Political roundup: Albertan values edition

In case y’all ever wonder why I hate this Province, I present a reminder: a picture of a target made in the likeness of the Albertan Premier, Rachel Notley, was posted by the organizer of an oilmen’s golf tournament yesterday afternoon:

An organizer of a golf tournament says he’s not sorry for putting up a target displaying a photo of Premier Rachel Notley’s face on a golf course.

Ernest Bothi, president of the Brooks Big Country Oilmen’s Association, said the sign was displayed at a tournament held Friday at the Brooks Golf Club.

He said the photo of Notley was placed intentionally and was meant to be a target. Although he said no one actually hit the display, Bothi defended his right to have it there.

Oh Dog, not another one. Get yer bingo cards!

It’s called freedom of speech.

*stamps freeze peach*

“I’m the president of the organization. I take full responsibility for it. And I did it because I see a lot of frustrated people out there,” Bothi said.

*stamps psychological projection*

“The picture was just a headshot. It wasn’t anything of a lewd nature. We just went out, everybody played 18 holes. That was it.”

*stamps Mansplaining*

Bothi said that the group members of the Brooks Big Country Oilmen’s Association playing in the tournament are “fed up” with people being out of work and the increased cost of living.

*stamps misattribution error*

“This has nothing to do with a physical attack. We didn’t burn her in effigy or anything like that. We just wanted to release some steam,” Bothi said. “It’s just, enough’s enough.”

*stamps denialism*

Important observation: Bothi has exactly zero pending criminal charges laid against him. He is free to be a fucking asshat, just as we are free to call him one. Seriously, stop misusing the term freedom of fuck mothering speech.

Implying violent acts through the use of an identifiable target is pretty much always tasteless. Doubly tasteless right now, considering a British MP was recently assassinated for her policy. Triply tasteless, because violence against women is still epidemic in the West. I’m not sure what part of “haha, I blow off steam by fantasizing about violence against you” is funny.

Derek Fildebrandt, the Dickweed Wildrose MLA who apologized for getting caught endorsing a transphobic & homophobic comment without reading it, responds:

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Anti-Queer hate crime on the rise

MetroNews found from the Edmonton Police crime stats that anti-Queer hate crime in 2016 has already surpassed the entirety of incidents from 2015:

Attacks on LGBTQ residents have made up about 25 per cent of events investigated by the EPS Hate Crimes unit in 2016, compared to less than eight per cent last year, according to police.

Police told Metro Tuesday that nine of 38 occurrences forwarded to the Hate Crimes Unit this year have been directed toward LGBTQ people, and five were classified as crimes (the other four were “hate-motivated incidents”).

In all of 2015, police recorded just one hate-motivated crime and six hate-motivated incidents perpetrated against the LGBTQ community.

Now would be an excellent time to start confronting folks contributing to a culture of violence and ignorance.

-Shiv

 

Stop telling me how to grieve

Source: Assigned Male

Source: Assigned Male


 

Source: Assigned Male

Source: Assigned Male

I’d crack a joke about throwing shade, but seriously, cishets, I need you to drink the tallest glass of Shut The Fuck Up you can find.

-Shiv

#AskTheGays, says Trump. Gays respond promptly.

pajiba covers another Trump moment, characterized by a brief window of lucidity before… well, you know:

In the wake of the horrific Orlando shooting, Ooompa-Loompa-American Donald Trump was an actual compassionate human for a moment, saying, “Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando’s LGBT community. They have been through something that nobody could ever experience. This is a very dark moment in America’s history.”

But then he spun this humanizing moment into political word vomit, insisting that his anti-immigration policies would better protect the queer community, even though the gunman in this instance was an American born in New York. Trump went on to declare he’s a better ally to the LGBTQ community than Hillary Clinton, demanding, “Ask the gays!

And “the gays” responded.

You get the idea, I’m sure.

-Shiv


 

Oops, the Twitter embeds broke. Fixeded them.

Canadian professor imprisoned by Iranian authorities

Content Notice: torture, sexual assault.

Dr. Homa Hoodfar of Concordia University was arrested in Iran when she returned to visit her family following her husband’s death:

A Canadian academic researching women’s issues in the Middle East has been arrested and is being held in Iran’s Evin prison — a jail with a brutal history of violence toward its female inmates.

Initially hesitant to go public, the family of Concordia University professor Dr. Homa Hoodfar is now speaking out, saying they fear for her safety and health.

