I'm Sick And Tired Of Hearing About "Thoughts And Prayers"

I know it's been a while since I've posted on this blog.  I began one year before my gender-reassignment surgery and planned to document that year leading up to it.  I had no idea of whether I would continue after that--or, if I did, what direction this blog might take.

For a while, I was writing about my post-surgery life.  But, in time, there was less and less to say about that, so I found myself writing about various transgender--and LGB--issues.  Too ofen, they involved malicious, discriminatory acts of violence (mentally and legally as well as physically) against us.  Perhaps I don't have as strong a constitution as I thought I had, for I could only write about such things so much, and for so long.   And I have never had any interest in turning this into a blog about academic gender studies.

Lately, though, I can't help but to notice the violence against LGBT people.  I don't know whether there's been more of it lately, or whether it's receiving more notice--which is to say that people are recognizing that we are being victimized for being who we are.  

That is what happened to 50 people in the Pulse nightclub.  Though my days of going to bars and clubs are long past, and I am not as immersed in the LGBT milieu as I one was, I'd heard of it: It seems to be one of the gay destinations in Orlando, Florida.  Thus, it seems like a logical (if I might use that word) target for someone like Omar Mateen, who was "repulsed by the gay lifestyle" according to media reports.

"The gay lifestyle":  Did he actually say that?  If he did, I'm amazed that, at this late date, the media still uses it without attributing it to him.  If they were not directly quoting him, it shows that they are just as misinformed, if not prejudiced, as he was.  Being gay--or lesbian or trans--is no more a "lifestyle" than being Muslim or black or handicapped.  A lifestyle implies choice; no one has ever chosen to be gay or transgendered, though we may indeed make the choice to follow our innate selves.

Also, while Mateen may well have been an ISIS sympathizer or whatever, it's hard to imagine that it was his primary motive for going into a crowded nightclub and opening fire.  First of all, ISIS-type terrorists usually choose larger, more public venues.  Second, he was described as "self-radicalized".  It's hard to understand why, if he indeed sympathised with ISIS or any other large organization, he would carry out a mass murder-suicide mission in their name without their help.  Even if he were, as some say, "crazy", it's hard to understand why he would make such a choice.


But, I fear, the real reason why law enforcement authorities and the media want to pursue the ISIS angle--to the extent that it exists--is that they can justify throwing more resources at investigating it, and carrying out other kinds of surveillance, than they could for investigating this tragedy as just a hate crime.  I mean, they will take something more seriously if it involves geopolitics than if it involved "just a bunch of gays out drinking and dancing".  Oh, should I add that most of the victims were Latinos?

Anyway...I can only imagine how the loved ones of those who died, and those who could in the coming days, must feel.  Which is the reason why it makes me sick to hear what we always hear after mass murders and other horrific crimes and tragedies: "Our thoughts and prayers are with them."

Fuck thoughts and prayers.  They never prevented anything like this or helped anyone who had to pick up the pieces afterward.  What we need is to keep folks like Omar Mateen from getting the weapons that enable them to commit such atrocities.  (He was in Florida, where one can walk into a Wal Mart and buy a gun almost as easily as one can buy a fishing reel.)  He bought his weaponry just days before he walked into the Pulse:  enough time for a background check that could have revealed, for example, that he beat his ex-wife.  Also, it might have raised questions as to why he, who wore police garb whenever he could and wanted so badly to becoe a cop, never became one.  Did he reply, and was he rejected because of psychological issues?

Mourn the victims. Give the families and friends the resources they need to help them move on with their lives, to the degree that is possible.  And keep assault weapons away people like Omar Mateen.  Fuck thoughts and prayers:  Neither our high-mindedness nor God will solve anything that we won't solve for ourselves.

Kitty Genovese, Fifty Years Later

Fifty years ago today, Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death just steps away from her apartment in Kew Gardens, NY.

That building is just a few minutes away from my apartment.  I've passed it any number of times.  So have countless other people.

