It’s been reported that a 24-year-old lesbian mom from Zimbabwe was brutally murdered in Gauteng.
In a statement, FEW (Forum for the Empowerment of Women) said it first heard of the news of Ruth “Nickki” Chigowe’s death on 27 May.
Her unidentified lifeless body was discovered “stoned to death” in Maphanga section, Katlehong, a large township southeast of Johannesburg. It was only on 31 May that the organisation was able to confirm Chigowe’s identity.
A murder case has been opened at the Katlehong North Police station. No arrests have yet been made.
Zaheeda Munyai from Access Chapter 2 told MambaOnline that Chigowe came to South Africa in 2019.
“According to the information I have found from community members, her parents disowned her due to her sexual orientation,” said Munyai. “She then found a job in a tuckshop and started to rent a room at Holomisa.”
Munyai revealed that it’s been claimed that two weeks before she was killed, Chigowe and her girlfriend “received homophobic threats from guys around the area wherein they uttered that they both deserve to be raped and killed.”
To add to the tragedy, Chigowe leaves behind a one-year-old daughter. “There is an urgent need for a massive intervention in Katlehong,” said an exasperated Munyai. “LGBTI people live in fear and they can’t even disclose their relationships in public.”
Lesbian Pinky Shongwe, 32, from Umlazi [South Africa] was stabbed to death by a man who was making romantic advances which she rejected.
Shongwe’s body was discovered this week.
Police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nqobile Gwala said a case of murder was opened by Umlazi police for investigation after a 32-year-old female was allegedly stabbed. She said the victim left home to go to a local shop but was stabbed multiple times by an unknown suspect.
“She was found lying on the road and was taken to hospital where she succumbed to her injuries on arrival. The motive of the killing is unknown and the matter is still under investigation,” said Gwala.
The victim’s sister Khethiwe Shongwe, said her sister had gone to a nearby shop when she was confronted by an unknown man who stopped and proposed love. She said she was home on the South Coast when she received a call that her sister had been stabbed, adding she was rushed to hospital but the family was told she had died on arrival.
Khethiwe said her sister had chosen to live her life openly as a lesbian, and her family and neighbours knew that she was lesbian. She said she did know whether the perpetrator was from the area, as no one had come forward with information about him.
Experts and politicians have grave fears for the safety of American lesbian basketballer Brittney Griner, after her arrest in Russia a month ago.
Custom officials arrested the American WNBA star at an airport near Moscow on or around February 17, according to the US government.
Russian authorities accused the two-time Olympic gold medalist of having a vape cartridge containing cannabis oil in her luggage.
However a month later, very little is publicly known about Griner’s circumstances, including her current whereabouts. US politicians have said Russia has blocked US consular support for several weeks.
Jonathan Franks, who has worked with numerous American citizens in similar situations, told CNN he’s “very concerned” about Griner.
“This has a lot of hallmarks of a very wrongful and arbitrary detention,” he explained.
“I think that it’s a huge mistake to report these allegations as if they’re true or even are likely to be true.”
Franks dismissed the statement from the Russian Customs Service, accusing Griner of “smuggling significant amounts of narcotic substances”.
“They’re making her out to sound like a drug kingpin,” he said.
“I think that it is unlikely that Ms. Griner will get a fair trial, because nobody gets a fair trial in Russia. It’s a rigged game.”
A Mount Vernon woman is suing Grant County and its director of community corrections, claiming she was called a “bad lesbian,” among other derogatory terms, by staff members while under consideration for a job in 2013 and was eventually passed over because of her sexual orientation.
Terry Hanson, 54, contends county staff discriminated against her and violated her civil rights. In the suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Pendleton, Hanson claims Grant County has a “custom, policy or practice of engaging in sexual orientation discrimination.”
The claims come after another federal suit filed against Grant County in September by James Gravley, a former county parole and probation officer. Gravley claimed to have heard the comments made about Hanson, spoke out about what was said, filed a complaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and was later fired in retaliation.
In an answer filed in November to Gravley’s federal complaint, Grant County admitted an employee called Hanson one lesbian slur during a staff meeting to discuss job candidates, but it denies anyone called her a “bad lesbian” and other derogatory terms.
Both lawsuits ask for jury trials and an undisclosed amount of financial damages.
A lesbian couple were forced to quit their home after they were hounded by a neighbour who spotted them kissing through their living room window, a court heard
Nurse Faye Mallon and counsellor Lydia Henshall were subjected to foul mouthed homophobic abuse by former gym owner Kim Armstrong who called them ‘naughty disrespectful girls.’
