This article has two points. One is about the evil of standing by while another human is attacked. The other is about bringing to light how sometimes minorities attack other minorities. I'd like to share on this.
My wife worked in downtown Portland, OR for years and up until the pandemic. A few years ago she had a succession of harassme…
This article has two points. One is about the evil of standing by while another human is attacked. The other is about bringing to light how sometimes minorities attack other minorities. I'd like to share on this.
My wife worked in downtown Portland, OR for years and up until the pandemic. A few years ago she had a succession of harassment incidents. The first was when a transgender person physically walked into her and used their shoulder to push into my wife. My wife was called a "f**king dyke" by this person and told "you're not cool" with menace. Weeks later another incident like this happened with yet another transgender person. My wife was harassed for absolutely no reason than existing and being "visibly lesbian." We were utterly befuddled by both moments and did an internet search to see where this animosity was coming from. Several rabbit holes later, we learned of a new type of homophobia coming from others within the LGBTQ+ milieu. We discovered the disparaging and often incorrect term TERF, and we saw many Twitter accounts where lesbians were disparaged to the point of encouraging violence. It all was a shock to say the least.
Another incident involved a black man who followed my wife for a couple blocks, screaming ugly words at her. He called her an "it" and a "fag." He said loudly that he was going to "f**k her up" and that he hated white people. Both this man and my wife were surrounded by people waiting forthe trolly during morning rush hour. Many looked at what was happening but no one intervened. My wife had to rush into a store to get away from the man.
It was at this point I went to the city of Portland's Human Rights committee. I was allowed to share these experiences and my perspective. That the rhetoric of the constant demonization of Trump (who I didn't vote for) and his supporters and whites and men and cisgenders was fostering more minorities railing against minorities. I told them it almost seemed as if the bystanders in the last example I shared, were trying to decide who the more oppressed person was - the white appearing lesbian or the black man.
My plea for help went unacknowledged. So I took my concerns to the city council which included Mayor Ted Wheeler. I related all the same information and asked that they consider how their rhetoric may have consequences for the city. I urged consideration for embracing civility, not as a means to shut others up, but to serve as an example of how we humans need to treat each other...before all we are doing is performing acts of dehumanization in the name of what's politically beneficial for those who won't likely ever experience what my wife did.
My concerns went unacknowledged. It was then we began to really see where Portland was going and we started the process mentally of figuring out where to move to.
One would think a same-sex interracial appearing couple like us would be at home in such a progressive place. Instead we found zealotry disguised as justice, and minority on minority hated to be acceptable. The insult to injury came from our former Mayor's (we have moved away from Portland) Twitter post. It said:
"...the burden should not be on BIPOC communities to aspire towards resilience or be resilient in the face of racism's physical and psychological violence. The burden remains on dominant communities to do the work necessary to make Portland safer, welcoming..."
Meaning minorities are supposed to wait around until "dominant communities" decide if and when they want to help us and that minorities shouldn't have to be responsible for our own hated or be strong when one of "our own" or others attacks us.
I'd like to end this comment with a quote from musician and blogger, Regie Hamm.
"Once you decide to see every single person on Earth as an individual, and not the group they may or may not be a part of, you get set free."
Freedom includes responsibility and resilience. I hope we can foster more of that when anyone is being harmed and when we examine our own capacity to hate and disregard mercy.
I'm so sorry your wife had to endure those awful incidents and that your elected officials ignored your concerns! I'm also one half of an inter-racial lesbian couple. We've been lucky enough that we haven't faced any in-person harassment like your wife did; the worst we've received is a driver honking at us and asking if we wanted a threesome when we walked home holding hands one evening. It was frightening in the moment, since he had an aggressive demeanor, and no one else was in earshot, but he drove off when we gave him nasty looks.
The homophobia of radical trans activists is very real. There are plenty of kind, decent trans people doing their best to cope with a difficult hand they've been dealt in life. But the ones who harass innocent lesbians or tell lesbians they're transphobic if they're not attracted to natal males aren't doing the rest of the community any favors. Many of them have taken over in-person and online spaces. For example, Reddit has deleted without warning two female-only lesbian subreddits that took care to follow Reddit's rules. Meanwhile, the largest "lesbian" subreddit claims that not being attracted to a trans woman because she's trans is transphobic: https://www.reddit.com/r/actuallesbians/comments/15ha8u/on_dating_trans_women_and_transphobia/. The icing on the cake is the attempted joke, "With enough forethought you might not need a sperm donor!" Since I'm happily married, this new homophobia doesn't affect me directly. But I worry for all the young lesbians who are pressured into opening their dating pools to natal males in a new way.
