Questioning Transphobia

One of eleven charts at Mother Jones that explain “everything that’s wrong with America today.”  I don’t see a chart about high fructose corn syrup, but the rest are fairly clear.

Just found out about this, and ugh. I don’t have commentary right now, but the post itself says it all:

This op-ed piece was written by DC Trans Coalition member Sadie-Ryanne Baker, on behalf of and with help from the DCTC organizing collective, in response to troubling recent events.

Standing Against Criminalization
DC government must rethink impact on marginalized communities of policing sex work

On the weekend of September 25^th 2010, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) raided a hotel in Northwest in a prostitution-related sting. After initial witness reports that dozens were detained, MPD has confirmed that six arrests were made on charges of soliciting prostitution.

Every week, the DC Trans Coalition receives numerous complaints involving police harassment. Many of these reports come from transgender, transsexual or gender-non-conforming (hereafter trans) individuals, especially trans women of color, who are involved in, or believed to be involved in, sex work.  Due to transphobic and racist police bias, many trans women are harassed and falsely arrested for sex work (the crime of “walking while trans”) while simply interacting in their own communities.

Whether they are sex workers or not, however, is beside the point. No one deserves the degree of persecution and violence these individuals face. While most survivors of policing abuses are unwilling or unable to file formal complaints, we continue to receive a consistently high volume of contacts from individuals who have been assaulted and/or verbally ridiculed by police. Many are treated inhumanely while in custody, despite MPD’s own General Order prohibiting such abuse. A soon-to-be-released study by the National Center for Transgender Equality notes that 71% of trans respondents had experienced harassment and disrespectful treatment by police officers and 45% were uncomfortable reporting crimes to police. After the most recent raid, DCTC was approached for advice from trans community members who are fearing for their own safety in the face of similar sweeping police actions. No one should have to live with this fear.

Read the whole thing at the link. Seriously, follow it and read.

I am tired of reading blog posts, essays, articles about sex work that position trans women as an addendum, and fail to acknowledge how so many are in such a vulnerable position because of poverty and survival sex work.

So a story that’s been sweeping the internet lately is Antoine Dodson’s video in which he is talking about a rapist stalking the women in his neighborhood and how he is helpless to protect his sister. And how this video was turned into comedy for many who viewed it, and more.

I didn’t watch the video, and I’m disappointed because I didn’t really realize what was going on, what people were doing to Antoine and how they were erasing what happened to his sister and the other women in his neighbhorhood in search of a laugh. Several have post about this already, and rather than offer my own uninformed analysis, I’m going to direct you to their blogs:

Prof Susurro at Like a Whisper – On Feminism, Liberals, Black Folks, and Antoine Dodson:

For those who do not know, Antione Dodson is the brother of a potential rape victim. He, his sister [whose name I will not use in this post], her daughter, and his mother lived in low income housing, Lincoln Park,  in Huntsville Alabama until recently. According to Dodson a rapist was targeting Lincoln Park because no one was doing anything about it. He said several young women and girls had been raped, and had either received no assistance or not asked for help because they knew the police were not going to do anything. Dodson also says the same thing happened to his family.

In late July, a rapist broke into their small home through a window and attempted to rape his sister. Dodson managed to scare the assailant and force him out of the apartment. He then called several of his friends in the area to look for the person because, like everyone else, he did not believe the police were going to do anything about an assault in low income housing. Later Dodson called both the Housing Authority Office that runs Lincoln Park and the Police. Hours went by before the police arrived and according to Dodson and others no major search was mounted by them. Also according to Dodson and others, the Housing Authority issued a statement but has made no improvements to security or safety in Lincoln Park to help protect them from being targeted. In fact, an attempted rape following a similar m.o. (rapist came through bedroom window, advanced on girl inside) occurred the following evening.

Sylvia at Problem Chylde – Think Twice:

this post is going to be a little didactic.

think twice before you laugh at antoine dodson. i know everything is supposed to take a backseat to short-lived fame and exposure. but how would you feel if your sister was attacked by a rapist and people did nothing about it? officials laughed at you, police took their time coming to investigate, media crews didn’t arrive until you called them, and then your time on the news gets spoofed to entertain others instead of warn them. antoine’s taking his time in the spotlight in stride, and i think he’s doing it for kelly’s sake. i hope all the people laughing and singing “hide your kids, hide your wife” are writing all of the people in kelly’s community and state to do something about catching the rapist.

i planned to write about this at feministe, fast on the heels of the gang rape of a 12-year-old at a nearby skatepark. what does it mean when you read about attack after attack after attack, and one of the thoughts in your head is “i hope no one auto-tunes something like this” or “how can this story garner more attention than it’s gotten,” when these stories should be enough to knock ten people on their asses with grief.

Black Amazon – Antoine Dodson HAS to be HILARIOUS:

Antoine Dodson is a lionheart . But for the rest of us he needs to be funny. He needs to be an internet meme , funny poor black guy,autotuned to death.

Prof Susurrois so amazing with her analysis of the three groups ( myself included ) that are full of teh fail , but I want to break em down a bit

Dodson has to be hilarious , because if his situation isn’t funny it would have to be enraging.

Dr. Goddess gives an excellent summation of what brought us this young lionheart ( i am calling him that forever) to national media attention.

There is a serial rapist in his community.

*record scratch*

Yes if you are laughing about what got Antoine Dodson so angry you are laughing because serial rape is funny!

The Crunk Feminist Collective – Antoine Dodson’s Sister: On Invisibility as Violence:

We are in the midst of Antoine Dodson Mania! For those that don’t know him, he’s the now famous man who fought off the intruder that climbed into his sister’s second story window in the middle of the night and tried to attack her with her daughter present. Remember his reaction? Hilarious right? I mean pissed off that his sister was attacked! LMFAO! So hilarious that now there is this song that has remixed the news clip and turned it into the new summertime hit.  It has even made the iTunes Top 20 and we can purchase sexual assualt for $1.99 and jam all day!  And the star of all this is of course was Antoine Dodson for his “comedic” reaction to violence and the Gregory Brothers for their creative innovation of putting it to song. Sarcasm aside, I must admit that to remix a news story like that is pretty amazing.  But what does it mean to remix violence against black women when our stories are already left behind?

See usually when a black woman is attacked we find some way of making it her fault. We ask questions like what was she wearing? What does she do for a living? How many sexual partners has she had in the past? You know, the typical stuff that removes accountability from her attacker.  But in this case, where a black woman minding her damn business awoke to an attacker in her second story apartment, normal victim-blaming would not work. So now what do we do, because we obviously can’t take a black woman’s story of violence seriously? Well, that’s simple.  We marginalize the attack and focus the story on her brother, whose anger we can exploit because it fits into stereotypes of queer masculinity that provide comic relief. The producers used the footage to lock Antoine in a frame, to capture him in place, in order to tell a story that fits their truths—black women’s confrontations with sexual violence are either not real or unimportant.  Framed under the guise of “news” this masquerades as a story about a woman awaking to an intruder in her bed but is really a story about a funny black man, hilarious in his anger. It was never about her.

I know there’s more conversation in the blogosphere about this, and I hope there’s a lot more. I’m still reading through everything, and I think it’s definitely worth anyone’s time to do the same. This highlights so many issues with race and the intersection with gender that it’s hard to summarize properly.

Oh, and I definitely fit into Prof Susurro’s groups – QT was silent on the whole thing. I do admit I have trouble keeping up with things, but the end result was still silence.

h/t BlackAmazon
Edit: category/intersectionality fail corrected