Newsweek and Larry King

Aqueertheory has posted a great analysis of Newsweek's article "Young, Gay and Murdered," which focuses on the death of Larry King. You can find it over at Below The Belt.

From Below the Belt:

While murder victim Larry King recently become a sentimentalized martyr for the LGBT rights movement, Setoodeh tries to show that ‘the reason Larry died isn’t as clear-cut as most people think.’ He suggests that the victim brought the violence onto himself by stretching ‘the limits of tolerance’ and ‘push[ing] his rights as far as he could’. Larry ‘was a troubled child who flaunted his sexuality and wielded it like a weapon’ - therefore, we should avoid turning him into a poster-child for the LGBT movement. He is not the right kind of victim.

And

We cannot allow ourselves to keep blaming the victim; we need to stop assuming and legitimating heterosexual privilege. Following Setoodeh’s logic, Larry should have been ‘on the down-low’, he should not have defended himself from homophobic abuse, and he should have refrained from acting on any of his crushes. While any ‘reasonable adult’ would have probably done this, to badger a child into stifling hir identity is cruel. Larry tried to live a queer life to the fullest, but he was brutally cut off because of homophobic social norms. Unfortunately, all LGBTQ people face this risk. Believe it or not, we all have a gun to our heads.

Sara Whitman also offered this terrific commentary on the article at the Huffington Post.

Young, Gay and Murdered. Lesbian assistant principal suspected of a "gay agenda." King's troubled past leading him to a group home placement shrugged off as a minor event in a series of his own trouble causing.

As if kids get taken out of homes because they "accuse" their parents of hitting them. Another top notch effort of reporting, the adoptive father gets to simply say, "Not true," and that's it.

Because it's really about this bad boy, who wore girls clothes, got what he deserved. Homosexuality was the evil here. Playing "grown up" without knowing it could get you killed.

Personally, I'm not surprised by the Newsweek article- after all, what's more likely to sell papers, a condemnation of queerphobic violence, or criticism of us "freaks" who won't conform to the heterocentric norms like those "normal" people who make up their target audience?

LGBT Rights groups ask that Lawrence King's killer be tried as a juvenile

A coalition of groups, including Lambda Legal, have asked that Brandon McInerney be tried as a juvenile rather than an adult for the murder of Lawrence King, according to this article in the Ventura Country Star.

Personally, I applaud this. As upsetting as the murder has been for queers and allies, we have to remember that McInerney is a 14 year old boy who was following through on the message sent by most of society. I'm not excusing his actions- he made the decision to bring the gun, and he made the decision to pull the trigger- but I am stating that demonizing a child while ignoring the influence of the queerphobic society that taught him that the proper way to respond to homosexuality and gender non-conformity is violence is bullshit.

Brandon McInerney is a product of our society. He simply happens to reflect that part of it which most people do their best to ignore until it hits the front page- and the obits. Pretending otherwise doesn't do anything to stop violence from occurring, but rather, merely helps people expunge their own guilty consciences.

try him as what he is- a juvenile. Instead of placing the blame solely on his shoulders, work to fight the queerphobia in our society before it claims more victims.

The "Blame the Victim" Game

A friend of mine just passed on this article about an abuse victim who has been jailed.

Noellee Mowatt has vowed never to call police again – in any situation, even if she's suffering.

Through choking sobs yesterday morning, Mowatt, 19, made the pact from a pay phone at a Milton jail, where she's spending the last few days of her pregnancy.

Due to deliver next Tuesday, the teenager has been detained at Vanier Centre for Women since Thursday, when a justice of the peace denied her bail.

Mowatt, who faces no criminal charges in this case, won't be let out until she testifies at her boyfriend's domestic assault trial on Friday.

So, apparently it's alright to imprison a 9 month pregnant woman who has not been charged with a crime, simply because she was victimized. It's just another example of the tendency to punish victims of crimes. Somehow, I doubt this is going to encourage abuse victims to stand up to their abusers.

Let's put it this way: abusers often work to annihilate their victim's self-esteem. They make them think that they're the one at fault, and that they deserve the abuse. Or at least, that society will hold them accountable for it, rather than the abuser.

Unfortunately, cases like this only go to support such notions, rather than dispel them, and give the victim more of a reason to trust their abusive partner's words.