#everyday example

DISCUSSION OF A REAL EXAMPLE

I found an interview with Oprah in which she talked to three men and their experiences with living on the down low. I thought that this was interesting because we don’t see a lot of gay black men willing to talk about issues like this. Usually its really hard to get people to come forth because of their fear of rejection by people they love. The men Oprah interviewed were all black men, maybe middle-aged, who didn’t want to be identified; one of the men were shown. All of this shows the extent to which disapproval of being gay means to men in the African American community.

photo credit to Huffington Post. (Kristen Ostendorf to the right)

Kristen Ostendorg

5th post

Kristen Ostendorf is a cisgender, white, Catholic woman from a middle class standing and she had been fired in August 2013. Arguably, Kristen Ostendorf is in a privileged standing in terms with the LGBT community. This is demonstrated in that she has written a Huffington Post blog that details her termination after opening up that she is a lesbian. She was teaching as a Campus Minster at a Catholic high school in Minnesota for eighteen years until she was terminated. She writes of her history growing up in Chicago, to which she accords as a Catholic city. She writes of the importance of faith in her life and how teaching and being a Campus Minister were her life passions. She did not detail her history with her sexuality but only knew that it was an issue when you are a Catholic teacher. Kristen shares in her blog post that being rejected from her church, her community deflates her. But she shares that she has faith that there can be a change.

           Kristen Ostendorf’s experience is related to my topic because she has directly dealt with LGBT employment discrimination. Not only that, but she was terminated from a religious institution, an institution that is infamously known for having a low tolerance with the LGBT community. This relates to the research I have done with regard to how religious institutions regard LGBT employment. It is unfortunate that despite the years she has dedicated into the high school and the respectable performance she has had, her sexual orientation became the undoing of her career. Growing up, religion was important to me. I do not like how they have been treating the LGBT community and that they would let go an individual who has made a great impact in that community simply due to her sexual orientation in opposition to her performance.

My blog focus involves a few real life examples. Below I have provided some clips and hope these can speak to their lives more than I can summarize them. Pedro Zamora was a 22-year-old Cuban American who was on the Real World San Francisco in 1994. Zamora was openly gay and very outspoken about HIV /AIDS education. He died on November 11, 1994 of complications due to AIDS, hours after the final episode of the MTV series aired. Below is the a 4-part reflection on Zamora’s life and activism.

https://youtu.be/KA4ZZImS4Qs

Ryan White, a white Indiana teen, contracted the virus from tainted blood. White’s story gained national exposure as he suffered horrible oppression in his community and at school due to ignorance about the disease. White was infected in 1984 and died in 1990, one month before his high school graduation in a new and accepting community. Below are various clips compiled about White’s death, and his experiences in his own words.

https://youtu.be/TNWCo-pIyPE

Magic Johnson is an NBA star who admitted to being HIV positive in 1991. Johnson became infected after treatments were available and still lives today. Below is Johnson’s announcement.

https://youtu.be/VbdOQUARrEU

I think these men of different backgrounds, and different modes of infection, provide a well-rounded picture of the 80’s AIDS epidemic and the public reaction. They changed public perception. In Ryan White’s case, specifically by showing a young white boy experiencing unspeakable treatment due to ignorance.

        By Nikhaule Martin

        Racism, discrimination, and oppression has been seamlessly sewed into our society. Acts of racism defended and treated as the norm. The issue of hyper surveillance that occurs within neighborhoods filled with minorities has been defended. Black men doing and selling drugs at the same rate as white men, but black men are more likely to be arrested. Families missing their fathers, brothers, nephews, cousins and friends because they were arrested and charged for petty crimes. Hyper Surveillance is an issue that affects minorities everywhere, not just blacks and not just black males. Minorities everywhere are at risk. Take the story of Jon Burge.

For this part of the project I chose to talk about an interview that Sandy Stone did with Cristan Williams. Stone is an out transgender woman who worked for a radical feminist lesbian separatist music collective group called Olivia Records. Stone faced a lot of hate that started because of Janice Raymond, author of The Transexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, an extremely transphobic piece of work. 

This hate started because Sandy Stone and other women who were part of Olivia Records, a collective of lesbian feminist women, were sent a couple of chapters of Janice Raymond’s book, read it, and sent it back to her with a comment sheet attached to it. Stone stated that the copy they received, though it did not name Stone personally, was clearly pitched to out her. The collective sent it back to Raymond with negative comments attached, and that is when the hate started. The hate that Olivia Records got was all aimed at Stone for being a transgender women. Many believed that she did not belong in a lesbian feminist space because of her identity as a transgender woman. It went as far as actual death threats, with a women’s group called Gorgons threatening to kill her if she came to Seattle. Stone did in fact go to Seattle with the collective, and Gorgons did actually show up there with guns. They were confiscated by the security there, but the threat was still very real and very scary to Stone. The hate, threats, and overall violent energy being directed at Stone and Olivia Records caused Stone to leave the collective and move. Now she lives a normal life and has moved on from the hate that TERFs threw at her.

