Rewriting HIStory: The erasure of trans and queer people of color

While it is probably not necessary to start my paper by explaining 500 years of exploitation, erasure, and colonization, I feel that I should reiterate that this history is yet to escape us. Colonization and domination provides privileged groups the unbeatable opportunity to rewrite history in their benefit. In the US we are still benefiting from the erasure and the exploitation of people of color, queer, trans and gender nonconforming folks. Reading Queer (In)justice was the first time that I had learned about non-binary societies that were a part of the first civilizations in America. When you can’t see yourself represented in a struggle for liberation and justice it leads to the false association that you do not belong in that movement because it was built without you. POC, queer and trans folks have for a long time have resisted state and institutionalized violence against their communities even though it is apparent that the popular gay liberation movement has tried to dismiss their contributions.

The Stone Wall Riots were in reality initiated by lesbian, queer and trans people of color, yet many have attempted to rewrite the story to exclude them. The Gay Liberation movement often attributes its origins to the riots at Stone Wall, yet much of the progress that the popular movement has accomplished does little to nothing for these communities. Queer (In)justice recounts numerous cases of state initiated violence and hate crimes that specifically target queer and trans people of color, yet these issues have largely been ignored or even condemned as distractions for the larger gay liberation movement. White gay male “activist”, David Marcus, publishes a proposal in the Federalist to remove the “T” from LGBT claiming that trans folks are “so radical and alienating….that it will harm the community as a whole.” Translation: fighting for the liberation of trans folks will put at risk the privileges that we have gained by buying into the system. Equality for Marcus is the ability to participate in state and social institutions, but it ignores and attempts to forget about the damage that these same institutions are doing to communities that still experience violent marginalization.  

By excluding the voices of further marginalized trans and queer people of color from popular movements, gay and lesbian folks who have been accepted by normative society are in effect justifying and perpetuating violence and dehumanization of these communities. To justify his stance on segregating the trans community from the “LGB” movement, David Marcus states, “Gay/bisexual men and women just ARE—we don’t need medicine or surgery to help us become who we believe we are,” and goes on to say, “And then these self-applied labels are used to create a competition of oppression.” This hatespeech disguised as an op-ed perpetuates the fallacies that trans identity is made up and that their struggle isn’t real. Rewriting history to erase a group from a movement is never done nonviolently. The erasure of a group from history is one of the most violent forms of oppression because it does not allow for future generations to identify themselves in the struggle and it allows the oppressor to rewrite their story for them.

Regardless of what David Marcus and other transphobic people think, trans and POC community are facing a very real crisis. As of November 21 there 22 trans women have been murdered in the United States with 19 of them being Latina or Black. The year is yet to end and these numbers have already far exceeded murders in past years. The authors of Queer (In)justice attempt to bring to light some of the stories of devastating violence that trans and queer communities of color face at the hands of the state and normative society. While some are declaring victory and celebrating an end to homophobia, queer and tans communities of color continue to face the imminent threat and fear of state and institutional violence.

Lesbian activist, Urvashi Vaid, feels the need to declare the obvious fact that those fighting for liberation and justice should fight for the liberation of all people in her essay “What brown can do for you” because that is clearly not the current reality. In her essay she states some of the benefits of promoting an intersectional movement that allows that includes the voices of all marginalized peoples, but I think that it will be hard to convince those who have gained access to privilege. The power to oppress others seems to be the most intoxicating drug that has been manufactured by our society, and despite countless struggles for liberation it seems that we cannot shake the addiction. Once a group has gained the ability to rewrite history and delegitimize the struggle of those who still face oppression by the same institutions that had previously oppressed them, the reaction seems to be instinct. Are we bound to become the same monsters that we are trying to fight?

Trans, queer POC have resisted disappearance for centuries and their survival is a testament to their power.  I believe in the power of my community and all marginalized communities to preserve our stories. Telling the stories of the marginalized and learning from the stories of our ancestors is the biggest tool that we have to fight those who attempt to convince us that trans and queer people of color don’t matter—that they don’t exist. We will not allow for HIStory to be rewritten because we have power, queer and trans people of color have power, and their stories have power. 

