How Women's and LGBT Rights Are Intertwined

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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

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I think you raise some excellent points.

I know if someone who wasn't Jewish told me that they knew how it felt to be Jewish, I'd be a little annoyed. And I'd feel differently based on my perception of whether that person was more/less oppressed based on group identity. Mainline Christian - very annoyed. African American, only a tiny bit. I don't know if that's fair, I'm just being honest.

However, if they said they were more aware of ISSUES regarding Jewish rights worldwide, they might very well be right. And if they said they were more involved in fighting for Jewish civil rights worldwide, they would certainly be correct. And I wouldn't be offended.

I think that's a fine distinction for some but a valid one.

I do agree about listening carefully (and I freely admit I'm not the best listener even in RL). Let's add reading carefully and asking questions before jumping to conclusions.

Unfortunately, I think on-line communication is inherently problematic because you have no voice, or facial or body cues to determine if the person is serious, sarcastic, or anything else. So there's a tendency to grab onto a sentence and take it out of context, or twist it around a little or make a lot more of it than it merits.

Your thoughts are always welcome and worthy of consideration. Thanks for reading and commenting.