Though the entire thing that Stone dealt with is scary, it is important to note that she has a lot of privilege as a transgender woman who passes very well and is white, able bodied, and lives in the United States. I really wanted to get the perspective of a transgender woman of color, but is was difficult finding well written sources or a person to interview. Transgender women of color experience transphobia very differently than white transgender women as it has racism tied directly into it. Transgender women who are not able bodied and do not have the means to pass as well as Stone does also have a very difficult time with transphobia. In general though, I felt like Stone’s experience with TERFs tied really well to my other sources, which all talked about TERFs and how malicious they can get, especially when it involved transgender women being a part of feminist and lesbian spaces.

Works Cited

DISCUSSION OF A REAL EXAMPLE:

In my previous posts on this topic, I have sought to locate some of the ways in which an over-focus on marriage equality can take time, energy and resources away from fighting other battles that LGBTQ rights advocates need to be active on.  In this post I will bring in a real example of this problem as it plays out in Uganda.

Most of my information for this post comes from an Aljazeera America article by Massoud Hayoun.  In it he reports on an LGBTQ rights activist doing work in Uganda named Moses Kimbugwe.  Uganda recently passed an anti-gay law that calls for life imprisonment for individuals taking part in what the government classifies as homosexual acts.  Additionally, people who do not report their gay friends and family to the police can receive 7 years in jail.  Moses speaks to how this affects him on a basic level, describing how for him and others in the gay community in Uganda, it is increasingly difficult to develop relationships.  Friends and family start to avoid them out of fear, and people who engage in relationships risk being reported.  For Moses and others in Uganda, marriage is not a very pressing issue when simply existing as a gay person is criminalized.  

Additionally, American anti-gay individuals actually traveled to Uganda and assisted the Ugandan government in crafting their hateful legislation.  Originally there were even plans for a “kill the gays bill” where the death penalty would be applied.  Eventually, life in prison was the settled upon sanction.  This is the first of the sources I have looked at which has a truly international perspective.  At a time when many in the U.S are rightfully excited at the progress on the marriage equality front, it is important not to ease up on global LGBTQ issues.  The regime is Uganda has teamed up with hateful voices in the U.S to craft horrific anti-gay legislation, so all Americans should feel a sense of ownership and responsibility to step up and speak out.  

                 Post 5 – Discussion of a real example: Leelah Alcorn

           Leelah Alcorn was a transgender teen who committed suicide in Ohio in 2014. Leelah Alcorn, born Josh Alcorn, was born a boy but “felt like a girl trapped in a boy’s body” as she stated in a letter she wrote prior to her suicide. In her letter she expressed that she had felt that way since she was four years old and that when she was ten she “finally understood who [she] was”. She explains that her school and peers were accepting of her, but her parents were not. When she first came out to her mother Leelah says her mom “reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I’m wrong.”

           Leelah had quite religious parents and this can be something hard to deal with for those who identify as LGBT. This is because the religious community is known to be against homosexuality. Being a part of a family that is so against who you are, which Leelah experienced, can lead to mental disorders like depression and anxiety and suicidal ideations. The two articles I addressed state this. They explain that rejection and not being accepted are risk factors for depression and suicidal ideations for LGBT youth. They both also explain that depression and suicide risk for LGBT people are caused by how their environment reacts to their sexuality. (Suicide Prevention for LGBT Students pg 56) This is what Leelah experienced. Although her school and peers were accepting, her parents were not. This unacceptance by her parents created an environment in her home where she did not feel welcomed or wanted, ultimately leading to her to choose to take her own life.

Discussion Of An Everyday Example

The topic of work inequality for queer women of color is something that can affect everyone, not just the group mentioned. These women need to provide for either themselves or for their families. When they are being harassed or discriminated against on the job because of their sexual orientation or because of their race, it affects those women on a deep psychological level. My cousin is about to graduate from the University of Guanajuato this year and she identifies as lesbian. I do not want her to be a victim of harassment or discrimination on the job. She already has had to deal with bullying in the past that lead to severe depression and anxiety. For some women, having the simplest of jobs can mean the world to them, and if they identify as anything other than straight, then they will feel trapped. They can’t be themselves for fear of the repercussions of their coworkers, and of fear of losing their job. These examples relate to my analysis of a web source. There I looked at the wage gap for gay women of color. These experiences also relate to my analysis of a first and second scholarly source in that I discussed some of the repercussions of coming out in the workplace.