Death Penalty

My first year at Wasson High School I was introduced to one of the most heart breaking plays (that makes me cry every time) I have ever seen and it is called, The Laramie Project. This was a big deal at the time since my school is located in the fourth my conservative city in the United States of America, Colorado Springs. My drama teacher fought many years to bring this play to my high school because of the important message of this play.

The story is about a college student named Matthew Shepard who was a gay student whom was taken out into the middle of no where to be beaten, tortured, and left for dead tied to a fence. A jogger found him in a coma and an ambulance rushed him to a hospital where he died six days later. After this tragedy the community rallied around this death to get justice for Matthew Shepard. Once they found the two men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, whom killed him they were arrested and convicted of two consecutive life sentences. These two kids pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty but the death penalty was sought. This makes sense since even this boy was gay he was white. The Authors of Queer (In)justice points this out in their novel saying that a similar case brought different results. In this other case the young man was black not white and there was no press pressure to make sure justice was served.

You maybe be wondering how this connects to the death penalty and it applies to it because as we can see that if you are white and gay a person would receive justice but if a person is black and gay they will not. Then we flip it to a person being considered for the death penalty and then sentenced to death. In Colorado right now there are three men on death row and they are all black. We had just a had case where a white man, James Holmes, who went into a movie theater and killed or injured so many people. He did not receive the death penalty. This shows the bias of the death penalty when sexual orientation is not involved but once you add sexual orientation into the mix a person is going to be more likely to be given the death penalty. For example, in Queer (In)justice there are two women Bernina Mata and Wanda Jean Allen.  Bernina Mata a Latina lesbian who killed a white male and Wanda Jean Allen a African American lesbian who killed her lover. They are both given the death penalty because of the their race and their sexual orientation. They do not fit into the binary of normal and normal behavior. Bernie a Latina women killed a white man making it so much worse for her because she killed, what society likes to think, the superior race. If a person of a non white race kills a white person they are almost always to be given the death penalty due to the biases of a judicial system. This shows up when it is not an LGBTQ case. So add in sexual orientation a person will almost always be given the death penalty because as the authors of Queer (In)justice put it, "sending a homosexual to the penitentiary certainly is a bad punishment." Which is a lie because sending a person to jail is not fun, it will not be a good time. It is a horrible place to go and to say it will not be a bad punishment because they are gay (implying they can have all the sex they want with other men) is false. They are going to be targeted and more likely hurt than to have a good time (i.e. sex). Sending people to their death is not a good option. 

So, how should the LGBTQ responded to this issue? The death penalty is a touchy subject because many people believe in it, a life for a life. But is it really affecting those who are the minority of our society. It is not only an injustice to those who receive it but to the families of the murder and the victims. I know it seems wrong to look and the murder or the family of the murder but is important. Many of those who receive the death penalty are not right in the head take for example Wanda Jean Allen, whom I mentioned earlier, when she was young she was hit by a car and later in her life stabbed in the temple, which damaged her mental state and lead to lower IQ. She was not mentally sane and yet we killed her because she was a lesbian and an African American woman. It is an issue for anyone who cares about people. The death penalty does not lead to closure or relief for the victims family. It drags out their loved ones murder and they have to relive it over and over instead of being able to move on.  So not only does the LGBTQ need to stop the death penalty for their own people but for every person because in the end an injustice to one group is an injustice to everyone. 

Where have all the cowgirls gone?

“Through the modern queer movement’s history, there have been moments where lesbians have felt the need to challenge something that seems to inevitably happen to dykes—our invisibility. The Lesbian Avengers and the Dyke March emerged as grassroots strategies to assert the presence of lesbians and to claim an anti-corporate politics within an increasingly corporatized and bought-and-sold LGBT movement (We’re Dykes, Don’t Touch Us, We’ll Hurt You 135).” 

