who aren’t heterosexual cisgender men or cisgender women is rooted in the gender-sex binary. The gender-sex binary is the social construct that people born with penises must embrace hyper-masculinity and adopt the category ‘man’, while people born with vulvas must embrace hyper-femininity and adopt the category ‘woman.’ It is safe to say that the vast majority of people born in the West are marked with a binary gender identity before they are even born.
The gender-sex binary is oppressive to queer, trans and gender non-conforming people, and those who are not white are pushed even further to the margin.
From the beginning of colonialism, to the Stonewall Riots, to present day — transgender people and Black people face denial of their right to be recognized as fully human within this system.
When the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn, queer folks stood their ground. In response to this violent exploitation of power rooted in the fear of non-normativity, they threw coins and broken bottles at officers and a riot quickly ensued. Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transfeminine drag queen, and Sylvia Rivera, a transfeminine Latina, have gone down in history as playing a primary role in these riots and in New York City’s gay liberation movement. In Rivera’s honor, Dean Spade founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, an organization that primarily provides legal services to marginalized LGBTQI+ folks of color.
If these women, and many more, were key in LGBTQI+ liberation, why do Pride campaigns and events today center privileged, white, gay cisgender men?
Why is the life expectancy of Black and brown trans women in the U.S. just 35 years old?
On May 18th, a Black transgender woman named Muhlaysia Booker was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas at only 23 years old. According to her Facebook page, Muhalysia worked as an entertainer and was a student at Louisiana State University. In April of 2019, Muhlaysia was violently beaten on video by a cisgender Black man while others egged on the assault. This video went viral on social media. She attended a rally the week after her assault to highlight the trend of violence women like her consistently face.
Michelle “Tamika” Washington, 40, another Black transgender woman, was killed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the day after Muhlaysia’s murder. According to her Facebook page, Tamika was a student who studied nursing at the Community College of Philadelphia.
The reality is that Black and brown trans people, especially transgender women, face the highest rates of murder in the United States today. The world watched while Muhlaysia’s life was threatened, and we failed to protect her. Due to misgendering in police reports and unreported murders, there are likely several others who were lynched this year at the hands of hatred and bigotry. And yet, they are rarely given the proper light during the month of June.
This Pride season, I ask you to honor those who led the queer liberation movement and uplift those without access to care and safety. Have conversations with your families and friends, humanize those at the margin, and donate directly to those asking for help. Help Black trans women survive. Pay for their transportation, donate to their education, and offer items that contribute to the means of survival. Much of this can be done by donating to and sharing their online fundraisers, directly buying art or clothes, and connecting them with childcare, health care and job opportunities.
As you celebrate Pride this month, revisit the reasons Pride began, honor those we have lost, and make a pledge to uplift the most marginalized.
I don’t think it helps that the library field is mostly women. Unfortunately, mostly women professions have a way of getting devalued as hell.
I’ve also noticed that male librarians tend to get more credit about innovating technology, despite the fact that there are plenty of female librarians that have done it longer and better.
The community organisation for which I volunteer is based in a library. We also work closely with another librarian. I always respected librarians, obviously, for being Keepers of the Books… But honestly? Working alongside them has given me such intense respect for them.
Yeah, okay, surveillance-free information is boss as and I’m not devaluing that. But I also want to point out that librarians are the literal best at building communities, at putting people in contact with others in ways beneficial to both, and at making sure as few people as possible slip through the cracks.
Our librarians (in the UK as a whole) are a defence force between the poor and the government; I can’t even begin to count how many people have been able to apply for benefits they desperately needed to survive, thanks to libraries… But also thanks to librarians. The organisation for which I volunteer is trying to build communities across an underprivileged area; the vast majority of our adult attendants were frogmarched in by the head librarian, and she has literally never brought us someone who wasn’t looking for something like us.
We run a fibre arts group locally, and so what do they do? They watch for people checking out crochet and knitting books and then bring them to us, or hand them a leaflet for the group. They hang our posters and hand out our flyers.
I would die for our librarians, and of course they are definitely and indisputably the best librarians… But throughout my life wandering far and away and using libraries in a variety of countries and at various levels of dirt-poverty, I have noticed that quite an enormous proportion of librarians are definitely and indisputably the best librarians.
Hieroglyphic inscription bearing cartouche with the Nomen of Queen Hatshepsut (Khnumt-Amun Hatshepsut. Joined with Amun, Foremost of Noble Ladies), engraved into her pink granite obelisk at the Precinct of Amun-Re, Karnak Temple Complex.
Boggy Creek Monster (Fouke Monster, Jonesville Monster or Southern Bigfoot)
Found in the area around Fouke, Arkansas.
Description matches the commonly known Bigfoot (Sasquatch) except for the bright red eyes. Sightings only started in 1971 but the earliest known report dates back to 1851. It is disputed whether the creature exists or not due to the prints showing that the creature had only three toes instead of five like other prime apes.
(Image from the docudrama about the creature from 1972)
I got to “be” the Boggy Creek Monster when it showed in 1972; first at the multiplex, then at the drive-in theater, St. Joseph, MO.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
