Time magazine may have recently declared a “Transgender tipping point,” but there are still plenty of unevolved douchebags out there, as evidenced by the back-to-back bomb threats LAPD received during Trans Pride last weekend.
Trans Pride L.A. posted this message to their Facebook page following the unfortunate incidents:
We at Trans Pride L.A. regret the situation that abruptly ended yesterday’s event, shortly before it was scheduled to conclude.
The Los Angeles Police Department notified us that an anonymous person called in a bomb threat, identifying the Renberg Theatre as the target. It was our second bomb threat of the day, the first of which just referenced Trans Pride. After the first threat, police and security immediately conducted a sweep of The Village and found no reason for concern. The second threat came later in the evening, at a time when close to 200 people were in the theatre enjoying the Los Angeles Transgender Film Festival’s short film program. Out of an abundance of caution and with input from the LAPD, we made the decision to evacuate the theatre. Fortunately, a subsequent security sweep determined there was no explosive device.
Our apologies to the filmmakers and everyone else inconvenienced by someone’s hateful and disruptive actions. We truly regret that this put a damper on an otherwise glorious day of joy and celebration. It saddens us greatly that the day had to end on a negative note.
While “gay pride” has become almost synonymous these days with “excuse to party like you’re 22 years old,” this is a sobering reminder that pride events really do matter.
Visibility is everything, and what these sorry excuses who called in threats don’t realize is their efforts are futile.
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.
They may have added a sour note to an otherwise wonderful celebration, but their act of fear ultimately does more to set them back than it does the trans community.
Dakotahgeo
I am just relieved that the Trans Pride was as successful as it was. I would so much like to be in attendance next year to show my support.
Pastor Dakotahgeo!
Nowuvedoneit
Why do people call in bomb threats? Anywho, I’m sure the police should be able to track down the anonymous phone caller. Nothing in the age of the NSA is anonymous.
Nowuvedoneit
@Nowuvedoneit: Lol, duh just figured it out, it’s to stop the event.
Teeth
Was it a real bomb threat or just someone threatening to call themselves a word that they don’t like?
ingyaom
@Teeth: I get it – a “trXXny” bomb threat.
niles
wait…they demanded that the words gay and lesbian be removed from all organizations and events, yet they have their own “Trans Pride”? Talk about delusional hypocrisy.
ShowMeGuy
I am reminded of a tourism town where I once lived. Some kids at the high school thought it as funny to call in bomb treats to the high school and since the nearest FBI or bomb squad was an hour away, the students would get sent home for the rest of the day. This was becoming a habitual occurrence….so one day the school administration decided that anymore missed school days due to bomb threats would get made upon on Saturdays. Something this community did for snow days so that the school year doesn’t run long into tourism season….the kids need those summer touri$m job$, don’t you know. When the students learned that the school days lost to bomb threats would get made up on Saturdays…..the bomb threats quit happening.
Bomb threats in America are a sad joke…..since real ones NEVER happen. No reason to shut down an event because of a bomb threat….because, remember…..in America real bomb threats NEVER happen. A true bomber doesn’t make phone calls !! ! !
It would be different if fanatical groups were calling in bomb threats and then actually blowing up stores, schools, amusement parks, city buses……..but they’re not. It’s too easy of a way to shut down someone else’s fun without having to do anything but make a phone call. Stop reacting to them and they will stop calling since it doesn’t get the desired results.
jayj150
It was Rupaul!!!!!!. He’s the enemy!!!!
lykeitiz
I find the word “bomb” offensive, and I demand that the LAPD and QUEERTY only refer to this as an “explosive device” threat going forward.
Jacob23
I think it is great that they have Trans Pride day now. I support it 100%. LGBT is and always has been a sham. Ts are not one people with LGBs. They are not defined by sexual orientation and having some common political interests on certain issues is not the basis on which to establish an identity. LGB orgs shouild never have caved to the pressure to convert to LGBT. Since Ts openly run their own T-only groups and have T-only events, it is time for us to reclaim our LGB organizations.
BTW, I’d bet $10 that the perpetrator of this bomb threat turns out to be a disgruntled trans activist, probably outraged that someone used a wrong pronoun 3 years ago, something really important like that.
Polaro
Their scorched earth policy sure has not won them any friends and it is souring some allies.
corvaspikenard
@Jacob23: I’ll let you in on a secret.
Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, trans people pretty much had ‘transsexualism’ recognised as a medical condition, with a path of treatment covered by insurance. They did this without any help from the GLB, because we didn’t have much to do with the GLB back then.
