[tw for transmisogynistic slur]
Today someone asked me what I think of the event called “Hey tranny, it’s tranny” occuring during Seattle Pride. Here’s what I had to say
For me, it’s a lot less about the word being a “bad” word or someone being bad for using it as much as it…
Ugh, Seattle. Not okay.
Jenny Saville and Glen Luchford, Closed Contact
“She presses her skin against glass to disfigure and manipulate it, emphasizing her negative body image.”
ily jenny
On April 28th, World Day for Animals in Laboratories, Italian animal liberation activists staged a daylight raid of the Green Hill Breeders complex in Northern Italy, freeing 25 to 40 beagles in the process. All but one of the dogs are puppies. Green Hill, owned by Marshall Farms Inc., is one of the largest European breeding facilities for nonhuman animals bred for vivisection. Green Hill, which sells “purpose bred” dogs for up to $1,200, keeps 2,500 dogs on site at any given time and harbors ambitions of expanding its facilities to contain 5,000. Green Hill breeds dogs to order for customers like Huntingdon Life Sciences, who can pay for extra “features,” like dogs with their vocal chords removed so they cannot scream when experimented upon.
Since the closing of Italy’s other laboratory dog breeding facility, Italian activists have gone hard after Green Hill. The campaign has employed a diverse array of tactics, ranging from letter writing and petitions to legal challenges and public demonstrations. Daylight raids like the one that occurred on Saturday are not in themselves unprecedented, but the sheersize of this one is a definite first. On the heels of this action, hackers acting under the umbrella of Anonymous have begun to take down and subvert websites owned by companies “who derive profit from the blood and the suffering of animals,” using the hashtags #OpItaly, #OpSaveAnimals and #OpGreenRights.
Activists scale the barbed wire fence surrounding Green Hill Breeders
It remains to be seen how the Italian government will respond to this escalation in the grass roots campaign against vivisection. 12 individuals were arrested at the raid on Saturday but it’s not yet clear how keen Italy is on following the United States’ suit on applying terrorism enhancements to a situation like this. Some European states have tended to tolerate occasional daylight raids as long as they don’t occur too frequently or straytoo far from the symbolic. Four dogs would have been one thing, but forty? When activists in England began using open raids to great effect during the 1980s, the state began to apply “conspiracy to burgle” charges to as many activists as possible in order to drain energy and funds from the movement (chronicled in Against All Odds).
An interior view of Green Hill’s kennels
It will be interesting to see how the campaign against Green Hill continues to play out. The story has only just begun to escape Italian news services and into international social media, blogs and online petition sites (1, 2). Wider coverage will not be far behind and this bodes poorly for a company like Green Hill. The discussion of animal rights as they pertain to food politics has been forced into the mainstream of late, but vivisection is an industry with a history of desperate resistance to public visibility. The brazenness of this raid is captivating and the images that have come out so far are profoundly moving. Perhaps we will be seeing more of these daylight raids moving forward, particularly given how easy it has become to organize a flash mob using social media. It is to be hoped that Italian animal liberationists will be able to both weather the state’s response to their act of mass conscience and to leverage the ensuing global attention to close down Green Hill once and for all. Whatever happens next, I’m pretty sure it’s already worth it.
ohlovelypop:Vaguely threatening letters from children.
the first one is my gpoy forever because not to be hard, but i need money.
Early in the morning of April 24th a group of angry queers smashed out the windows of Mars Hill Church in Southeast Portland. Mars Hill is notoriously anti-gay and anti-woman. Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill’s head pastor, has said that women need to be subservient to their husbands and that gay people are a cancer. His personal brand of Christianity crusades against the “feminization” of Jesus - we angry queers are not fans of Jesus, but we have a problem with anyone who has a problem with femmes.
This action was taken in memory of Mark Aguhar, a fierce queer/trans femme of color and artist from Chicago who killed herself a little over a month ago. We also hold in our hearts Paige Clay, a trans woman of color who was found murdered in Chicago on April 16th; Duanna Johnson, a black trans woman who was in all likelihood murdered by the police in 2008; Agnes Torres Sulca, Deoni Jones, and all other trans women who have been murdered by this cissexist, femmephobic, racist, and transmisogynistic society.
Churches are a major contributor to the culture that deems trans women of color to be disposable, as not worth keeping alive. Children who are forced to attend Mars Hill are indoctrinated in hateful dogma that teaches them their natural desires are an abomination that will damn them to hell. Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign does nothing in the here and now for queer kids trapped in abusive home or religious settings. And it never got better for Mark, Duanna, Paige, Agnes, Deoni, or the countless other trans women (especially brown trans women) who are regularly murdered.
When Mars Hill moved to town, so-called “representatives” of the queer “community” from the Q Center met with officials from the church in order to have dialog. What we have to say to the Q Center is this: FUCK YOU, you don’t represent us. You are disgusting traitors who prioritize social peace and the bourgeois aspirations of rich white cis gay people over the more pressing survival needs of more marginalized queers. Fuck dialog with people who want us dead, the only dialog we need with scum like Mars Hill is hammers through their windows.
We smashed Mars Hill because they make our lives miserable. We hope this small act of vengeance will strike some fear into the hearts of all of Mars Hill’s pastors, and warm the hearts of our friends and comrades (known or unknown). It may not get better, but we can certainly get even.
-angry pdx queers
