Zodiacs for Social Justice

oppressed people: *makes a couple jokes about privileged people once in a while*

allies: 

UK: Big Fat Gypsy Weddings ‘has increased bullying of Gypsies and Travellers’

Channel 4’s Big Fat Gypsy Weddings series has been blamed for an increase in bullying and negative stereotyping of the Gypsy and Traveller communities.

Educational consultant Brian Foster said there was “no question” in his mind that the Channel 4 series and its controversial poster campaign – featuring the strapline “Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier” – had caused “real, measurable and long-term harm”.

Foster, who chairs the advisory council for the education of Romanies and other Travellers, is also a trustee of the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain (ITMB).

He was commissioned by law firm Howe and Co, which represented the ITMB’s complaint against the Channel 4 ad campaign, to consider the impact of the show in its evidence to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

Foster said in his report: “That harm is on a number of levels, including physical and sexual assault, racist abuse and bullying, misinformation and hostile questioning, resulting in damage to the self-esteem of children and withdrawal from school.

she is not taking any podiums away from cisgender women, and cisgender women don’t have some special claim as “actual” women, all people who identify as women are “actual” women

"Dating preferences" that exclude entire groups of diverse people (ie "I don’t date Black girls" / "I’m just not attracted to Mexican guys") = blatant racism.

In fact, the link between extra pounds and leaner paychecks is distinct: When a woman “becomes overweight,” she already is less likely to land a public-facing role in better-paying white-collar jobs, according to research released Tuesday by Vanderbilt University.

And women who are considered obese or morbidly obese — based on their body mass indexes — are more likely to be forced into some of the cheapest-paying, most labor-intensive roles in industries such as home health, food prep and child care, said Jennifer Shinall, the study’s author and an assistant professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School.

“The data shows employers don’t want to hire heavier women to be the face of their company,” Shinall said.

“But morbidly obese men don’t seem to be underrepresented in these personal-interaction jobs, nor do they seem to be over-represented in physical-activity jobs. That’s what’s striking about the data: We see a pattern for women but not for men,” Shinall said. “This is a sexual discrimination issue.”

not enough people are talking about how a white american soldier stationed in the philippines drowned and murdered a filipina trans woman in a hotel room toilet this month and its goddamn important 

her name is jennifer laude. she was 26. she was engaged. she was planning on getting married in march, going back to school for hotel management, going on to become a flight attendant. not that this matters necessarily, because even if she had been a sex worker, which a lot of media has assumed, she would obviously not have deserved to die — but not every media source is giving her an identity outside of “trans” “filipina” and i want people to know who she was.

she was out on october 11 with a friend, met a 19 year old US marine named joseph scott pemberton, and the two of them went to a motel together. 

thirty minutes after checking in, he left, and she was found naked with her head in the toilet, dead. there were two condoms found which are currently undergoing investigation.

tensions are rising because the US naval&military presence in the philippines has already been highly contested, many citizens want US soldiers out of their homes, and this isn’t the first potential hate crime, potential rape, or murder committed by US soldiers in the philippines (or, obviously, anywhere). the US is currently ensuring that US guards protect joseph scott pemberton even though potentially the philippines should have jurisdiction given the fact that it’s fairly definite that he murdered a philippine citizen.

her boyfriend and sister have even literally climbed into the military base demanding justice, and her mother has also voiced protests. they have not been answered.

guys, this is important for so many reasons.

it’s important because we need to talk about how trans people are still murdered every day.

we need to talk about how being nonwhite and trans in the presence of whiteness and cisness is still dangerous — literally, just existing.

we need to change the way we talk about nonwhite queerness, nonwhite trans people. they are not inherently exotic, erotic, or “other.” they are human people. their genitalia is not your business. their gender is not a reason or excuse for their murder.

we need to change the way the media talks about being trans. “chicks with dicks,” the “used to be a dude,” the “surgery” question — media must stop dehumanizing trans lives, reducing them to an absurdity or a joke. media coverage still uses jennifer’s “birth” name or mentions “formerly a man,” or shit like that, and it physically pains me to see these microaggressions, because they are a reminder of the exact transphobia that cost her her life. they participate in the same violence, they reinforce that otherness, and microaggressions will not necessarily kill a trans person but the attitudes they inspire clearly often do. 

we need to talk about masculinity and the military and what leads 19 year old boys to commit murder in the face of what they’ve been told is the “other.” because articles are surfacing arguing that pemberton didn’t know she was trans, but she was naked and she was killed and so i’m pretty sure that’s not a fucking useful defense. 

i don’t actually care whether or not she was cheating on her fiancé (which i doubt). i wouldn’t care if she was planning on having sex with pemberton for money (she was also robbed this night, by the way, though it’s not clear by who) (though i’ve got a guess). she did not deserve to die.