Then a lesbian named Janice Raymond came along and said to the US government that trans medical care was a new phenomena, unethical, asserted that legislation should block trans medical care and that it would be best to institute a national program of reparative therapy.
Until Raymond’s HHS paper, the US government generally supported trans care as medically necessary.
It was only after the NCHCT pushed Raymond’s bigotry in 1980 that the US government reversed course in 1981 and took up Raymond’s views and rhetoric. Raymond’s hate became the government’s stance.
And it was around this time that trans people had to join the GLB because we were getting fucked over by the GLB without a voice from within the GLB.
GLB activists would routinely use trans people’s right to ‘compromise’ with the conservative right. For example, The Gay Liberation Front had protections for transpeople removed from a proposed 1971 New York GLBT rights anti-discrimination bill under the pretext that it wouldn’t pass with such ‘extreme’ language.
Even today, such as the recent debacle in Houston, trans protections keep getting removed from the table to enable the GLB to get their rights at the expense of trans people.
So you’re right. What the fuck have the GLB ever done for trans people except screw us over? Please, by all means detach the ‘T’ from the GLB, so long as you leave us the hell alone.
The GLB has the worst track record of screwing us over; trans people were on the cusp of being accepted and getting on with our lives, then the GLB fucked it up for us.
hex0
@corvaspikenard:
Transsexuals would be nowhere without gays, you’re the one doing the reversal. Trans people were accepted in the 60s and 70s? What ridiculous nonsense in an era where crossdressing was a crime. Janice Raymond wrote one irrelevant paranoid book and was not responsible for taking away your medical coverage (because radical lesbian feminists were so powerful in the Reagan era!)
See: http://janiceraymond.com/fictions-and-facts-about-the-transsexual-empire/
Trans have latched on to EVERYTHING we’ve created, we say we are proud to love our own kind, you loathe your real body so much to butcher and mutilate it.
I think you are insincere about removing the T, where would you get your political bidding, money without guilt tripping gullible gays into supporting the T? You’ve tried so hard to make us believe that your struggle is ours but it’s bs.
As to the article, I wonder whether this was a “false flag”, trans do like to reiterate that they’re the most oppressed people on Earth…
corvaspikenard
@hex0: Wow, linking to the website of the Queen of Transphobes; you’re a class act.
My transition is done, I need nothing from the GLB. We’ve won the bulk of our rights on our own, despite the push-back from the GLB trying to make us an underclass.
We never needed you and we need you now less than ever.
We never wanted to be part of the GLB and it’s become abundantly clear over the decades that we’re only part of it so that you have someone to use as a bargaining chip and to shit on and feel superior to.
You’re no better than the homophobes of the 70s and 80s – you even use all the same words as them.
Lvng1tor
Once again severely disappointed and in many cases disgusted by my gay brothers as they continue to belittle and insult our Trans family because of their ignorance and imagined superiority.
Even if you don’t understand what a trans person goes thru or can relate to their experience, even if you don’t understand why it’s LGBT and not LGB T understand that violence and the threat of violence against Trans individuals is wrong on any level and your continued insults and ridicule is a direct endorsement of that violence. It’s sick and wrong.
@corvaspikenard: Come on…you and I both know there are many LGB Trans individuals and that not every queer (umbrella term) is anti trans and are not out to throw you under the bus. Many of us stand side by side with our Trans family. I know the rage you are throwing back in face of small minded bigots. I feel the same over closed minded cisgender straight people sometimes….but there are also allies there and with out them none of us would have the rights we have. Please remember that.
Oli1023
@corvaspikenard: @Lvng1tor: I honestly wish that this animosity would be put behind us soon. It really hurts me to see such division in the LGBT community. I have never seen transgendered people as inferior, so I have no idea what you’re on about.
Teeth
@Lvng1tor: Speaking strictly for you, that is. Over the last 2 years I’ve lost any sense of kinship with the transexual community. I’ll vote for them- like I would for equal treatment for any group, but it ends there. I don’t want them at my table anymore. Sour malcontent professional victims are NOT good friends.
Tackle
Some of you gays are an embarrassment to us LGBTQ people, who believe in equal liberty, rights and justice for all within our LGBTQ family. Thank god that you are in the minority of gay men who think and believe this way. I would like for someone to explain who the T has hurt us, when everday we are moving closer to full equality, all with the T attached? If it really bothers you that much with having the T attached, then what’s stopping you from starting your own group/movement (gay men only)? And I’m not even a trans- person, but I find the statement. ( loth your real bodies so much to butcher and mutilate it). Some people do not want to educate themselves. Trans people are not born in their, as you say, “real bodies.” The brain and the physical body, do not match. Trans people are not butchering or mutilating their bodies. I say it’s modifying and making corrections. Besides, it foolish to say that trans or the T does not belong witn LGB, when many trans people are LGB. Example: if a trans women was born with a male body, but sexually the preference was for women, after the body modification and correction, you have a lesbian. So among trans people you have many LGB people. Nothing difficult there . But prejudice and bigotry can blind anyone.