During a hate campaign father-of-two Armstrong would repeatedly drive his vehicle into the couple’s car and also filled their wheelie bin with medical waste, a court was told.
When confronted by the two women he retorted: “‘Am I bothered? You’re the f**king weirdos” and he also dismissed the couple as “fat lesbians.”
Ms Mallon, 26 and Ms Henshall, 27 later moved out of their home in Stockport, Greater Manchester to get away from the abuse.
Decorated army veteran Yvonne Sillett will appear at the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide on Monday. Yvonne was driven out of the Australian Army over her sexuality three years before the government changed policy and allowed gays and lesbians to serve.
Yvonne says on the Discharged LGBTI Veterans’ Association website (DLVA) that she joined the Army at 18. After then qualifying as a cipher operator, she obtained the Top-Secret clearance necessary for the job.
But a decade later, the army’s then discriminatory policies caught up with her.
“In 1988, I was caught up in a ‘witch-hunt’ at Watsonia Barrack for being gay.”
The Army consequently notified Yvonne Sillett that it would reduce her security clearance to Confidential. She could no longer serve in the Signal Corps.
“The prospect of future promotion was next to zero and I would never be able to train female recruits again. I elected for honourable discharge after serving for 10 years!”
If Yvonne had served another decade, she would have received a pension for life. Because of her sexuality, that never happened.
A Black gay woman who worked at a Tesla Inc. factory accused the electric-vehicle maker in a lawsuit of “festering” racism by ignoring the racial and homophobic slurs and physical harm she endured.
Kaylen Barker, a former contract worker who inspected brake parts, is the latest to complain that Tesla ignores discrimination based on race, sexual orientation and gender at its plants. According to her complaint, her abuse occurred even as Tesla defended another contract worker’s discrimination case in court — which the company lost and was ordered to pay $137 million in damages.
Nohemí Medina Martínez and Yulizsa Ramírez were found roughly 17 miles apart from each other on a stretch of Juárez-El Porvenir Road.
The women, who were both 28-years-old and of El Paso, Texas, were discovered on 16 January the day after seeing family whom they had travelled to visit in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, El Diario reported.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Chihuahua Committee for Sexual Diversity director Karen Arvizo confirmed that the pair were parents to three children and got married last year.
Arvizo also shared their fears that, like many other crimes against the LGBTQ+ community, the killings could go unsolved.
“The concern is that authorities will absolutely do nothing,” Arvizo further explained to the outlet. “We feel like we are treated like second-class citizens and that we really don’t matter.”
Martínez and Ramírez lived in Texas, but were both Mexican citizens.
They were discovered in two separate trash bags on the streets of the Mexican border town and had reportedly been tortured, shot dead and dismembered.
Fairness West Virginia reported that Technical Sergeant Kristin Kingery has filed a lawsuit alleging ongoing discrimination based on her sexual orientation and gender expression in the Air National Guard.
According to the complaint filed, Kingery was allegedly told by supervisors that her career would “suffer” unless she began wearing makeup and growing her hair long.
Documents say that the alleged harassment based on her sexual orientation and gender expression included Kingery being forced to try on a woman’s Honor Guard jacket in front of others to, “confirm that none of the women’s sizes would fit.” It also says that rumors of her “transitioning from female to male” were perpetrated by both colleagues and supervisors.
Lesbian pop star and regionally famous pro-democracy activist Denise Ho was one of seven people arrested on Wednesday morning by national security police in Hong Kong. She was released on Thursday afternoon.
All seven arrestees were linked to the pro-democracy news website Stand News and were accused of “conspiracy to publish seditious material,” a colonial-era crime punishable by two years in jail and a fine of up to 5,000 Hong Kong dollars ($640).
Ho served as a former board member for the publication, Go magazinereported. Police searched her home for two hours, taking her phones and computers as well as her identification card and passport, CNN reported. Police also searched the publication’s offices, seizing materials there too.
Police said the arrests occurred because of “seditious” articles the newspaper published between July 2020 and November 2021. Police also froze nearly 61 million Hong Kong dollars ($7.8 million) in the newspaper’s assets.
The arrests and shutdown mark China’s increasing crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, which officially operates as one of China’s administrative districts. Under Chinese pressure, Hong Kong passed a 2020 National Security Law which China claimed would help quell violent civil protests. Fellow human rights activists and international observers say the law is just a way to arrest and silence any of China’s critics.
Rabia was just 15-years-old when she became engaged to a Taliban officer against her will in a small village in Afghanistan.
