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Gender Terrorism in Nashville (posted 10 December 2001)
(caught this story while going through backlogged issues of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s feminist newswire)
Nashville bus driver Willie Houston was holding his fiance’s purse when a man began harassing him with anti-gay slurs, making references to the purse. The man pulled a gun on Houston and shot him to death as Houston put his hands in the air and pleaded that he just wanted to go home.
A friend of mine once worked in a children’s clothing store. A woman came in one day and bought a bonnet for her baby son. Later that day, the woman came in again with her husband next to her. She was crying. He stared at her and demanded that she say what we agreed to say
. She put the bonnet back on the counter, and haltingly said, I’m returning this bonnet so my son won’t grow up to be a faggot
.
I’ve heard a lot of people wonder what kind of psychological issues
it takes for someone to want to live, either in whole or in part, in a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth. But to me, the real question is, what kind of sociological and political and psychological issues
does it take for a society in which a man will murder over a purse, intimidate and humiliate his wife over a piece of clothing that’s off-brand for little boys?
geoff walker replied:
man, that is just tooooo bad
Dianne Clark replied:
I new willie houston the man that was murder in nashville because someone desided to judge him as gay,even though he was not gay.People like to see what they want to see not the inside of a person but the ouside and the inside is the only one that counts. I grew-up with willie and i have known him my hold life and he would never judge anyone like someone choose to judge him…
Jeffery Winkler replied:
Yeah well, we execute people for horrible crimes, and it’s hard to imagine a crime more horrible than sticking your penis up another person’s anus. Anyone who does that should be killed. However, it’s very unfortunate that an innocent person was killed who was falsely accused of such a horrible thing. Of course, that doesn’t make the crime he was falsely accused of any less horrible.
Charles W. Johnson replied:
Jeffery Winkler’s beliefs may be different from yours. For example, he seems to believe that engaging in consensual anal sex is a crime punishable by death. Similarly, (see URL below) he seems to think that continually harassing other people after they have asked you to stop is acceptable behavior. I think that for the most part, the best thing to do is simply to agree to disagree on these points.
One curious thing remains, though. In every reference to homosexuality I’ve seen out of Mr. Winkler, there seems to be a repeated obsession with anal sex between men. I remark on this not because Mr. Winkler’s strange beliefs are particularly interesting in themselves, but they are an occasion to wonder. Every time I hear some homophobe railing about homosexuality, anal sex is what they always talk about, sometimes even describe in lurid detail. But 1/2 of the gay community, being female, is simply anatomically incapable of having penile-anal sex in the first place. And, as far as the other half goes—I have met an awful lot of gay men in my life. Some of them like anal sex; others do not, and choose not to practice it. But one thing is sure—I have never found a single gay man who was half as obsessed with anal sex as the average homophobe. In all seriousness—whatever happened to taking a nice boy out to dinner and a movie, or holding hands in the park, or exchanging flowers? I have to wonder what sort of picture of romantic relationships the homophobes have.
Another note. On reading Mr. Winkler’s post, one might assume that this is some prank that someone pulled on a friend, fabricating an insane post under his friend’s name. Sadly, if this is true, the deception is far wider than one might think. For example, observe the following conversation on Mr. Winkler’s website (which is indeed surreal, but not for the reason that Mr. Winkler seems to think it is):
http://www.geocities.com/jefferywinkler/lesbian.html
It just goes to show: it really doesn’t take all kinds.