The long-absent father of two young daughters recently took them away from their lesbian mother after threatening to send her to prison for her sexual orientation.
Continue reading at: https://76crimes.com/2019/01/04/estranged-dad-seizes-kids-from-lesbian-mother-in-cameroon/ (source)
Posted in News
Tagged Children of lesbian parents, Discrimination, Erasing 76 Crimes, Lesbians in Cameroon
A lesbian from India who was allegedly held against her will by her husband and parents has won the right to live with her girlfriend.
The High Court of Delhi‘s Justices Siddharth Mridul and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal said the woman, who has not been named, had an “inalienable human and fundamental right” to live with her partner, according to The Indian Express.
Continue reading at: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/01/03/
lesbian-captive-husband-india/ (source)
Homophobia in sports: Because of public pressure and fear of lesbians, a star athlete is barred from every football (soccer) club in Cameroon. Now she’s trying to get back in the game.
Continue reading at: https://76crimes.com/2019/01/03/cameroon-homophobia-derails-a-pro-sports-career/ (source)
Posted in News
Tagged Discrimination, Erasing 76 Crimes, Lesbians in Cameroon, Lesbians in sports, Lesbophobia
By Liz Waterhouse
As 2018 draws to a close, we look back on lesbian news through the year. The articles located, written and shared were assessed by location, issue and perpetrator or source of the issue. Community responses to articles were also reviewed.
In 2018 Listening2Lesbians found and shared 152 stories from 35 countries of the world, with 146 of these articles country specific.
The USA was the greatest source of stories with 65 pieces, as many as the next 18 countries combined.
The USA and United Kingdom were reported on 76 times, exactly half of the total articles for the year. This stark overrepresentation of the USA and the UK reflects various factors including a cultural dominance which is mirrored in media resourcing and output as well as our current reliance on English language media.
In the context of existing analyses of global lesbian experiences, the stories we were able to source this year do not adequately represent the reality of lesbian lives around the world.
There remain overwhelming gaps in representation, with 135 countries or territories never having been reported on by Listening2Lesbians. In 47 of these 135 unreported countries, homosexuality is strictly or defacto illegal and it is implausible that discrimination, harassment and persecution of lesbians do not exist in these countries.
The underreporting of lesbian experiences in these countries is almost certainly exacerbated by the (LGBTI and mainstream) media focus on other groups within the LGBTI community. It has been a source of frustration in 2018 how often lesbians are not included in reports on legal changes, persecution and their effects even when it is evident that they will be affected, and that their experiences will be further exacerbated by cultural expectations of and pressures on women and the punishment levied against women who do not meet these cultural norms/sex roles.
Listening2Lesbians will continue working to discover, document and share the experiences of lesbians in these countries as part of our commitment to global lesbian wellbeing.
Discrimination and harassment were the dominant issue reported in 2018, representing 47% of the global stories reported in the English media.
Physical and sexual violence against lesbians, including murder, represented 30% of reported stories with persecution a further 16%, often including stories of lesbians seeking asylum to escape it.
This breakdown is not globally representative with the USA breakdown between discrimination and harassment and persecution significantly different to that in the rest of the world. Discrimination and harassment in the US represent 61% of the stories with persecution representing just 5%.
For the rest of the world, minus the USA, discrimination and harassment represent just 36% of the stories in 2018 with persecution representing 24%.
Physical or sexual violence, including murder, was reported at similar rates of approximately 30% of the stories.
It seems likely that there would be further variation across the regions of the world but there is not yet enough data held by Listening2Lesbians to assess it in greater detail.
After looking at what happens to lesbians, and where, the next question is who – who is manifesting this hostility and opposition to lesbians, what is the source of the abuse.
Stories reported in 2018 were coded for source and while some of the assessments are subjective, the intent was to provide insight into the nature of the opposition to lesbians.
Global data was considered first, with governments the global primary source of hostility and opposition to lesbians (28% of the reports). Individuals and strangers were not far behind at 23% of the reports.
The USA vs global minus USA data was also assessed, with the results reflecting a similar variation as noted in the reported issue breakdown.
Mirroring the discrimination-harassment vs persecution focus of the issues reported charts, the source charts show a marked difference between the USA and other countries. It is possible that this variation would be greater with more comprehensive data for countries with potentially greater overlap with the USA (such as the UK, Australia and New Zealand).
The USA hostility source data shows relatively low levels of reported family and friend hostility, with strangers and individuals the dominant hostility source. Government is an additional notable hostility source, with discrimination the primary issue.