Teeth
@Tackle: Your argument is absurd. It’s the radical trans activists who attack gay men and drag culture — which brought a lot of us to consider “Is this relationship even working anymore?”. And for me, the answer is no. I agree with you about the issue with transexuals– were talking about an error in anatomy and I wish them well with correcting it. That’s a gender issue, not a sexuality one. Their issues are very different from mine in that sense. But I’ll be damned if I’ll have my culture ripped off because it offends someone else’s.
Tackle
@Teeth: I agree with you about the radical trans activist who attack gay man and drag culture. But there is a group of radical gay men who attack all trans people based on the actions of those FEW radical trans activist. So why not just go after the radicals??
And if you think there is ever going to be a cohesive, loving, comfortable unity among all or even the majority of GLBTQ people, on every topic, all the time, you are going to be in for a difficult ride in life. What we do not want to do is throw a temper tantrum, making a decision for all gay men, and demanding that the (T) , get off the bus. But the answer is to dialog, build bridges and unify with those LGBTQ. (T) of like mindness.
Jacob23
@corvaspikenard: Well, thanks for letting me in on the secret that all your troubles arose from the massive political power and cultural influence of a lesbian who wrote something in 1980. You really need to get the secret out of how the Reagan Administration set policy based on what lesbians said! Clearly, America fell in love with transsexuals until a lesbian ruined the party.
That scapegoating nonsense aside, two thing stand out in your comment. First, your admission that Ts joined LGB as a political maneuver, not because Ts are truly “one people” with LGBs. I couldn’t agree with you more and that is why LGBT is a sham.
Second, you are a fully transitioned transsexual. For all intents and purposes, you are and function as a woman, presumably a heterosexual woman. Unless you are gay, there is no logical or moral reason why you and your group should be lumped with gay people, which is why many HBS folk oppose LGBT. They feel that their identity was hacked, no less than LGBs feel that our identity has been hacked. The hacking, or hijacking, was done by the “gueer” activists and radicals, joined by a variety of tiny subgroups w/in the transgender umbrella.
The transgender activists don’t care a whit about gay people or about fully transitioned transsexuals. They are happy to colonize us both, forcing us into their war on gender. LGBs and HBS should form an alliance to oppose the colonization of our respective groups. I think you would find that, once the offensive construct of LGBT is removed, the vast majority of LGBs have no animus toward, and no conflict, with HBS folk. Our problem is strictly with the people who have been attacking us and robbing us of our identity and those who abet them.
gcvsa
I’m sorry, but I thought I was clicking on a link for Queerty, but it seems there must be an HTTP redirect to a troll site, or Fox News, or the Daily Mail, or something. Can one of the admins please check the server to make sure it’s functioning properly? LOL
gcvsa
You know, I really think that political awareness of LGBT issues is sufficiently advanced at this point in history that it would be useful on some websites to require anyone commenting on contentious issues in our communities be forced to identify themselves positively and publicly. The last thing the LGBT communities need is to devolve into backbiting over who belongs and who doesn’t. At the very least, we need to have better moderation of discussions like this, so that only comments which are on topic rise to the top.
Before you post anything, ask yourself these questions: 1. Is it true? 2. Is it helpful? 3. Is it kind?
And if you make it past those questions, then ask yourself these: 1. Does it need to be said? 2. Does it need to be said by me? 3. Does it need to be said by me right now?
In my life, I have found that nowhere are issues of privilege more difficult to unravel than in marginalised communities, whose members will cling to the idea that one form of oppression is equivalent to all forms of oppression. The cis LGB communities are rife with failures to exhibit compassion around aspects of life that do not involve sexual or affectional orientation, such as race, class, and gender identity, yet the trans communities must necessarily confront these issues on a daily basis, because so many of us are also gay, lesbian, bi, pan, of color and poor. Among cis LGB people, the divisions just between men and women, between bi/pan people and gay/lesbian people are astounding.
If you are the sort of person who believes that solidarity with others somehow detracts from the attention you feel you deserve, I suggest you probably need to spend some time in self-examination.
