How Women's and LGBT Rights Are Intertwined

[aviv_b_artwork]

Here's an link to an interesting article that appeared on Change.Org Blog. This expresses what I believe far more eloquently than I would be able to.

How Women's and LGBT Rights Are Intertwined

by Alex DiBranco

In August, Michael Jones reported on Change.org's Gay Rights blog on the disturbing practice of "corrective rape" -- also known as trying to rape a queer person, most often a lesbian, straight. Because all a woman really needs is a real man between her legs to realize what she's missing out on, the reasoning goes.

In South Africa, it has been an epidemic, with hundreds of queer women reporting corrective rape every year -- and many more silent in the shadows. The rapes are fed by a deadly cocktail of misogyny and homophobia; as this phenomenon makes all too clear, women's and LGBT rights are intertwined.

Yesterday, Abbie Kopf blogged on the Gay Rights blog, "Why Every Gay Rights Advocate Should Be a Feminist." And the sentiment goes both ways.
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Read the rest of the article here:  http://womensrights.change.org/blog/view/how_womens_and_lgbt_rights_are_intertwined

The article by Abbie Kopf is also worth reading.
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Your are free to comment as long as you are respectful.  Unfortunately due to recent events, I will be screening comments.

Yes, I agree with the position.  I've been active in human rights advocacy, including gay rights advocacy for 35+ years. I've been writing fanfic for six months. So before you start making assumptions that I'm a slash writer who 'thinks' they support gay rights, you might want to realize that I was involved in this issue before a lot of you were born. Long before it was fashionable to have gay friends, or participate in gay rights events. Long before AIDS, during AIDS and God-willing after AIDS. I have friends and family members who are gay and I'm not going to apologize to anyone for that.  If you have a problem with that, really that's your problem, not mine.

And if you don't agree that straight women should work for gay rights, that's fine. You are free to explain why. But you are not free to make personal attacks or judgments about the motivations of others unless you know them personally, send hate messages to my PM, or any other nutfuckery that you think up.  Instead take all that negative energy and make something positive out of it.
 
Go do something meaningful.  Write a letter on behalf of a political prisoner in another country. Attend a rally supporting rights for immigrants.  Open your checkbook and help kids who are homeless, feed a hungry child even if they aren't the same race or religion that you are.  There a dozens of things you can do to make the world a better place, that don't take a whole lot of time or even much money. Its fine to stand up for yourself, but if you only stand for yourself and don't stand up for others, then you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.
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This message was not approved by my feminist friends, my gay friends, political prisoners, immigrants, hungry children, or anyone else.

Comments

[freekydj.livejournal.com]

Once again, proof that bigotry provokes violence. The idea that rape is going to "fix" a gay woman is insane. I just don't understand how rape could be considered acceptable against a gay woman, but not a straight woman.

It is an act of violence and emotional trauma regadless of a person's sexual orientation!

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that rape is often tolerated when it involves straight women. A man forcing his wife to have sex with him is not considered rape in many parts of the world.

And a small, but very dangerous subset of men do not consider 'date rape' (I hate that term, rape is rape), to actually be rape. See this article:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/11/12/rapists-who-dont-think-theyre-rapists/

Recently a woman who had written about group sex fantasies on her journal found the DA in her group rape case essentially dismissing it because of what she had on her journal. I saw this over on WTF_sexism.

[freekydj.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, it seems there are so many situations in which rape is "validated" due to circumstances and/or lifestyles, even the clothing a woman wears can be questioned.

Rape is rape. Although things are changing (much to slowly as far as I am concerned), there is such a long way to go.

That doesn't even touch on societies in which even if it is believed that a woman was raped,and it was truly against her will, she is marked as a woman to be ashamed of, and even punished for being assaulted.

No wonder so many women never come forward.