Also. Also. Also: Homophobic Pilots, Racist Queers, Fake Lesbian Book Deals, Sex Diaries

Welcome to Also.Also.Also – a rundown of important stories you should know about but we didn’t write about, much like The Daily Fixes of Yore.

+ The Stranger ran an emotional feature called “The Bravest Woman in Seattle,” about the court testimony of a Seattle woman who’s 39-year-old partner Teresa Butz, was raped and killed by a man now known as the “South Park Killer.” The woman herself was raped and stabbed, but survived. She testified, the author says, to say: “This happened to me. You must listen. This happened to us. You must hear who was lost. You must hear what he did. You must hear how Teresa fought him. You must hear what I loved about her. You must know what he took from us. This happened.”

+ New York Magazine’s Sex Diaries features The 52-Year-Old Birthday Girl Flirting with Hot Young Lesbians.

+Lesbian minister Amy DeLong was found guilty in a United Methodist Church trial of performing a same-sex marriage. The court acquitted her of being a “self-avowed practicing homosexual.”

+Kink wrote a heartbreaking eulogy about queer writer/performer/blogger Cheryl B, who died last week of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

+ Rev. Irene Monroe on why Provincetown isn’t safe for black lesbians.

+A new Twitter campaign is calling for President Obama to “evolve already” in his stance on gay marriage, according to The Advocate. #evolvealready

+ Solomon Georgio on Racist Queers: “Yes, being gay makes you an oppressed minority. Now that we have that established, I would like to point out that you are white.”

+From The Huffington Post – Gay Rabbi Steven Greenberg wrote a letter to New York State Senator Steve Saland encouraging him to vote for marriage equality.

+Queerty says that the federal government is developing plans to collect LGBT health data.

+A Southwest Airline pilot was busted and reprimanded for saying homophobic, misogynistic, and just plain mean things over his radio. Jezebel posted his whole tirade for your listening pleasure.

+The GOP doesn’t think they’re fighting a “war on women” while concurrently passing anti-choice legislature, meaning that they maybe don’t understand what “war on women” means.

+Yashir Ali explained why it’s weird and wrong that many politicians are pro-choice and anti-gay marriage.

+ New Japanese Pop Idol turns out to not be real— she’s a digital composite of her other, actual girl-group members.

+Pam’s House Blend reported that an Arkansas newspaper erased the name of a man’s gay partner from his obituary. Change.org has an open letter to the editors that you can sign.

+Your BFF, aka the guy who was posing as Gay Girl In Damascus, apparently tried to nab a book deal as his alter ego. Gawker provided a link to the book of lies but also assured us that it’s terribly written so don’t even worry about it.

+ Lindsay Lohan failed a sobriety test and is back in court today.

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37 Comments

  1. Thanks for the links! I feel caught up on all the news. On the other hand, I’m absolutely disappointed in the defensiveness that showed in the hyperbolic and quite funny/realistic post of “Racist Queers”.

    It seems that this discussion will never evolve–or will never be flat out discussed in a productive way that doesn’t lead to somebody screaming, “Enough of being PC”, “I shouldn’t have to apologize for my ancestors,” “You’re playing Oppression Olympics” and “You’re racist. The End.”

    Welp.
    Also, I really like “Also. Also. Also.”

    • Wait, I’m confused about your comment– was the defensiveness in the comments or in the article?

      • In the comments section, of course! lol. It’s like, “ARRRGH< I WANNA POUR DRAINO IN MY EYES AND INTERNET BITCH SLAP ERRYBODY" whenever I read comments on any site like that and the infamous Youtube…

        • YES. Looking at defensive white gays making cheap excuses has me thinking THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.

        • I don’t think doing both of these things at once would work. You should do them separately, or else you won’t be able to aim.

          Or would Draino unclog your eyes?

        • The quality of Autostraddle’s comments has spoiled me. I generally run screaming from other websites. Although, slapping the shit out of everyone sounds like a better approach.

  2. ugh so much to be sad/angry about ughhh. everyone #evolvealready

    but also I feel very informed and I like this whole “Also. Also. Also.” business.

  3. I read that Stranger article the other day and it actually made me cry. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I am not a crier at ALL, and I was sitting at home alone just sobbing. Then I went and locked the deadbolt on my door. I really recommend reading it, it is so horrible what those two women went through, and I think Teresa’s partner’s strength needs to be acknowledged.

  4. That Mac-Master-trying-to-get-a-book-deal article made me realize something: the whole Amina Arraf debacle is really mostly like all those fake memoir hoaxes we’ve been dealing with in years past, such as James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, just reinvented in a new and disturbing light for an audience with slightly different values. Ugh.

  5. I just ready the Bravest Woman in Seattle article and I’m totally in shock right now. That is terrifying and so sad.

  6. Oh god. I read “The Bravest Woman in Seattle” and couldn’t read anything else because oh my god.

  7. the bravest woman in seattle broke my heart. i feel sick and angered by the unjust system that let this happen

  8. Being part of one minority has usually meant hating other minority’s more than anyone.

    The Irish against the Italians
    The African Americans and the Koreans
    The African American and the Irish
    And so on.