Ben Barrett
Brothers and sisters, what is the deal with all this animosity? I’ve been gay all my life and never knew that there was so much division amongst a group of people all fighting for equality. I hadn’t even heard that this was an issue. Let us not bicker amongst each other like this. After all, when it comes right down to it, our fight is not whether transsexuals belong with the LGBs, but against a common enemy who opposes all of us. I’m talking about bigots who hate us simply because we’re different, often in the name of God, and lump us all together in one big group of sodomite perverts. To them, there is no difference between us. They view us all as confused reprobate sinners who need the deliverance of their deity.
Consider this: while it is true that transgenderism is not an orientation issue, our opponents don’t see it that way. They claim that “God does not make mistakes” and that anyone who would try to change their body is sinning and ultimately engaging in homosexuality, because they don’t recognize the gender issue so see what I consider heterosexual relationships as homosexuality. This is not true, but arguing with such logic is like screaming at a wall; it will do you no good, and the wall remains unchanged. Therefore, since our common bigoted enemy sees us as one group of people, why not become one group of people? Why does the LGBT movement have to be exclusively about gay rights? Why can we not simply fight for equality? Bigotry is bigotry regardless of who it’s aimed at, and it cannot be tolerated.
Since I’ve been talking about religious groups, I’d like to point out two scriptures that I think apply here. Jesus once said that those who were not against His cause were for Him, and He also said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Most of the Bible is pure garbage, but these two lessons have a lot of truth in them. Those who are not against us are our friends. If the transgender community has been as ostracized and targeted with unwarranted hatred as we have, why not join forces with them? Why must we fight with them? Furthermore, a house divided against itself will not stand is absolutely true. A group in harmony can achieve monumental feats, but when there is dissension in the ranks progress grinds to a halt.
LGBs, the transgender people are not your enemies. Transgenders, the LGBs are not your enemies. We have a common enemy. He goes by many names, including Bigotry, Hatred and Ignorance. Why not fight this enemy instead of bickering amongst ourselves? Fighting will get us nowhere. Only through unity and acceptance of each other will we find the unity and acceptance that we ask of everyone else.
Cheers.
-Ben
Teeth
@Ben Barrett: I think a lot of the vitriol comes as a response to gay men being attached by the PC police for drag culture… And honestly, sites like this one that co’d them by making certain words verboten.
corvaspikenard
@Teeth: On one hand you have some gay men being asked by some trans people not to use the word ‘tr***y’ and the gay men are being abused for not bowing to that (unreasonable) request.
On the other side, you have a group of gay men saying trangender people as a whole are all mentally ill freaks who mutilate their bodies out of some sick fetish – and then abusing the trans people who disagree with that.
I believe both sides are wrong, but the response from the gay anti-trans crowd is horrifically disproportionate. If you can’t make an argument without attacking the identity of trans people, then you’re just a bigoted asshole.
Teeth
@corvaspikenard: I agree with a lot of that. We are the kind of people, as a whole, and for obvious reasons, who counter a punch with a war. Only a real piece o’shit would be hostile to someone for having a medical condition. All that said– I really think we are at a point where we need to shake hands and mostly separate from transexuals. We can be loving cousins, but our issues and sensibilities are so radically different. And if we cave on the newest fit over the word “TR…..Y”, then soon will come calling each other “Gurl” or calling passable queens “Fishy”. or “queen” for that matter. Drag culture is a giant piss-take on the world’s definition of femininity. It’s very existence HAS TO BE “non pc” or it becomes just cross dressers.
hex0
@gcvsa:
http://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/camp-trans-organizer-gemma-seymours-michfest-walking-stick/
What do you have to say about this? Are you now going to attack gay men in a similar fashion to that of your vitriol of lesbians?
corvaspikenard
@hex0: Linking to Gendertrender won’t win you any points, friend. That site is the equivalent of a White Supremacist blog and it regularly posts made-up detransition stories as well as outing stealth trans women and trying to get them fired from their jobs for being trans.
Comments on the site regulalry call for ALL trans women to be locked in mental health institutions and to be denied employment and housing.
You might want to find a more reputable and unbiased source of information.
corvaspikenard
@Teeth: I don’t think the issue is trans people, it’s the trans people who get co-opted into tumblr feminism because they are vulnerable and are looking for somewhere to fit in. Historically, trans women have been hard-as-nails realists; who slogged through all the rough shit life threw at them and came out the other side as the person they felt they always should have been.
I guess it’s actually a sign of progress that young gay and trans people can waste the time and energy on fighting over words like ‘tr***y’. Obviously they’re not fighting tooth and nail for housing and employment like we used to.