Now 22-years-old, Rabia has fled Afghanistan and has managed to get away from the man who made her adolescence hell. She is temporarily living in Pakistan, but she’s hopeful she will ultimately be able to claim asylum in either Canada or the UK so she can build a life for herself.
Like so many others, Rabia had no choice but to flee when the Taliban seized power. She is a lesbian, which makes her a threat to Taliban rule. To make matters worse, she knew the man she was engaged to as a teenager was still trying to track her down.
That’s why she and a friend – another lesbian – decided to travel to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“We had lots of problems because the Taliban stopped us along the way several times,” Rabia tells PinkNews.
Thankfully, Rabia and her friend managed to get into Pakistan with the help of a journalist who advocated for them at the border – but she wishes leaving was never a necessity in the first place.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have arrested lesbian activist Sareh in the West Azerbaijan Province of Iran.
Twenty-eight-year-old Sareh, was detained for 21 days by the Iraqi Kurdistan police after her interview with BBC Persian about the situation of the LGBTQI community in Iraqi Kurdistan.
After release, she made an attempt to cross the Iranian border to seek asylum in Turkey. Sareh was arrested on October 27, 2021 while attempting to cross the borders to Turkey.
Tasnim News Agency, an agency affiliated with security forces, reported that IRGC had arrested individuals in West Azerbaijan on charges of “communicating with and supporting homosexual groups”.
IRGC is a branch of Iran’s armed forces that was set up after the 1979 Iranian revolution to defend the country’s Islamic Republic political system, according to the report by BBC. Iran criminalises sex between men with the death penalty and sex between women with a hundred lashes.
Hours before leaving for Turkey, Sarah [sic] made three short videos and sent them to a trusted person. according to 6Rang. Sareh’s intention was to make her voice heard by the media and human rights organisations in case she got arrested.
“I arrived in Iran yesterday. They found out today that I am here,” she said in the video clip in Arabic. “I may be arrested any moment. They have all the information about me. They are after me. I have to get out immediately.”
“I reached the border somehow. I filmed the route,” she said in the same clip. “I wanted to send you this clip to make you understand how much we are suffering, as part of the LGBTQI community. We will resist till the end. We will remain true to ourselves. I hope a day comes when we can all live freely in our country,” she said.
“I was kept in solitary confinement because I am homosexual. I was electrocuted. Those 21 days felt like 21 years,” she said, about ways in which IRGC tormented her.
Gloria Jean Watkins, known internationally as bell hooks, died on December 15th 2021. After a prolonged illness she passed at home, surrounded by friends and family. hooks was born in 1952. She grew up in Hopkinsville, Kentucky – which was segregated at the time of her birth. And these early experiences of anti-Blackness went on to fuel a lifelong commitment to social justice.
hooks was an activist, author, and academic. Her career began in 1976, when she was a Professor in English and Senior Lecturer in Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California. It was during this time she published her first volume of poetry, and adopted her great-grandmother’s name. hooks made a conscious choice to write her name in lowercase – both to distinguish her from her grandmother, and as a way of encouraging readers to focus on the “substance of books, not who I am.”
A prolific writer, hooks penned some forty books in her lifetime. Her work explored themes of gender, race, capitalism, class, sexuality, and children’s rights – all through the lens of intersectional feminism, which she practiced and theorised before Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term.
Sexually explicit lesbian videos showing a former star of the national women’s soccer team and her partner spread widely in Cameroon last week. In response, social media sites were ablaze with people claiming to be outraged. Online and off, discrimination and insults against LGBTI people in Cameroon intensified, and police made arbitrary arrests of several gay and trans Cameroonians.
The videos showing Gaelle Enaganouit, the former forward team manager of the Indomitable Lions, could put her at risk of prosecution under Cameroon’s anti-homosexuality law.
Article 347-1 of the Cameroonian penal code states: “Any person who has sexual intercourse with a person of the same sex shall be punished with an imprisonment of six (06) months to five (05) years and a fine of twenty thousand (20,000) to two hundred thousand (200,000) [CFA] francs” (about US $35 to $350).
According to the news website CoupsFrancs.com, the advocacy group Stand Up Against the Decriminalization of Homosexuality yesterday filed a complaint in court in Yaoundé, Cameroon, accusing her and Brenda Ahanda of the “practice of homosexuality”.
Reportedly Enaganouit has left the country and traveled to France.
LGBTI rights activists have noticed an upswing in violations of the human rights of LGBTI citizens, including five arbitrary arrests of gay and transgender people in Douala.
Activists have been forced to defend their personal security more rigorously.