For countries other than the USA, Government remains the primary hostility source at 34% of stories, with persecution the dominant issue. Individuals and strangers remain a significant hostility source in non-USA countries with elevated rates of community and family- and friends-based hostility. The hostility resulting from family and friends and individuals and strangers for non-USA reports is predominantly physical violence, including murder. Persecution is notable in the community-based hostility for non-USA reports.
The data on both the source of hostility and nature of the hostility demonstrates a difference across the global lesbian experience, with a focus on discrimination in the USA, and a significantly elevated rate of government persecution and interpersonal hostility in other countries.
Additional data in future years will allow for enhanced analysis of these variations.
While there remains social and legal hostility in a variety of countries, the situation of lesbians in countries with profound violent social opposition and government persecution is evidently of a different nature to that of lesbians facing harassment and discrimination, with civil remedies available to them and a state which will not punish them on reporting a crime.
Civil remedies and greater community acceptance do not appear to have resolved the issue of interpersonal violence which remains consistent at approximately 30% of reports across the board. An assessment of the magnitude or severity of the interpersonal violence cannot be made with the current data.
In 2018, the Listening2Lesbians story with the most individual views was California: Court update on alleged murder of lesbian couple and adult child.
The most shared blog post (from WordPress) was U.S: Man Breaks Woman’s Spine in Anti-Lesbian Hate Crime.
The Facebook post with the greatest engagement was the personally devastating announcement of my partner and Listening2Lesbians powerhouse Lisa Mallet’s death: Listening2Lesbians Mourns loss of Lisa Mallett.
The pattern of engagement with Listening2Lesbians stories shows that violent individual attacks garner the most attention, particularly where those attacks occur in the first world. It was notable that, as in previous years, some significant stories of personal trauma and persecution did not appear to capture the imagination of Listening2Lesbians readership, mirroring a phenomenon well established in the mainstream media.
Crimes and hostility against lesbians seem under reported relative to the mainstream and LGBTI populations in both media sectors which is broadly in line with previously identified trends. The stories which were reported predominantly focus on crimes against lesbians in the English speaking first world countries. Additional stories were located through thorough reviews of English-speaking local media around the world.
In addition to sex, race and class remain significant factors in what is reported (and how), and also appear to influence the community response to those reports. Social and legal structures which prevent lesbians from reporting crimes and hostility against them exacerbate these tendencies, with language barriers inhibiting a deeper investigation of the experiences of lesbians as reported in the non-English media landscape.
As with reporting on crimes against women more generally, there remains little interest in reporting and responding to institutional, family or communal violence or persecution, which appears to be the dominant global lesbian experience as reported in 2018 once the USA data is excluded.
Listening2lesbians remains committed to broadening the information reported on the global lesbian experience, with our focus remaining on seeking to highlight the experiences of profoundly marginalised lesbian communities around the world.
Contact information:
Posts from 2018:
Posted in News
Tagged 2018, Annual Summary, Discrimination, harassment, listening2lesbians, murder of lesbian, persecution, Rape, representation, sexual assault
By Liz Waterhouse
Listening2lesbians has a mission of reporting on violence and discrimination against lesbians globally.
While this sounds like a simple task, assessing what we have been able to find in the last few years indicates that accessing news about crimes against lesbians is far from simple, with multiple barriers preventing us from being able to present a comprehensive picture of global lesbian experiences.
There is very little information being published about what is happening to lesbians around the world if we compare what is reported on an ongoing basis with what is found by those writers analysing the situation in depth.
Even for the countries with the most information available, invariably white dominated English speaking countries (the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada), the information is limited and piecemeal. Based on the news we see, and the patterns of how it is reported, the communities who face significant additional problems due to overlapping axes of oppression, such as lesbians of colour and lesbians with a disability, are additionally disregarded by the authorities and/or the media.
This is no surprise because we know that many lesbians do not or cannot report violence or harassment for cultural, social and legal reasons. It is not safe for many lesbians to report their experiences, and around the world, reporting their experiences will open lesbians up to harassment and persecution.
When violence and harassment does get reported to authorities and it makes its way to the media, the following filters seem to apply:
Across the world there are some countries for which there is significant reporting (such as South Africa), which reflects both their rampant crime rate against lesbians (and women more generally) and the wide spread use of English in their media.
That leaves 135 out of 209 countries and territories for which we have not yet found a single news article in real time by December 2018.
We know that the absence of news reports does not indicate an absence of persecution of lesbians because homosexuality is illegal or defacto illegal in 47 of those countries.
This means we know that there are many communities of lesbians who are entirely silenced, whose experiences we know far too little about but whose experiences we need to be listening to because they remain persecuted.
