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The media
problem with black lesbians
By
Rev. Irene Monroe
Issues of race, gender
identity, and sexual orientation trigger a particular
type of news broadcasting on the major networks. With
their objective to provide viewers with “infotainment,”
rather than fair and balanced reporting, discerning
television viewers—straight and gay alike—are most often
insulted by the news than informed by it.
Case in point: “The O’Reilly
Factor” with Bill O’Reilly on the Fox News Channel,
which recently tipped the scales of purportedly
delivering fair and balanced reporting. O’Reilly
carelessly brought defamatory news to his viewers about
an alleged national epidemic of black lesbian gang
violence terrorizing neighborhoods and schools in large
urban enclaves.
According to Rod Wheeler, a
Fox News crime analyst, these black lesbian gangs
recruit and force kids into homosexuality. “There is
this national underground network, if you will, Bill, of
women that’s lesbian and also some men groups that’s
actually recruiting kids as young as 10 years old in a
lot of the schools in communities across the country,”
Wheeler told host O’Reilly on the show.
And the notorious black
lesbian gang, Dykes Taking Over, is supposedly a
pedophiliac gang carrying weapons and violently
attacking and raping the girl victims they recruit. “As
a matter of fact, some of the kids have actually
reported that they were actually forced into, you know,
performing sex acts and doing sex acts with some of
these people,” Wheeler continued.
And corroborating Wheeler’s
crime-busting story is former lesbian gang-banger and
evangelist Linda D. Jernigan, who was asked to speak at
a Chicago area public school on the topic, but was
turned down because the school wanted her to
“de-Christianize” her conversion testimony.
Jernigan nonetheless gives
her testimony to all and any who will listen. She told
Peter LaBarbera of the right-wing organization Americans
for Truth about Homosexuality, “Lesbian girl gangs would
drag a targeted female into the school restroom, hold
her down, and perform oral sex on her to ‘turn her out”
by forcibly seducing the poor girl through lesbian
rape.”
Although O’Reilly had to
apologize for the egregious errors and lies reported on
his show, the story has nonetheless achieved the desired
goal of “infotaining ” its audience by perpetuating both
frighteningly racist and homophobic stereotypes.
“We overstated the extent of
gay gangs in the Washington area. . . . Detective
Wheeler has apologized,” O’Reilly stated on his show.
And the report about “Dykes Take Over” offered no
evidence to support the allegations.
The story about this
purported trend of black lesbian gangs actually derives
from a story about several black lesbians coming home
late from a night out in Greenwich Village in New York
City in August 2006. They defended themselves against an
anti-gay attack.
Because of poor legal
representation, three of the women pleaded guilty to
attempted assault, and were sentenced to six months in
jail and five years probation. However, these women were
depicted in the media as “a posse of lesbians,” “a pack
of marauding lesbians” and a “gang of lesbian women,”
all created in the imaginative and entertaining world of
news broadcasting.
But the real story not told
is how little is ever accurately reported about hate
crimes against black lesbians—and other gay, bisexual
and transgender people of color—and how issues of race,
gender identity, and sexual orientation trigger the type
of violence against them. Nor are the reasons for the
silence around such violence often explored.
For example, on the morning
of May 11, 2003, Shakia Gun, 15, was stabbed to death
when she and her girlfriends rebuffed the sexual
overtures of two African-American men by disclosing to
them that their disinterest was simply because they were
all lesbians.
Around 3:30 a.m. that
morning, Gun and a group of her girlfriends, ages 15-17,
going home from Manhattan to Newark, N.J. While waiting
for the bus, two African-American men in a white station
wagon harassed the girls. "At some point during their
interaction, they made their sexual orientation known.
They made it clear that they weren't interested," Lt.
Derek Glenn, a spokesman for the Newark Police
Department, told the Associated Press.
Incensed that the girls
rebuffed them—and by lesbians, no less—the two
assailants reportedly jumped out of their car and got
into a scuffle with the girls.
Stabbed by one of the men,
Gun dropped to the ground and died shortly after
arriving at University Hospital in Newark.The lack of
reporting on this type of hate crime is for three
reasons—all dealing with race.
The first reason is the
"politics of silence" in LGBTQ communities of color to
openly report these kinds of attacks unless it results
in death. With being openly queer and often estranged if
not alienated from our communities of color, reporting
attacks against us by other people of color can make
victims viewed as race traitors. So we end up colluding
in the violence against us.
The second reason has to do
with the dearth of LGBTQ reporters of color writing for
both straight and queer white media. Those papers and
television networks sensitive to race issues, but that
don't have LGBTQ people of color working for them, often
engage in the "politics of avoidance" and won't broach
the topic for fear that the news organization won't
bring the right angle or sensitivity to the topic. With
the objective of newspapers and networks to report the
news, those media engaging in the "politics of
avoidance" when it comes to people of color do a
disservice not only to the profession, but also to the
entire LGBTQ community.
The third reason has a lot to
do with how the media view the topic of violence and
people of color as synonymous. From such a skewed
perspective, there is no news to report. And if so, it’s
both defamatory and sensationalized.
The end result is a kind of
institutional racism and homophobia that not only
revictimizes those targeted by such crimes, but also
falters in serving the community these news
organizations purport to serve.
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updated
3 October 2007 |