Mix (pseudonym), a lesbian rights activist, stated: “I have been living in lock-up since the beginning of this story, I can no longer go out for fear of being attacked by neighbors and young people in the neighborhood. They call me Enganamouit’s sister, Mama Scissors.”
The national human rights watchdog project Unity and its member associations are urging Cameroonians to show more tolerance and have advised LGBTI community members to be cautious and discreet.
ROME, NOV 9 – A 20-year-old Tunisian-Italian woman was attacked by her father after telling her parents she was gay in the Marche seaside resort of Pesaro on Saturday, Il Resto del Carlino newspaper reported Tuesday.
The woman told her 53-year-old Tunsiain father and 58-year-old Italian mother she was a lesbian and was going out with a woman, the north-central Italian daily said.
When she was getting into her girlfriend’s car outside her workplace on Saturday afternoon, her father set on her, pulled her back by the hair and slapped her twice, the paper said, while her mother insulted her.
The woman was helped by a nearby hotel clerk who took her into the building and threatened to call the police if her parents tried to come after her.
Local police have opened a probe into mistreatment in the family. (ANSA).
The Young Terrace community in Norfolk, Virginia is in devastation after a mass shooting on November 3 left three women dead, two injured, and several children traumatized from witnessing the murders first-hand — some seeing their own mothers gunned down in broad daylight — right outside their home.
Police report that Detra R. “Dee” Brown, 42, and Nicole Lovewine, 45, who were partners, came home as Lovewine’s pregnant, 19 year-old daughter, got into an argument with her boyfriend. He pulled out a gun and shot her at approximately 6:00 pm. When Brown and Lovewine came out to help, the shooter turned the gun to them and reportedly fired at both “point-blank” in the head.
Another women who was outside with her three children, Sa’idah E. Costine, 44, then ran to try and help them. The assailant shot her as well, leaving her dead. Another women was shot and wounded before the rampage came to an end.
Police have arrested Ziontay Palmer, 19, and charged him with the entire shooting after apprehending him hours after. He was dating Lovewine’s daughter, who is five months pregnant, and authorities believe a domestic dispute set off the violence, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
Palmer is facing three second-degree murder charges, two malicious wounding charges, and multiple firearm charges. He is being held in Norfolk General District Court without bond.
Lovewine’s sister, Tina McPherson, told the Virginian-Pilot, “That man… put a stain on this family that can never be washed — he hurt us to the core.”
A neighbor and witness told local reporter Andy Fox that there was “nothing they could do” for Brown and Lovewine. “They were shot execution-style. They had just come home from work,” the witness said.
A fifteen year old girl has been raped by two men as punishment for suspected lesbianism in the town of Yilo Krobo in Eastern Ghana.
It was reported on Africa Feeds, that the suspects, who shared housing with the victim and her friend, confronted the girls with an allegation of lesbianism and tried to offer them money for sex. When the girls refused, the men attempted to sexually assault them. One of the girls escaped, but the other was raped a number of times by the suspects.
The fifteen year old victim reported the attack to the police and one of the suspects has been taken into custody. The other suspect has yet to be apprehended.
Currently there are a number of legislators in the country trying to pass an anti-homosexual law that states anyone who engages in sexual acts with members of the same-sex will be “liable on summary conviction to a fine of not less than seven hundred and fifty penalty units and not more than five thousand penalty units, or to a term of imprisonment of not less than three years and not more than five years or both.”
This bill, if passed, will apply to anyone who “holds out as a lesbian, a gay, a transgender, a transsexual, a queer, a pansexual, an ally, a non-binary or any other sexual or gender identity that is contrary to the binary categories of male and female.” It will also seek to punish people who promote and/or are allies to the LGBT+ community.
THE family of a lesbian woman who was shot and killed believe her death was mostly influenced by her sexuality. Limakatso Puling, 29, was shot and killed in Avoca Hills on Tuesday night.
It is alleged Puling and a friend were walking home when they were approached by armed men who demanded their cellphones. It is believed that Puling refused to hand over her cellphone leading to one of the men shooting her in the head.
Thembeka Ngcengula, Puling’s girlfriend, said it would take her a very long time to come to terms with her loss. Not only had she lost a partner but a parent to her disabled daughter, Olwethu, she said.
Lineo Puling, Limakatso’s aunt, said the family were heartbroken. They were expecting to see her in the December holidays. She said Puling had called home a weekend before her death and told them to make arrangements for a family get-together.
“I don’t even know where to begin explaining the hurt our family, especially her grandmother, is going through. We haven’t seen her since 2018. Receiving her phone calls telling us she was coming home brought so much joy. Unfortunately, it was short-lived.”