That, of course, is one of the reasons why her murder is still discussed and is studied by students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, psychology and criminal justice.  It gave rise to what people in all of those fields call "The Bystander Effect" or "Kitty Genovese Syndrome", which says that as the number of witnesses increases, the less responsibility each one feels to act.

It's accepted as the standard explanation of why, according to accounts published ever since the day of the crime, thirty-eight people said they heard screams or other commotion, or otherwise sensed that a disturbance was taking place outside their windows, and "did nothing".  One witness said, in a phrase that's become almost a cliche, "I didn't want to get involved".

Recently, the number of people who "didn't want to get involved", or who were even awake at the time of the stabbings (between 3 and 3:30 am) has come into dispute.  What's not in dispute, though, is that when police got word of her stabbing, it was too late to save her life.

But I don't want to get into an argument about that now.  Instead, I want to talk about how Ms. Genovese's victimhood has been portrayed and another aspect of her life that was not revealed until a decade ago.

I was five years old on that cold, windy early morning when she died almost literally on her own doorstep.  I often heard about the murder as I was growing up.  For a few years, she was portrayed, probably correctly, as an innocent victim who had the misfortune of crossing paths with a homicidal maniac.  After all, Winston Moseley would say "I went out that night intending to kill a woman.  When I got such a thought, it remained with me regardless of what else I might be thinking".  And he has remained unrepentant ever since.

However, as time passed, I noticed that some people questioned "what sort of woman" Kitty actually was.  They wondered "what she was doing" when she parked her car and made that fateful walk toward her apartment at 3 in the morning.  That seemed to be a central question in a TV movie that was aired when I was a high school senior, if I recall correctly--probably around the time of the ten-year anniversary of her death.  The movie was fiction, but was not-too-loosely based on Ms. Genovese's case.  In one scene, a police detective (I think) working on the case stops a woman he sees walking home and chastises her for walking alone at night in a skirt that was "too short".

It seemed that whatever people could get book deals, tenure or fame from milking such a claim had gotten what they wanted--and that other people realized that bar managers (Ms. Genovese's line of work) and others who work in such establishments and restaurants often come home at odd hours. More important, the notion that women who are so brutalized are not "asking for it" and don't "have it coming to them" (I can remember when other women used to say such things about girls who'd been raped.) was discredited. So the notion that it was her fault that she'd been attacked by a man who stabbed her, fled when he thought someone else had seen him, and came back to "finish the job" went where it belonged--to the dustbin of history..

Now it is widely accepted, rightly, that Ms. Genovese was an extremely unfortunate soul. However, there is one other aspect of her killing to which a few people alluded a decade ago, but has rarely, if ever, been mentioned again.

As far as their neighbors knew, Mary Ann Zielonko was a friend of Kitty's who shared their apartment--you know, the "2 Broke Girls" scenario. Everyone, apparently, liked both of them, but saw more of Kitty, the more outgoing and friendly of the two. What no one realized--or simply did not say--is that Ms. Zielonko was her girlfriend. No, not in the sense of two young female friends sharing an apartment. They were partners, lovers, or whatever you choose to call them.

Ms. Zielonko did not reveal this aspect of their relationship until she was interviewed on the 40th anniversary of her girlfriend's murder. Of course, there was no reason why she should have. After all, attitudes about same-sex relationships were, to put it mildly, very different from the ones we (some of us, anyway) have now. But what if their union had been public knowledge? How might it have affected the way the case was portrayed?

More important, might Winston Moseley have been aware of it? He has never given any indication, at least verbally, that it played any role in his choosing Kitty as his victim. However, it's hard not to wonder if he approached her sexually and she said--or gave some other indication--that she was gay and therefore had no interest in him. Could that have been a factor in the viciousness of his attack?

Whatever the answer is, or isn't, to those questions, I hope that more people remember that, in the end, Catherine Susan Genovese was murdered because  she was a woman.  Too many of us have met that same awful fate.