Last year, the University of Tennessee’s Pride Center created a guide to pronouns preferred by some transgender students, including some they invented themselves: “ze, hir, and hirs.”
Since then, there have been ongoing incidents in strict opposition to the guide, which has since been withdrawn. Windows at the center have been smashed. Flags have been snatched several times. The letters “LGBT” are habitually scratched off the sign outside. The center was eventually defunded by state lawmakers and is now funded almost exclusively by donations and staffed by students.
Related: Was ‘Radical Queer’ Group Bash Back Behind HRC Building’s Vandalism?
“I felt the only way to move forward was pull the website,” said system president Joe DiPietro, who claimed it was the biggest controversy he’d seen since taking office in 2011.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Nevertheless, that clearly hasn’t calmed down detractors. Last weekend, the University of Tennessee’s Pride Center was vandalized yet again: the rainbow flag was torn down, and in it’s place, a hand-scrawled note was left behind: “Fags get AIDS more often. #ImWithHer.”
Related: Satanic Vandalism Appears On Dallas Gay Landmarks
Student Thomas Tran, who shared photos of the scene on the Pride Center’s Facebook Page, wrote, “Glad to see how welcoming this campus is coming back from a long weekend.”
All of this was found this morning. Someone decided to exercise their freedom of speech and left us a message after destroying our flag. This is what we are up against. This is the type of thing that will most likely get swept under the rug by administration who do not care for us.”
According to a Twitter statement from the university, campus police are looking into the incident:
@JoelAndersonPhD Incidents like this have no place on our campus. A bias incident report has been filed, and UTPD is investigating.
— UT Knoxville (@UTKnoxville) September 6, 2016
The Pride Center notes the date of the occurrence is significant:
This past weekend was the 1 year anniversary of #UTK removing the gender neutral pronouns article; today’s vandalism is the legacy of that.
— UTK Pride Center (@UTKPrideCenter) September 6, 2016
Here’s one of several messages posted to The Pride Center’s Facebook page:
Masc Pride
Too bag lots of f*gs out there give people a leg to stand on when they make such statements. LOL @ #I’mWithHer, so we know the vandals are str8 guys (or possibly lesbians who are sick of the rainbow).
Ukin Blome
@Masc Pride: You sure do spend a lot of time here for someone who hates himself as much as you do. I’m surprised to find a psychopath that has the capacity to feel self hatred. For most psychopaths, the only thing they can feel is sorry for themselves.
Masc Pride
@Ukin Blome: Take your meds, tulip!
scottjamesmiller
@Masc Pride: You make excuses for anti-gay acts of hate and ignorance? As far as our gay family is concerned, you were adopted.
robho3
@Ukin Blome: Masc Pride’s goal in life is to post a negative comment about every story queerty posts— poor thing has a lot of time on his hands.
Baba Booey Fafa Fooey
@Ukin Blome: @scottjamesmiller: That’s why an ignore button is needed here. The ignore button prohibts you and the troll from interacting. It stops you from replying to their post – which is what they want. You shouldn’t have to come to a gay site and read that kind of abuse, you can go to any site and read that abuse, not here. The ignore decreases trolling considerably and makes a site much more bearable.
Transiteer
No surprise it’s in the South. Third World boneheads still trying to live in the 50’s. Amazing that people in a so-called “school” are still this stupid – probably a few dumb jocks trying to affirm their manliness and counteract the boner they get in the showers. No wonder people outside the U.S. look at the place like it’s a dumpyard of the terminally stupid and bigoted. Can’t do anything right – ship the jobs overseas, and still pretend it’s 1957.
cancorv
More often than what? I thought we only got AIDS once, whatever “getting AIDS” is.
Nahald
Did you really expect anything else from the backwood hillbillies in Tennessee? I think not.
Ukin Blome
@robho3: Psychopaths have NO emotional capacity. They do not know what an emotion is. If you say to a psychopath, I love you, they will have no idea of what you speak. They will know that they can manipulate you and get you to do things that they want you to, but they have never experienced the emotion of love. Having no emotions, psychopaths think they are powerful beings and can control people. What most people see as a troll on this site I see as a very sick psychological disorder. I have compassion for him and all the other user id’s he uses. You can understand the misery of his existence in the content of his posts. For him, life is something he just cannot connect with.
Masc Pride
@scottjamesmiller: What was the excuse made? I simply said what was stated is actually true for the most part. Technically more heteros have HIV, but that’s only because they are roughly 96 percent of the population. Meanwhile gay men account for a mere 2 percent of the population, yet contribute to over 60 percent of new infections. All facts. Look it up, and then go change your tampon. And then help Ukin change his.
Ukin Blome
@Masc Pride: That’s Ukin Blome. Did I hit a nerve? Sad, so sad, so very sad.
Kevan1
@Masc Pride: Wow Mascpride you are showing your ignorance. Maybe you need to stick a tampon in that pie hole until you can educate yourself. I also wonder if the cops need to look at you as the vandal. You are nothing but a bully. A sad coward. Until you grow up and become an adult go back to preschool and this time actually educate yourself. You show yourself as a weak, sad, stupid, uneducated punk. Take your self loathing cowardice self and crawl in a hole because no one cares in the end what you have to say. Why do you not go bully someone else with your low I.Q…? That means (intelligence quotient) a total score derived from one of several standardized tests designed to assess human intelligence. You might check yours out. I think you may find yours at about thirty and I am being generous with that guess. Please for everyone else’s and your benefit get a life. Quit being a punk and convert you energy to something positive and peaceful.
Masc Pride
@Ukin Blome: You wish you could. Remember, you’re the one who has the problem with my statement. So sad, so very sad.
@Kevan1: Didn’t even bother to read your reply. How does that make you feel?
Kim K Kute Kuchie
lol INCONVENIENT TRUTH!!!! truth HURTS