To try to find every available article on violence against lesbians, Listening2lesbians scans every news item from the following news sources, every day:
Google searches for:
News articles and blogs on Feedly including:
We also watch the news on facebook across groups, news sites, pages and friends’ walls.
As we find new sources they are added to the list of sites we search and follow.
English speaking western countries dominate the news.
News from lesbians in english speaking western countries also dominates the lesbian news.
Listening2lesbians works hard to counter that domination by dedicating our efforts to finding news on marginalised and invisibilized communities of lesbians.
That domination is emphasised by the prevalence of English speaking news for the english speaking audience.
We are aware that our work to find and share information about lesbian communities around the world is limited by searching in English.
While we do have plans to reach out to communities, activists and representative organisations more directly in future, this is limited by the current size and scale of Listening2lesbians and will rolled out in a way that prioritises the sustainability of the project over speed of expansion.
The framework we are using to focus on the experiences of lesbians around the world may not cleanly fit the cultural framework of all communities. We are mindful of not imposing western values or terminology on the communities we are trying to reach.
We do know that women in same sex relationships around the world are persecuted, subject to violence and discrimination, however they are labeled and identified, and it is this reality we are looking to report on.
We know we have many readers who represent communities around the world and who speak languages other than English.
Your experiences and the experiences of lesbians in your community matter.
If you see news articles about violence and harassment against lesbians in your community, and it is a story we are unlikely to find for language or other reasons, please send it to us at:
We also welcome contact from activists, journalists, researchers and organisations representing, researching or supporting lesbians around the world.
Posted in Listening 2 Lesbians
Tagged lesbian erasure, listening2lesbians, media, persecution, violence against lesbians
[Marta Álvarez] the lesbian activist spent nine years in a Colombian prison, for the murder of her brother (who allegedly tried to rape her), and experienced a series of relentless homophobic attacks at the hands of the guards and officials.
Álvarez spent years of her sentence trying to speak out about the inequality and eventually took her case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), where she argued she was being discriminated against for not receiving same-sex conjugal visits.
Continue reading at: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/12/29/
marta-alvarez-lesbian-prisoner-colombia/ (source)
Julia Beck
AfterEllen.com
“Baltimore City is a hostile environment for lesbians. Organizations like the LGBTQ Commission that claim to support Lesbians are too often controlled by men who de-platform and silence outspoken women. Too many activists wear a facade of benevolence, preaching inclusion and equity while threatening to beat and kill women like me.”
Continue reading at: https://www.afterellen.com/general-news/568221-how-i-became-the-most-hated-lesbian-in-baltimore (source)
Posted in Listening 2 Lesbians
Tagged AfterEllen, Julia Beck, lesbian erasure, Lesbians in the U.S., LGBTQ Commission
A rainbow plaque honouring the “first modern lesbian”, Halifax’s Anne Lister, is to be replaced after a backlash over its wording.
Continue reading at: https://www.halifaxcourier.co.uk/news/
rainbow-plaque-honouring-halifax-s-anne-lister-to-feature-the-word-lesbian-after-backlash-1-9505380 (source)
A man was arrested Tuesday afternoon, the day after a woman was shot and killed.
Eric Douglas Moore, 20, of Burlington, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of 24-year-old Mary Elizabeth McBroom.
Continue reading at: https://www.greensboro.com/news/crime/
burlington-man-charged-with-murder-in-death-of–year/ (source)
Male correctional officers and supervisors participated in “sexist and homophobic displays” that included discussions about the “sexual prowess” of female correctional officers, how women who are raped “really want it to happen,” and how women can’t defend themselves, “especially when they’re hit,” correctional officer Nicole Jones, 28, of Dormont alleges in the 12-page complaint.
Ms. Jones, who is gay, said her colleagues regularly spoke about how she wanted to “be a man and take testosterone.”
Continue reading at: https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2018/12/21/Allegheny-County-Jail-correctional-officer-harassment-discrimination-complaint/stories/201812210100 (source)
Casey Handal and Zadette Rosado live in Barringon, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, with their two daughters. They say that earlier this month, they looked outside and noticed that their rainbow flag was gone.
In its place was an American flag.
Handal said that she doesn’t think it was a random act of vandalism. If it were, then the thief wouldn’t have taken the time to raise an American flag to replace the rainbow flag.
Continue reading at: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/12/
lesbian-couples-pride-flag-stolen-neighbors-response-incredible/ (source)
While only two Republicans voted to confirm Feldblum in 2010, she faced no problems with reappointment in 2013. President Donald Trump reappointed Feldblum to the post, but staying on the EEOC board requires the consent of the Senate.
This year, Lee is acting unilaterally to block her nomination against the desires of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to NBC News.