    So being part of a minority makes you no closer to other minority´s

    • I love you for posting that! It’s one of my favorite scenes from that show. Second only to the cacao/”safe word” bit.

      • I love the cacao one too! Lol. I also love the women at the feminist bookstore. I actually visited the bookstore earlier this year when I was in Portland. It was funny b/c when i went they were having one of those sharing circles…and i felt soo rude taking a picture by one of the bookshelves.

        http://jackygro.wordpress.com/

  9. Re: Provincetown

    Why would a person’s response to being harassed be to write a letter to the Chamber of Commerce?? Why do we think the authorities can and should solve our problems for us? Do the harassers give a fuck about a letter to the Chamber of Commerce?

    Again I would reiterate, learn to defend yourself.

    • I think she wrote a letter to the Chamber because she seemed to think the problems stemmed from businesses valuing cheap laborers over cultural sensitivity to the GLBT culture in Provincetown?

      I think, more than learning to defend yourself, we can and should take our money elsewhere. I mean, I’m from the Midwest so I would never vacation in Provincetown, but I would also never assume a police officer gives a shit about my right to feel safe as a female…too much has taught me that they probably won’t.

      • I personally go to beachy places and step right off land and into the deep :D. Adios, bitches, and half the crap down there is both male and female, or morphs from one to the other. Dive Provincetown, though do it at slack tide, lest you be swept down to the Carolinas :D.

      • Or just don’t go to Provincetown. Getting on and off the Cape from May to September is a shitshow.

  10. Would you maybe be able to add a trigger warning to the “Bravest Woman in Seattle” link? I was aware that it would be tough stuff, but not that it would be that graphic. <3

  11. Hey there,

    after reading that horrific story about the women in Seattle, and nearly breaking down and crying at work, I must ask this: how safe are the States for gay women (and men), especially Washington DC and Virginia? See, the thing is: my soon-to-be-wife and I are very likely to move to the States next year for her job, and stay there for years, but to be honest, the US is starting to scares me more and more… We’re from Europe, from countries that are very pro-gay and support our rights in a lot of ways, from countries where we can walk hand in hand on the street whenever we want to, and things like this, what happened there in Seattle, that huge country filled with hate and violence… it sometimes terrifies me to move there.

    • It really depends enormously on where you live and in what company you find yourself. Your best bet is to find some Washington, DC/Virginia-based queer women and ask them about their experiences. That way you can have something of a support group, also.

      My home in the States is accepting and wonderful and I’ve always felt really comfortable there, for what it’s worth, but I live in New Orleans, not DC.

      Good luck with your move, if you choose to pursue it.

    • I was born and raised in Europe and still in some ways (naively) act like I’m still living there.
      When I moved to the US, I first lived in Minnesota, then in NYC, and now in Miami. In terms of crime/safety, each one of those regions is very different and I’ve tried to approach the relative dangers with awareness and common sense. The biggest factor, I believe (and not to sound ignorant), is your neighborhood and I like to think this applies to DC just as much as it does to NYC or Seattle.

      I WILL say that reading the story of the South Park rapes and murder completely horrified me and makes me want to stash a baseball bat next to my bed and carry pepper spray on my keys. In that respect, I believe your concerns are justified.

      Also, I believe my biggest vulnerability is being a woman first, a lesbian second, and a human being third. At the end of the day – yes I’m shit scared of incidents like this – but I can’t live my life in fear and I’m not going to go out and buy a gun or a knife to help me sleep better at night. I’m also not going to stop holding my girlfriend’s hand. I just can’t…

  12. I read the “The Bravest Woman in Seattle” and was shaking afterwards to stop myself from crying. What a devastating story.

    Minutes later, on another site, I saw the ‘courteous rapist’ meme – I don’t think I would have had any positive thoughts on that anyway but after reading the story of Teresa Butz and her partner it made me feel physically sick. And there are comments on that site like ‘the worst thing about this (aside from the fact that there were so many) is that they were funny’, ‘So wrong and so damn funny. Now I can’t repost this else my wife’ll kill me’, etc.

    It just makes me so angry and sad that something like that can go around and be consideed an acceptable thing to write by so many.

  13. “Gawker provided a link to the book of lies but also assured us that it’s terribly written so don’t even worry about it.”

    Oh man, I just tried to read it and it’s really really terrible. He starts the book rambling about where he should begin and all these different crappy ways “Amina” could begin her story.

    This stuff is such shit.

  14. Thanks for your reactions Avery and Uhmina! I’ve been talking about it with my partner and reading that article made us realise that we will definitely will be looking out for our safety more, as in finding an apartment in a building with security, not ground floors, installing deadbolts on the frontdoor and bedroom door and such. May seem like out of proportion, but better safe than sorry…

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