we need to acknowledge that trans lives are worth saving. we need to acknowledge that they are being stolen. we need to acknowledge that we are losing trans lives because misinformation and prejudices present transgender people as less than important, as other, as separate, as disgusting, and not only are their murders altogether too common, but so is the poisonous rhetoric that follows, that she deserved it for being a monstrosity, or for “tricking him,” and this is rhetoric that we cannot abide.

no one is asking for it.

jennifer laude has faced more oppression, discrimination, and prejudice in her life than most people could bear. her strength and courage to be herself every day is praised by her friends and family. she has inspired filipina and filipino queer and trans youth. she worked so hard to become who she is and create a life that allows her to be true to herself, and to recognize that that life was cut so brutally, needlessly short — it makes me furious. and it should make you furious too.

jennifer laude’s only crime was being a human, who happened to be trans, filipina, and female, and her murder needs to be acknowledged and met with justice.

a personal note: this story is particularly devastating to me because i am a cis female bisexual half-filipina, and i’ve been struggling coming out to my family in the philippines because the pervasive culture is very catholic and conservative, and moving very slowly towards an acceptance of queer identity. jennifer laude is and was an inspiration — and so was her mother, pictured below, who came to accept, love, and protect her. 

it is not easy for people who were raised largely ignorant about being trans to come around, and so to know that jennifer’s mother made the journey to accept and support her daughter only to have that journey cut so brutally, horrifically short — i can’t stand it. i cannot. 

here are some links for further news and reading (trigger warnings for some transphobic language, obviously, unfortunately), and if any word surfaces on protests or petitions for her murderer to find justice i will let you know, but before i leave you guys let me quote what the commission on human rights (CHR) chairperson loretta ann rosales said at jennifer’s wake:

Ang pinakamahalagang usapin dito human being siya. Hindi siya dapat pinatay.

The most important issue here is that she is a human being. She shouldn’t have been killed.

links to more information:

wiki page

Witness Says Suspect U.S. Marine Didn’t Know Murdered Filipina Was Transgender

Marine murder case reveals US-Philippine sore spot

Remarks vs Laude reflect deep-seated prejudice – CHR

“I think he was a strong kid.

I think, you know, being much older, much older than him, I did feel that, sometimes, I needed to look out for him and I think so did the other prisoners around him feel the same. But obviously, being in Guantanamo, you can’t really look out for one another.

Uh, it’s, it’s, it’s difficult you know, today I’m here, and I’m, I’m thinking of, thinking of him and he’s still in prison and he’s still, still a kid. I don’t know really what I would say to him. It doesn’t seem, it doesn’t seem fair that he’s still there and, and I’m here.”

Khadr, a Canadian, was taken into US custody at the age of fifteen, tortured and refused medical attention because he wouldn’t attest to being a member of Al Qaeda, even though he was shot three times in the chest and had shrapnel embedded in his eyes and right shoulder. As a result, Khadr’s left eye is now permanently blind, the vision in his right eye is deteriorating, he develops severe pain in his right shoulder when the temperature drops, and he suffers from extreme nightmares.

Ahmed, who was imprisoned in the cell next to him for some time, reported that Khadr would return from interrogations (where he would be tortured) crying and would huddle in a corner of his cell with his blanket over his head.

Shafiq Rasul, another former Guantanamo Bay detainee, stated that although Khadr was forced to mature due to his harsh treatment and torture, he still had the mentality of a child. Guantanamo Bay’s Muslim chaplain James Yee confirmed this by reporting that Khadr had been given a Mickey Mouse book in a surprising act of kindness by one of his interrogators, and that he slept with it clutched to his (injured) chest. Muneer Ahmad, one of Khadr’s first attorneys, reported that at their first meeting at Guantanamo, Khadr asked for nothing other than colouring books, car magazines and pictures of big animals and played with the attorney’s ink pens and digital watch.

Alabama, which is testing out its new voter ID law for the first time this year, will not accept public housing ID at the polls.

Bernard Simelton of the Alabama NAACP State Conference told ThinkProgress that he learned Friday that voters will not be able to use their public housing ID under the Attorney General’s interpretation of the new law. Simelton said he wasn’t sure why, but speculated that the restriction was because the town of Bayou La Batre’s housing authority is run by a private entity. “So it’s not a government-run program. The city owns the property, but a private company runs it,” he said.

Simelton said the NAACP would probably challenge the decision to reject public housing IDs because of the late notice.

Alabama’s voter ID law is believed to have disenfranchised at least 282 voters in the primary.

Full recap once I get back to my laptop, but seriously, the police are ridiculous as fuck with this VonDerrit Myers story. Just admit it: your racist vigilante brother in arms gunned down this kid in the street.