On March 10, while Hoodfar was visiting family and friends in Iran after the recent death of her husband, security officials raided her home and confiscated personal items including her computer and books, according to her niece Amanda Ghahremani. The raid happened only two days before the anthropologist was meant to return to Canada.

The Counter-Intelligence Unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards interrogated her several times over the next few days, arrested her and released her on bail, Ghahremani said in an interview with VICE News. Her passport was confiscated and she wasn’t allowed to leave the country.

The interrogations continued, and on June 6 — the last day her family had contact with her — she was arrested again. Her lawyer has had no access to her since then, and Iranian officials are not letting him view her file, so it’s not clear whether she is facing charges or not.

Evin Prison gained notoriety in Canada in 2003 when another Iranian-Canadian, Zahra Kazemi, died in Iranian custody after being arrested for taking pictures of the Evin Prison. The official story was, at first, that Kazemi went on a hunger strike and struck her head after fainting days later, resulting in her death. But a coroner later testified that Kazemi’s autopsy revealed extensive evidence of torture and rape, and that the immediate cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Iran expedited Kazemi’s burial, and no Canadian coroner has ever seen her body themselves, nor has any Canadian judge been asked to assess the charges against her. Diplomatic relations between Canada and Iran deteriorated shortly after. No shortage of stories following the brutal treatment of the Evin inmates has come out since.

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Intersectionality & violence

Content Notice: Discussing Orlando, but less anger and no vivid description of terrible things this time.

My colleague over at Death to Squirrels (hi Iris *waves*) posted something that finally knocked over a domino in my head. In her post, she says (emphasis mine):

I also think that what makes this mass shooting particularly difficult to process is that it implicates multiple intersections of queerness, racism, homophobia, religion, policing, mental illness, terrorism, gun violence, domestic violence and more.

Gah. Duh. Thanks for screwing in my lightbulb, Iris. You’re fab and ilu.

I’ve been dizzied by some of the participants in this conversation. They hone in on their pet issue with a laser-like focus. Something about this strategy always rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn’t homophobia, it was Islam. It wasn’t Islam, it was guns. It wasn’t guns, it was toxic masculinity. It wasn’t toxic masculinity, it was homophobia. It wasn’t regular homophobia, it was also internalized homophobia. And on and on.

And I read Iris’ post and I was like, I figured it out:

Y’all are White Feminists.

White Feminists refer to a specific iteration of feminism that lacks intersections. It subscribes to universal womanhoods, assumes all women occupy the same station in society, and redresses what they see to be pressing injustices within that station. And this is not to say that none of the White Feminists’ concerns are invalid–however, equal access to promotions would be of small consolation to, say, the trans woman held in a men’s prison.

White Feminists have notoriety for their laser-like interpretation of the patriarchy. Feminists of colour, trans feminists, atheist feminists, working-class feminists, kinky feminists, queer feminists and more have all blasted White Feminist literature for patently refusing to acknowledge the interaction between sexism and one’s other minority demographics, be it economic class, race, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, gender variance, you name it. The contrasted movement is intersectionality, which when we’re discussing acts of oppression, tries to consider the sum of one’s minority demographics as greater than and inseparable from the whole of its parts.

Most of the participants probably aren’t feminists, so I’m not actually accusing (most) of them of being White Feminists. Rather it’s a metaphor. Allow me to use the Royal You for a moment, and describe generally and not necessarily You, but possibly You, the reader: You’re honing in on one cause of the Orlando shooter’s actions, when there ain’t one cause.

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Weddings don’t seem to be so bad anymore

Brief aside: Due to mental health concerns, I am largely avoiding the news. I intend to keep blagging but the content over the next little while, best guess a few weeks, will be either personal, humorous, or adorably clumsy animal .gifs.

Weddings used to be mine fields for gender dysphoria. I hated them. The closest I came to liking them was at a Latinx wedding, because they played cha-cha-cha and samba during the reception instead of pop music.

I hate pop music, too.

Anyway, dysphoria, weddings. Awful thing The First: Forcing me into a men’s suit. I’m barely five feet tall and a ~115 pounds. There is not an adult man suit made on this planet that will fit me. These ill-fitting suits gave me plenty of reminders that something was wrong–though my last wedding attended prior to transitioning was still years from actually coming to terms with my gender. I kept looking at the women, thinking I was attracted to them (which was only occasionally the case), but most of the oggling was actually, “what would I wear to a wedding, given the choice? Her top plus her shoes with something different for the legs.” But men’s suits? Might as well ask me to wear an angry boa constrictor.