The Senate failed to approve her through unanimous consent based on Lee’s objection alone, and now she must go through a lengthier confirmation process, which means the EEOC will not have a quorum and cannot meet until the confirmation is complete.
Continue reading at: https://www.advocate.com/politics/2018
/12/21/antigay-senator-shuts-down-government-dept-over-lesbian-appointee (source)
Posted in News
Tagged Chai Feldblum, Discrimination, Lesbians in government, Lesbians in the U.S., Mike Lee
A Catholic shrine in Portland, Oregon will feature a lesbian choir at a caroling event and it’s upset some homophobes.
‘It is surprising then that the Servites would allow a lesbian choir to sing on the very spot where the altar is normally located, where the body and blood of Christ is consecrated.
‘How can we expect visitors, who may never set foot into a Catholic Church again, to understand what Jesus taught about sin and our need to seek forgiveness?
‘The presence of this choir is a scandal and will certainly lead to even more confusion in a time of moral ambiguity.’
Continue reading at: https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/
christmas-festival-lights-portland-lesbian-choir/#gs.Xbl7G8o (source)
Eleven young women were arrested in the northern Nigerian city of Kano for allegedly planning a lesbian wedding, the Islamic law-enforcement agency, the Hisbah, told AFP Thursday.
Continue reading at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/12/
nigeria-sharia-police-arrest-11-women-over-lesbian-wedding/ (source)
Image copyright of Lonely Planet
“They were pushing and forcing the girls. Coercing them.”
Popal also accused [President of the Afghan Football Federation (AFF) Keramuudin] Karim himself of beating a girl with a snooker cue and calling players lesbians to stop them speaking out.
“If they spoke out, no one would listen to them because being accused of being lesbian or gay in Afghanistan is a topic you don’t speak about and puts you and your family in a lot of danger,” she said.
Continue reading at: https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1073150/afghan-football-federation-president-suspended-amid-allegations-of-sexual-abuse-against-female-players (Source)
Update: Update: FIFA Bars Afghan Soccer Chief guilty of sexual assault and intimidation
Julia Diana Robertson
AfterEllen.com
“PinkNews, a male-run publication, has a history of coming under fire with the lesbian community. Yesterday, it happened yet again…
Lesbians are the most silenced within the alphabet and within the mainstream media. We’re pathologically misrepresented.
The mainstream media (including the ‘LGBT’ mainstream) are male-dominated (like everything else)… Even lesbian organizations and media are controlled by non-lesbians and male-money—Parent companies or advertisers that ultimately control what we can and cannot say. Mainstream media is like the creepy uncle who shows up at your lesbian dinner party, uninvited, holding a bouquet of d*cks. PinkNews has been called out on social media, time and time again, for what lesbian readers view as biased reporting, anti-lesbian sentiment and misogynistic viewpoints.”
Continue reading at: Male-Run ‘Pink News’ at Odds with the Lesbian Community…Again (source)
Posted in Listening 2 Lesbians
Tagged AfterEllen, Julia Diana Robertson, lesbian erasure, Pink News, PinkNews
An Australian Federal Police detective’s career was ruined after she and another female officer were referred to as a “two for one” deal, in meetings to decide job postings, because of their same-sex relationship, a court has heard.
Continue reading at: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/
federal-police-officer-in-same-sex-relationship-claims-discrimination-20181210-p50ldm.html (source)
Update: Update: Lesbian Police Couple Lose Discrimination Claim against Australian Federal police
Comedian Leah Forster claims that kosher-certification rabbis bullied Brooklyn restaurants into canceling her comedy shows due to her sexual orientation.
Continue reading at: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lesbian-comic-says-kosher-mafia-forced-cancellation-her-nyc-shows-n946256 (source)
Posted in News
Tagged Discrimination, Jewish lesbians, Leah Forster, Lesbians and religion, Lesbians in the U.S.
The whereabouts of a married woman remains unknown to her family and friends after she fled into hiding since she was caught red-handed engaging in lesbianism with her partner in the Ashanti Region about a month ago.
Continue reading: http://adacommunityonline.com/2018/12/01/housewife-runs-into-hiding-after-she-was-caught-with-lesbian-partner/ (source)
Posted in News
Tagged Discrimination, Lesbians in Ghana, violence against lesbians, violence against women
A homophobic [man] sucker-punched a woman on a train, sending her to the hospital with a broken spine – all because he thought she was a lesbian, cops said Saturday.
Continue reading at: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/
ny-metro-homophobe-punches-woman-broken-spine-20181208-story.html (source)
Update: Update: Man pleads guilty to anti-lesbian attack that resulted in the woman’s spine being fractured
Listening to Lesbians 