Violence is usually discussed within the context of heterosexual families and social groups. It’s widely assumed that people in same-sex households, communities, and relationships are either incapable of causing harm to each other, or that their needs can’t be met by mainstream anti-violence groups. As a result, significant issues like intimate partner violence or the particular needs of transgender youth seeking shelter from abusive homes are not addressed. This leaves portions of the LGBTQ community without the conventional resources available to heterosexuals who seek relief from abuse.
Category: Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality
Soon to enter its 13th year, Dyke March Chicago is, for many lesbians and transgender people, an alternative to Pride Parade. Historically, the March has remained on the city’s North side. This year, it’ll be in Pilsen, home to a predominantly Latina/o community. In the last few weeks, organizers began hearing complaints about the change in venue, and decided to hold a town-hall meeting. According to Nicole Perez, a member of the Dyke March organizing committee, the event was held to dispel misinformation and stereotypes about the logistics of the March and the neighborhood.
![Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After by [DePaulo Ph.D., Bella]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41F8kg5M3rL.jpg)
When E. Patrick Johnson conceived his book Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History, he did not think the project would ever extend beyond the printed word. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2008, the book was a collection of oral narratives. But halfway through the research and interviewing process, Johnson realized he would need to do more. As he explained to Windy City Times in a 2008 interview: “[H] earing them tell their stories in their unique ways suggested to me that the immediacy of the telling had to be recaptured in a way that reading it on a page would not.”
“Radical queers haven’t yet figured out how to use film as politics; we’ve done it with performance and spoken word, but not with film. The assimilationists are winning the war because they’ve learned how to use film as propaganda by wrapping their message in the preferred discourse of civil rights.”
Sweet Tea, a new production of E. Patrick Johnson’s one-man performance of the stories and lives of Black gay men in the South, began its theatrical run May 7 at the Viaduct Theatre. The piece is based on Johnson’s book of the same name, a compendium of interviews with 63 subjects. The May 8 performance was preceded by a panel discussion involving several of the men. Windy City Times spoke with three of them separately by phone the day before the initial performance.