Now I have fun with weddings. I try to do something that’s still punk, even though I’m going formal. Think LBD’s with knee-high gladiator heels, or dress shirt and lady vest with shiny spandex pants and polished boots. Rainbow accessories are a must–any Queers suffering at a straight wedding ought to find refuge with me. I’m on the lookout for a rainbow underbust belt. Smoky cat’s eye eye-shadow is a must–can’t forget our busy evening of smouldering at straight people.

Awful thing The Second: What is with all the gender segregated traditions?

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What do the Cologne rapes and the Pulse shooting have in common?

Y’all didn’t have a single iota of fucks to give about violence against minorities until you could blame a Muslim for it.

Content Notice: Mentions of suicide, a description of the murder scene, plus the stuff that is probably apparent given the title of the article.

I speak, of course, of a very particular tract in this conversation, which means if this doesn’t sound like you, then this post isn’t directed at you. If you want an even hand, a level contribution to the discussion, go here or here. I’m sure there are other very reasonable arguments being made, but I need you to understand one thing:

Orlando was a message, and I am among its recipients.

This is not something I can cover without breaking into tears. This is not something I can cover without being reminded why high bridges and the edges of knives look so attractive. This is not something I can cover without picturing my family, my chosen family, on the floor of that nightclub, their phones ringing in their own blood while I’m frantically calling them. This is not something I can cover without thinking about all the stupid snapchats and videos and pictures they send me, knowing that in different circumstances it could have been footage of the last seconds of their life.

This is not an issue I have the benefit of distance from. I can’t lounge around in a chair and pontificate from the pipe in my hands.

A lot of people are jumping into this conversation. And it’s bad enough that I can’t simply mourn this attack on my community, it’s bad enough that I can’t even be angry at who I want without cishets shouting at me and telling me how I should be outraged, it’s bad enough that my Queer Latinx brothers and sisters witness this crime be literally whitewashed, I have to find that my attempts to seek out solidarity, are met with people who have never shown any inclination for giving a single fuck about anti-queer violence until it was a brown man who pulled the trigger.

This is shady as fuck. I see you, crawling out of the woodwork.

Where the fuck was your outrage, when trans women were dying in the streets at the hands of cis men?

Where the fuck was your outrage, when the pressures placed upon us claimed a body count that was nearly a coin flip?

Where the fuck was your outrage, when Queers were offing themselves because they had been told, over and over, by Christians and Muslims and Atheists alike, that their lives were disgusting and unimportant?

Where the fuck was your outrage, when North Carolina stripped Queer Americans of their rights?

Were you at the vigils?

 

The Edmonton vigil for Orlando

The Edmonton vigil for Orlando

 

Source: wiki commons

 

 

Were you at the protests?

protest2

Also the Edmonton vigil.

 

Source: static DNA India

The parades?

Source: Edmonton 2016 Pride festival, edmontontourism.

Source: Edmonton 2016 Pride festival, edmontontourism.

The fucking memorials??

Source: Times of Israel

 

 

Where the fuck have you been?

I don’t believe for a moment that you give a shit about Queer people except for our utility in being the foundation of your hate. When you’re absent from everything to do with us, when you’re ignorant of the violence we face from every organized religion and then more outside it, nearly every culture on this fucking planet, you can’t suddenly claim to give a shit about Queer deaths. I could paint my walls with the mugshots of every person who has murdered one of mine, and yes, there would be brown folks up there, black folks up there, Asian folks up there, and a whole lot of fucking white folks up there too.

But you are silent, absent, until now. Because the shooter claims membership to the Almighty Boogeyman of your fragile fucking psyche, has a brown name and brown skin, and is nominally a Muslim.

Islam is used to justify homophobia. Christianity is used to justify homophobia. Judaism is used to justify homophobia. Pseudoscience is used to justify homophobia. Racism is used to justify homophobia. Sexism is used to justify homophobia. DO YOU THINK I FUCKING CARE WHY SOMEONE SHOOTS ME?

Don’t you fucking tell me who I should be afraid of, that I ought to spurn the Queer Muslims holding my hand at the vigil, that the Christians offering prayers condemning hate and violence ought to be shunned, that the First Nations howling their grief in Cree as they appeal to someone or something I’ve never been introduced to are not my allies, because they believe in something impossible. They were there. You weren’t. Their tears were as real as mine. They may believe in fairy tales but at the end of the day, they were still fucking there, they’ve always been there, and they will continue to be there.

I know exactly who to watch.

After all, he was a gun-toting, queer-hating, hypermasculine, wife-beating, aspiring cop who shared fantasies about killing people. He’s your fucking poster boy.

-Shiv

Source.