The Ugly Underside of Progress

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." -Mohandas Gandhi

Is the uptick in reported violence against LGBT people an unintended consquence to all of the advances being made on the gay rights front?

The ongoing almost repeal of DADT, freedom to marry in NY, and pollsters tripping over themselves declaring 73% of country supports employement non-discrimination legislation, and a majority of support for gay marriage are all pointing in the direction of progress.

Yet, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs latest report cites a 13% increase in reports of violent crime of LGBTQ and HIV-affected people. Alarmingly, murders topped the reports for the year with the second highest total ever recorded. Grim news amidst all the good news.

While progess marches forward with the hearts and minds following, there is likely an inevitable costly backlash which takes the form of increased violence against our communities.

From the evidence, those who most often pay the price of broken bodies are those who are the most vulnerable and visible among the L's, the G's, the B's and the T's. I'm loathe to invoke "my victimization is worse than yours" or the "my oppresssion is the same as yours" game.  That road only leads to further dividing all of us into a deeper exisitence of living like crabs in a bucket, all the while constantly biting eachother while we wait to be dumped in the boiling water.

We are generally drawn to the issue of the freedom to marry like moths to a flame. Young men & women should have the equal right to openly serve their country. At least these are the "defining" issues that we hail as mileposts. These are the things of cocktail parties, fund raising letters, and endless media opinion punditry. Make no mistake, these are worthy and honorable goals. 

But, there is an underbelly to the progress and many of us don't recognize it. 

Scan the headlines of hate crime violence and check out the reports citing the statistics. What becomes alarming is the frequency of the victims being people of color, trans, and young.

From the NCAVP report:

In 2010, NCAVP documented 27 anti-LGBTQ murders, the second highest yearly total ever recorded by the coalition. This is a 23% increase from the 22 people murdered in 2009.
70% of the 27 reported hate murder victims in 2010 were LGBTQ and HIV-affected people of color, which represented 44% of total survivors and victims. This reflects a disproportionate targeting of people of color for severe and deadly violence. As well, people of color were less likely to receive medical attention when they needed it and less likely to receive appropriate responses from the police.
Transgender women made up 44% of the 27 reported hate murders in 2010, while representing only 11% of total survivors and victims. As well, transgender people were more likely to have injuries as a result of attacks and less likely to receive medical care.“This increase in murders signals a pattern of severe, ongoing violence against LGBTQ and HIV 

So no matter where you come from on this, it is apparent that people of color and transwomen are the the ones paying the backlash of progress most often. Ironiocally, its up to you to form your own opinion, these people aren't likely to directly benfit from the freedom to marry in NY or elsewhere. They aren't likely to directly benefit from the repeal of DADT. But on the other hand, many in our community will or have proposed that everyone, inluding people of color and trans people, will benefit when these imporatnt rights are secured. The result will move the public conciousness and bend the moral arc towards justice for everyone. This point of view is likely true to some extent.

But it is exactly that argument that supports the premise that the letters in LGBT should not be separted or treated differently. 

In general, the public consciosness doesn't differentiate between letters of the alphabet in an often confusing anacronym. We're all queers, faggots, and abominations to most hateful. To the "I have a good freind is gay" crowd, we're still all generally lumped together.

Don't think so?

Let's go back a step. Lets think about the "anti-gay" rhetoric. "Anti-gay violence", "Gay bashing" are universally understood lexicon. In terms of looking at what triggers this "anti-gay" violence, we're quick to label it homophobia. But what is the percieved trigger?

The perpetrators of violence need some sort of trigger or cue that moves them to violence. Two drag queens assaulted were called faggots. A straight man holding an elderly woman's purse while helping her cross the street was assaulted. Most recently a straight man, who "looked gay" was turned away from giving blood. He "looked" gay because he was percieved to be effeminate. More often than not the offending trigger is some sort of gender expression variance. Beaten while gay seems to most often happen to those who display some sort of outwardly visible trigger or cue percieved to trangress the offender's sense of gender expression. Sadly, the victim of these crimes are made invisible

Can we afford to have any daylight showing through the letters LGBT?