Lineo said they were saddened that their daughter was robbed of her chance at life because of her sexuality.
“We contacted her friend who she was with when they were attacked. She told us that when Limakatso refused (to give) her phone, those men kept calling her names regarding her sexuality. The killers must be gloating that they killed a lesbian. Was she not a human being? She was a lesbian woman and didn’t deserve to be killed. I hope justice will be served one day.”
Editor’s note: We have been following this story since it first appeared. For personal reasons we were unable to post it until now. Hence why we have included all three stories.
Man “pretending to be woman” on trial for raping lesbian
A 30-year-old man is on trial for rape after he allegedly lured a lesbian to have sex with him while pretending to be a woman.
Tsang Tsz-ho, 30, is on trial in High Court today (Mon) as he appeared in front of a jury of six men and a woman.
Prosecution said Tsang got to know the victim on lesbian dating platforms Butterfly and Her. He called himself “Jan” and said he was a tomboy.
Tsang knew the victim wanted to engage in sadomasochism, and arranged to meet her on February 27, 2020 to a Kwun Tong hotel.The Standard Channel
The victim found out Tsang is a man during sex and questioned him. She repeatedly pushed him away.
She also asked him: “I don’t understand. Why do you go after lesbians?” But Tsang did not answer.
Prosecution said Tsang should know the victim wanted to leave immediately, and that she only promised to have sex because she thought Tsang was a woman.
The victim called the police on the night of incident. Prosecution alleged that Tsang knew full well that she was a lesbian but hid his own sex.
Man on trial for raping lesbian said he did not respond in time to clarify his gender
A 30-year-old man on trial for raping a lesbian while “pretending to be a woman” said he was not aware the dating platform he used is for homosexual women only.
He said he did not clarify about his gender after the lesbian called him “sister”, because he could not respond in time.
Tsang Tsz-ho, 30, pleaded not guilty to raping a woman referred as X in court when they engaged in sadomasochism on February 27, 2020 at a Kwun Tong hotel.
He called himself “Jan” and chose to describe himself as a “tomboy” on lesbian platform Butterfly. X told the court earlier that she would not have agreed to the sex if she knew he was a man.
Testifying in self defense on Monday, Tsang said he did not know Butterfly is for lesbians only.
He said he used different dating apps including Tinder, Skout and HeyMandi from 2014, which do not restrict sexual orientation.
He got to know X on Butterfly in November 2019. He said he was aware that lesbians use the app, but did not think men were banned.
As for why he chose his sexual orientation as “tomboy”, Tsang said he could not log in if he did not choose one of the options. He knew tomboy means a boyish girl.
During conversations with X, the woman called him “elder sister” but he did not clarify. Tsang said he did not respond to the message in time.
X also said she wanted to find “a girl who cares for me”. Tsang replied “I can”, and told the court that he meant he can be a person who cares for her.
Tsang also told the jury that he did not put on any make up nor got into a dress in order to pretend to be woman.
He testifed that when they were in the act, he asked X if she felt comfortable, and she said yes. He thought the answer means she agreed to the sex.
But then X asked him what was inside her body, and he found the question strange.
“I was thinking what could it be? I stopped the action,” he said.
When X started pushing him away, he thought the woman was upset because he did not wear a condom. X then told him: “You are a man? And you did not wear condom.”
Hong Kong man accused of concealing his sex to rape woman cleared of all charges
An unemployed Hong Kong man accused of concealing his sex in order to rape a woman he met on a lesbian forum has been cleared of all charges.
A High Court jury on Friday acquitted Tsang Tsz-ho, 30, after four hours of closed-door deliberations in the midst of a typhoon, which ultimately led to the postponement of all other hearings.
Tsang was found not guilty of rape by a vote of five to two, and cleared of indecent assault by a unanimous vote from the jury of six men and one woman, concluding a 10-day trial before Mr Justice Joseph Yau Chi-lap.
The NYPD is asking for help in its search for the man who attacked a young woman in the East Village because she was holding hands with her girlfriend.
On September 15, the 21-year-old woman was walking with her girlfriend near the corner of East 14th St. and 3rd avenue when the suspect began yelling anti-gay slurs at them, amNY reported.
The couple continued walking, but the suspect did not relent. Continuing to spout slurs, he approached the victim and punched her in the face before fleeing the scene. The victim was not seriously injured.
Nearly a month later, the attacker has still not been found. The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force continues to investigate the incident and on Sunday, released camera footage of the suspect walking down the street.
Listening to Lesbians 