One of the injustices (not necessarily what I think is the biggest issue, but an important one that connects to others) that sticks with me is the lack of representation of lesbians that we see today, and how their contribution to LGBTQ activism in the past has been overlooked and replaced with the homo-normative idea that the white, gay man is the face of the group now.  In class, when asked about any well-known lesbians, no one really named any. The mayor of Houston was mentioned, as was Ellen DeGeneres, but no one else was named. When I tried to think of others myself I couldn’t think of anyone other than some in the entertainment industry such as Ellen Page, Melissa Etheridge, Sarah Gilbert, and Rosie O’Donnell. It troubled me that I couldn’t name many others, lesbian erasure was occurring at the height of what some might say was progress in the LGBTQ community with marriage equality occurring recently. It is an injustice that notable lesbians are left out or overlooked, and in Urvashi Vaid’s essays she tells stories of the history of lesbians creating and developing many movements of activism that have led to the acknowledgement of the intersectionality of issues such as criminalization and violence in the queer communities, especially at the hands of the legal systems, racism, and poverty. She attributes ideas about accountability and transparency in organizing and critiquing structures of institutions to lesbian movements from the 70’s (Ending Patriarchy 149). The lack of diversity in the movement and the issues is a disservice to the population of young LGBTQ growing up without the historical knowledge and leadership and without giving them the tools to move forward in a critical informed way. 

The lack of community togetherness is something that is presently lacking in the tech world of today. We see it in many aspects, the lack of shared human experiences in place of quick and easy. “Culture helped us get together and build a shared set of values (153).” Vaid cites her experiences through a time when lesbian activism was at a high. She tells about her encounters in the building of community and placing importance on culture and politics (153). I can see this lack of community increasing the separation and cross exposure that is need to illustrate how the needs of many affect the needs of the few, so to speak. It is easy to sit at home and like something someone did on social media or to blog about an issue, but with this there is an apathy and remoteness that doesn’t seem to stir feelings of righting the injustices towards marginalized groups such as the LGBTQ population. Do we need to bring back the presence and determination of radical feminist lesbians to stir the pot and to keep the movement moving forward? YES. 

Altering the structures in place that colonialism and patriarchy have glued in societal norms is not easy to upheave. Yet maybe if we look to the fore-woman that saw fit to stand up and challenge the world around them, together with solidarity. We too can use their experiences as models to look at the structures in place, band with others and re-expose lesbians and lesbian activism in a way that sets motion to new movements that include larger groups of disenfranchised individuals that need allies working for their human rights.  So I tried to find other lesbians that work in other arenas such as news and politics to learn their names, so that maybe I can look to them to find my own queer ally voice to draw visibility to injustices that need to be addresses.

Here are some women I found notable, sorry there aren’t many representations of POC & I acknowledge this list may not be from the best source but it’s a start. (all copy and pictures from site)

1.  Jane Addams: Born in 1860, Jane Addams  is known as the mother of social work. She founded the famous Hull House Chicago, which revolutionized the field of social work. She is a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

2.    Tammy Baldwin is an out elected representative in Congress from Wisconsin. She is a fierce advocate for LGBT and is considering a run for US Senate in 2012.

 

3.    Kate Brown: Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown is the highest ranking openly bisexual elected politician in the United States. Kate Brown has sponsored several gay rights bills in her terms in the Oregon legislation, including Oregon's domestic partnership and civil rights ordinances.

 

 4.    Brittney Griner stands out on a basketball court and now this skilled player is "out" in other ways. Shortly after being picked as the #1 WNBA draft pick out of Baylor, Brittney Griner came out.

5.    Sherri Murrell is the head coach of Portland State University. As far as we know, she is the only out lesbian or bisexual coach in NCAA Division One Women’s Basketball.

     

 6.    Barbara Jordan was an accomplished politician from Texas. Although she was in a long-term relationship with another woman for more than 20 years, she never publicly came out. It was only after her death in 1996 that the press reported about her sexual orientation.