As far as I'm concerned, taking a lesbian to task for not being attracted to a trans "woman" is proof positive that the whole world, including them, sees these people as what they are: men. Women are NEVER permitted to set boundaries and refuse sexual service to men. In their eyes, a woman setting any sexual boundary is a hate crime, not a man violating one.
What you and your wife unfortunately experienced is standard mob evolution. Time and time again, throughout history, this is where it starts. Historically, it has always gotten much worse and normally grows into tyranny as a ruthless leader is needed to quell the widespread violence. Can we avoid the same fate here in the US? I wouldn't bet on it; as a population we are no different than any population that has come before us.
I'm so sorry that happened to your wife. When I learned about the way that trans "women" harass lesbians, that's when the scales finished falling from my eyes about the whole trans business. It's just one more way for men to demand sexual gratification from all vaginas everywhere. It's the violence of any man anywhere who has encountered a woman who feels justified in setting a boundary of any kind. Men's fists are justice, but women's boundaries are violence, and somehow these men figured out that as long as they slap on some dimestore lip gloss and call themselves Poledancerina, their misogyny is woke now.
We've been second class human beings behind the ones with penises since time began. Now, we're second class WOMEN behind the ones with penises. Ishtar weeps.
I have a social worker colleague with decades of experience in the Pennsylvania penal system. Her specialty was counseling for sex offenders. A few years ago, she was asked to help decide the contentious issue of whether transgender woman would be housed in the male facility vs the female facility. She thought about it for a few nano-seconds and said, “people with penises go with the men.”
Your experience is deeply unfair and infuriating but somehow not surprising. There's this weird new extremist SJW behavior that your experience somehow reminds me of: in footage from the riots and protests we've had for over a year now, I have seen numerous examples of (white) leftist-aligned agitators screaming at other people, calling those other people the "N" word. Over and over, usually at other white people although I just saw a video where they screamed it at a black person. I still can hardly believe it, or understand it.
This article has two points. One is about the evil of standing by while another human is attacked. The other is about bringing to light how sometimes minorities attack other minorities. I'd like to share on this.
My wife worked in downtown Portland, OR for years and up until the pandemic. A few years ago she had a succession of harassment incidents. The first was when a transgender person physically walked into her and used their shoulder to push into my wife. My wife was called a "f**king dyke" by this person and told "you're not cool" with menace. Weeks later another incident like this happened with yet another transgender person. My wife was harassed for absolutely no reason than existing and being "visibly lesbian." We were utterly befuddled by both moments and did an internet search to see where this animosity was coming from. Several rabbit holes later, we learned of a new type of homophobia coming from others within the LGBTQ+ milieu. We discovered the disparaging and often incorrect term TERF, and we saw many Twitter accounts where lesbians were disparaged to the point of encouraging violence. It all was a shock to say the least.
Another incident involved a black man who followed my wife for a couple blocks, screaming ugly words at her. He called her an "it" and a "fag." He said loudly that he was going to "f**k her up" and that he hated white people. Both this man and my wife were surrounded by people waiting forthe trolly during morning rush hour. Many looked at what was happening but no one intervened. My wife had to rush into a store to get away from the man.
It was at this point I went to the city of Portland's Human Rights committee. I was allowed to share these experiences and my perspective. That the rhetoric of the constant demonization of Trump (who I didn't vote for) and his supporters and whites and men and cisgenders was fostering more minorities railing against minorities. I told them it almost seemed as if the bystanders in the last example I shared, were trying to decide who the more oppressed person was - the white appearing lesbian or the black man.
My plea for help went unacknowledged. So I took my concerns to the city council which included Mayor Ted Wheeler. I related all the same information and asked that they consider how their rhetoric may have consequences for the city. I urged consideration for embracing civility, not as a means to shut others up, but to serve as an example of how we humans need to treat each other...before all we are doing is performing acts of dehumanization in the name of what's politically beneficial for those who won't likely ever experience what my wife did.
