Date: Wed, 4 May 94 09:23 GMT
From: gwyn@thunder.indstate.edu (Thomas W. Holt Jr.)


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit


TRANSGENDERED PICKET VILLAGE VOICE

Special to Workers World

Transsexuals and transgendered people picketed the New York City
offices of the Village Voice on April 18. A bigoted article about
Brandon Teena fueled the angry protest.

Brandon Teena, who identified as a man, was discovered to have
been born female by Nebraska police in December. Soon after the
cops "outed" him publicly, two men stripped Teena at a party,
kidnapped, beat and gang-raped him.

Police refused to charge the two men with any crime. 

Only days later, Brandon Teena's friend Lisa Lambert and Philip
Levine, an African American friend of Lambert's, were all shot to
death by the two men who had brutalized Teena.

Police at first claimed they knew of no motive. The two men were
later arraigned on criminal charges stemming from the murders.

Although in her Village Voice article Donna Minkowitz admitted
that Brandon Teena identified as a man, wanted to have a sex
change and did not identify as a woman or a lesbian, Minkowitz
continually defined and referred to Teena as a woman and a
lesbian throughout. Not once did Minkowitz use the term
transsexual or transgender. 

A leaflet distributed to passersby noted that the trashy article
did find room for 11 references to Teena's sexual practice, seven
references to his genitals and five references to a dildo he
allegedly owned.

In an interview with Dyke TV at the protest, Leslie Feinberg,
author of the transgender and gay novel "Stone Butch Blues,"
said: "Yes the article is sleazy, salacious psycho-sexual babble.
But worst of all, this article lets the cops off the hook for
their culpability in instigating the violence against Teena in
the first place.

"We demand an investigation into the criminal role of the
police."

                               -30-

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World,
55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww%transfr@blythe.org.)

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