Postcard from the artist collective project THINK AGAIN

So, I guess as a middle range millennial, I now get to tell all you young queer kids that what you are feeling right now is exactly how it felt in 2004 when we re-elected George Bush, and not only that but many states put in bans against gay/same sex marriage at the time.

This is probably not comforting, but it is true, and it helps me when I feel hopeless: For every revolution there is a counter revolution, for every step forward there is a step back, that things may not be good forever but they will not be bad, either. That we clawed our way to get where we are and we can claw our way forward from here, too. Talk to your queer elders, the ones who have been here before and will be here again and who threw bricks at Stonewall.

When I was a child, if you got AIDS it was a death sentence. Now it isn't. Now you live on.

So I'll quote angels in america: You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins.

“LOVE Is Tender & Knows No Gender” pinback, Northern Sun Products, c. 1999. #lgbthistory #lgbtherstory #lgbttheirstory #lgbtpride #QueerHistoryMatters #HavePrideInHistory #Night

ORLANDO LESBIANS🔻1992 Orlando Pride Parade. Saviz Shafaie Collection. #lesbianculture #orlandolesbians #1992

Check out What’s in the Archives? Lesbian Collections to learn more about Canadian lesbian history and the CLGA’s collections. 

Selected early Lesbian Connection covers, 1975-1982.

I learned about the murder of Kitty Genovese in two separate psychology classes, at two separate universities. It was studied as an example of the “bystander effect”, which is a phenomenon that occurs when witnesses do not offer help to a victim when there are other people present.

I was told by my professors that Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old unmarried woman who was attacked, raped, and brutally murdered on her way home from her shift as manager of a bar. I was told that numerous people witnessed the attack and her cries for help but didn’t do anything because they “assumed someone else would”. Nobody intervened until it was too late. 

What I was not told was that Kitty Genovese was a lesbian who lived more or less openly with her partner in the Upper West Side and managed a gay bar. 

Now… is it likely that people overheard Kitty’s cries for help and ignored them because they thought someone else would deal with it? Or, perhaps, did they ignore her because they knew she was a lesbian and just didn’t care?

Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe it was just a random attack. Maybe her neighbours didn’t know she was gay, or didn’t care.

But it’s a huge chunk of information to leave out about her in a supposedly scientific study of events, since her sexuality made her much more vulnerable to violent crimes than the average person. And it’s a dishonour to her memory.

RIP Kitty Genovese. Society may only remember you for how you died, but I will remember you for who who were.

this was one of the first lessons I had in psych too and we were never told about this either nor was it in any of the reading materials

I never knew this.

I also never knew this about Kitty Genovese, but I do know that, in fact, many of the dozen (not thirty-eight) people who witnessed some part of the attack (which took place after 3AM, on a chilly night in March when most people’s windows were closed) tried to help in some way.

One shouted out his window for the attacker to leave her alone, which did successfully scare the man off temporarily.

Another called the police but, seeing her still on her feet, said only that there had been a fight but the woman seemed to be okay.

And when Kitty Genovese was finally attacked in a vestibule where she couldn’t be seen from outside, Karl Ross, a neighbor, saw what was happening but was too frightened himself to go to her rescue–so he started calling other neighbors to ask what he should do. Eventually one of them told him to call the police, which he did, and the woman he called, Sophie Farrar, rushed out to help Kitty even though she didn’t know whether the attacker was gone.

Kitty Genovese died in the arms of a neighbor who tired to help and comfort her while they waited for the police and ambulance to arrive. Kitty was in fact still alive, although mortally wounded, when the ambulance reached the scene.

The man who saw the final stabbing? Who panicked and called other neighbors first instead of the police? The man who said, infamously, that he “didn’t want to get involved” because he was reluctant to turn to the police for help? He was thought to be gay himself. He was a friend of Kitty and Mary Ann’s. After being interviewed by the police he took a bottle of vodka to Mary Ann and sat with her, trying to comfort her.

So, no. I don’t think the evidence indicates that Kitty Genovese’s neighbors let her die because she was a lesbian, because Kitty Genovese’s neighbors tried to help.