My concerns went unacknowledged. It was then we began to really see where Portland was going and we started the process mentally of figuring out where to move to.
One would think a same-sex interracial appearing couple like us would be at home in such a progressive place. Instead we found zealotry disguised as justice, and minority on minority hated to be acceptable. The insult to injury came from our former Mayor's (we have moved away from Portland) Twitter post. It said:
"...the burden should not be on BIPOC communities to aspire towards resilience or be resilient in the face of racism's physical and psychological violence. The burden remains on dominant communities to do the work necessary to make Portland safer, welcoming..."
Meaning minorities are supposed to wait around until "dominant communities" decide if and when they want to help us and that minorities shouldn't have to be responsible for our own hated or be strong when one of "our own" or others attacks us.
I'd like to end this comment with a quote from musician and blogger, Regie Hamm.
"Once you decide to see every single person on Earth as an individual, and not the group they may or may not be a part of, you get set free."
Freedom includes responsibility and resilience. I hope we can foster more of that when anyone is being harmed and when we examine our own capacity to hate and disregard mercy.
I'm so sorry your wife had to endure those awful incidents and that your elected officials ignored your concerns! I'm also one half of an inter-racial lesbian couple. We've been lucky enough that we haven't faced any in-person harassment like your wife did; the worst we've received is a driver honking at us and asking if we wanted a threesome when we walked home holding hands one evening. It was frightening in the moment, since he had an aggressive demeanor, and no one else was in earshot, but he drove off when we gave him nasty looks.
The homophobia of radical trans activists is very real. There are plenty of kind, decent trans people doing their best to cope with a difficult hand they've been dealt in life. But the ones who harass innocent lesbians or tell lesbians they're transphobic if they're not attracted to natal males aren't doing the rest of the community any favors. Many of them have taken over in-person and online spaces. For example, Reddit has deleted without warning two female-only lesbian subreddits that took care to follow Reddit's rules. Meanwhile, the largest "lesbian" subreddit claims that not being attracted to a trans woman because she's trans is transphobic: https://www.reddit.com/r/actuallesbians/comments/15ha8u/on_dating_trans_women_and_transphobia/. The icing on the cake is the attempted joke, "With enough forethought you might not need a sperm donor!" Since I'm happily married, this new homophobia doesn't affect me directly. But I worry for all the young lesbians who are pressured into opening their dating pools to natal males in a new way.
As far as I'm concerned, taking a lesbian to task for not being attracted to a trans "woman" is proof positive that the whole world, including them, sees these people as what they are: men. Women are NEVER permitted to set boundaries and refuse sexual service to men. In their eyes, a woman setting any sexual boundary is a hate crime, not a man violating one.
What you and your wife unfortunately experienced is standard mob evolution. Time and time again, throughout history, this is where it starts. Historically, it has always gotten much worse and normally grows into tyranny as a ruthless leader is needed to quell the widespread violence. Can we avoid the same fate here in the US? I wouldn't bet on it; as a population we are no different than any population that has come before us.
I'm so sorry that happened to your wife. When I learned about the way that trans "women" harass lesbians, that's when the scales finished falling from my eyes about the whole trans business. It's just one more way for men to demand sexual gratification from all vaginas everywhere. It's the violence of any man anywhere who has encountered a woman who feels justified in setting a boundary of any kind. Men's fists are justice, but women's boundaries are violence, and somehow these men figured out that as long as they slap on some dimestore lip gloss and call themselves Poledancerina, their misogyny is woke now.
We've been second class human beings behind the ones with penises since time began. Now, we're second class WOMEN behind the ones with penises. Ishtar weeps.
This thread is awesome! I'm very encouraged by this!
I have a social worker colleague with decades of experience in the Pennsylvania penal system. Her specialty was counseling for sex offenders. A few years ago, she was asked to help decide the contentious issue of whether transgender woman would be housed in the male facility vs the female facility. She thought about it for a few nano-seconds and said, “people with penises go with the men.”
Your experience is deeply unfair and infuriating but somehow not surprising. There's this weird new extremist SJW behavior that your experience somehow reminds me of: in footage from the riots and protests we've had for over a year now, I have seen numerous examples of (white) leftist-aligned agitators screaming at other people, calling those other people the "N" word. Over and over, usually at other white people although I just saw a video where they screamed it at a black person. I still can hardly believe it, or understand it.