See also: Debunking the Myth of Kitty Genovese (The New York Post)

A Call for Help (The New Yorker)

(Also, going by the content of the murderer’s confession, it was indeed a random attack.)

how on EARTH was this “scientifically” studied but the details gotten so wrong and the wrong as hell conclusion published and taught in schools?!?!?! where were those scientists observation skills?! on vacation?!

How to take facts and turn them into an urban legend that gets taught in schools: Make a bad made-for-t.v.-movie about it, watch it, believe everything the movie says, annnnnnnd go!  That’s how it gets taught as this supposed “scientific study.”  Someone got fucking lazy.

Spread the real deal, kids.

A book about this, “No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Nonfiction this year! if anyone wants to check it out try your local library!

@herbertwestdidsomethingswrong

this whole post is quality. 

Her brother William has devoted much of his life to figuring out what happened. He produced a documentary in 2015 called The Witness to help get the real story out. The Just a Story podcast also has a episode about Kitty Genovese and how and why the narrative got so twisted.

Keeping up with our theme of groundbreaking work from trans elders, we’ve got this 2013 collection of Johnson and Rivera’s writings ✨

Introduction gets it

Rivera on STAR’s work

- Martha P. Johnson, 1972

Okay this zine has a transcript of the “Y’all Better Quiet Down” speech, but I’m gonna share the actual footage because the text doesn’t do justice to the sheer force of the moment

“my queerness is traditional” Ryan Young 2017

One of my newest pieces for my senior project. Got a few pics done over the weekend and shooting more tomorrow!

Source

https://ramshackleglory.bandcamp.com/album/live-the-dream

I do want to point out that the print came way before the song. It was made by Dalia Shevin in response to the Seattle WTO protests of 1999.

The Radical Queer Aesthetics of Gay Power Magazine

being so fr when I say that transmisogyny has put feminism back like 50 years

what i thought we had distanced ourselves from was the reduction of women to vaginas and wombs and the ability to bear children. i thought we had progressed past ‘dresses are for women and pants are for men.’ i thought we progressed past the idea that someone is less of a woman if she does not adhere strictly to beauty standards. i thought we progressed past the idea that naturally being comfortable adhering to highly feminine standards is vulgar. but i (sarcastically) guess no one could have predicted that trans-exclusive feminism would be the downfall of all the progress we’ve made

— Quote by Leslie Feinberg, from TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism, issue 7, volume 1. 1995.

“Female Perversions–Sex and the Lesbian” by Dr. Albert Reissner, MD.  1965

- Some chapter highlights include:

reading progressive sex ed caricatures with accurate and detailed and realistic diagrams of sexual organs + shows their variation, but all i can think about is how there is no discussion of what srs is besides the fact that it exists

how may people know the before and afters of vaginoplasty? phalloplasty? meta? how it works at all?

this one has been passed around recently from the mayo clinic and that actually makes me so happy because how many of transfeminine people are aware of what their options even look like?

there’s a diagram for phallo and meta from springer link(i believe) and. honestly i’d never seen these before and i dont think i’ve ever seen any diagrams. i know vaguely because of reading papers or listening to people talk about their experience but i’ve never seen it, yk? it makes me more confident in my choice to get meta when i’m older

There’s a website called Transbucket that has a whole archive of before and after photos, surgery costs, surgeon names and locations, and general feedback on complications, sensation, everything. It’s been around for at least a decade, and there are photos of some folks five or eight years down the line. It’s organized by procedure, and it’s very comprehensive. It’s NSFW of course but it’s an amazing resource!!!

Demystify transition! Break irrational medical fear!

I've actually really wondered the specifics of phallo and meta so seeing diagrams is fucking awesome

Stefa Marin Alarcon

thank you trans women. everyone say thank you trans women. or else

Stormé DeLarverie

Also known as the “Rosa Parks” of the gay rights movement, whose reported tussle with the police was one of the decisive moments of the Stonewall riots. The popular Drag king spent much of her life as an entertainer, MC, singer, bouncer, and bodyguard. Most significantly as a volunteer street patrol worker, the “guardian of lesbians in the Village”