Pratt also sent the two women a message which included their home address, and another in which he said he couldn’t wait to “ruin” their Christmas.
He then began phoning the couple, leaving a number of voicemails, including one where he said “you’re dead”.
Continue reading at: Man threatened the lives of his lesbian niece and her girlfriend in homophobic attack · PinkNews (Source)
From the time I was a teenager, I was attracted to women, but it was difficult back then to even think about my sexuality. I was born 71 years ago, when the social and cultural repression around homosexuality was at its peak in the US. As a young adult I had several intense friendships – crushes really – on women, including one that was loving, sensual and addictive. However, the idea that it could ever be sexual didn’t occur to me. My sister remembers me saying, a few years later, that I found relationships with my women friends difficult – the feelings were just that strong. Because I didn’t know what to do with them, there was a lot of internal conflict.
Continue reading at: The best decision I’ve ever made? Coming out at 65 | Opinion | The Guardian (Source)
It appears that the principal accused of the homophobic abuse of 38 high school pupils in the Eastern Cape will not face any disciplinary action.
It was reported last month that Principal Nomampondomise Kosani of Ulwazi High School ‘outed’ the girls, aged 14 to 18, as lesbians to their parents, guardians and teachers after two female pupils were found kissing in the toilets. The humiliated girls were allegedly subjected to insults and were told to ‘stop’ being gay’. Some of the parents reacted with anger and said they were prepared to use violence to ‘make their children straight’.
Continue reading at: No action taken against principal who outed ‘lesbian’ pupils – MambaOnline – Gay South Africa online (Source)
Posted in News
Tagged compulsory heterosexuality, Discrimination, homophobia, lesbian children, Lesbians in South Africa, Lesbophobia
A letter has been sent to an out politician in Canada threatening an attack on a Pride parade.
The letter was sent to Kristyn Wong-Tam, an openly gay politician who sits on Toronto City Council, as the city marked a day against homophobic bullying on Wednesday.
Continue reading at: Anonymous letter sent to gay politician threatening attack on ‘faggot’ pride parade · PinkNews (Source)
Posted in News
Tagged Discrimination, homophobia, Lesbians in Canada, Lesbophobia, Pride parade, Threats of violence
THE Victorian government is offering grants for creative projects to combat homophobia.
Continue reading at: Victoria offers creative grants to fight homophobia – Star Observer (Source)
Posted in News
Tagged Discrimination, grants, homophobia, Lesbians in Australia, Lesbophobia
According to activists on the ground, three men have been arrested in connection with the murder, with two subsequently released. It is believed that one man remains in custody.
Shockingly, it appears that he has only been charged with robbery after being found in possession of items belonging to Smous.
Mambaonline has as yet been unable to communicate with the authorities in the area and officially verify these reports.
Local LGBTI activist Nthabiseng Mokanyane, who is also a relative of Smous, told Mambaonline that one of the released suspects had allegedly threatened a member of the community. “He said that they are going to kill all the lesbians and take off their heads,” she said.
Continue reading at: Lesbian South Africa Lifestyle | News | Dating (Source)
The ACLU of Georgia argued that federal law protects LGBT people from workplace discrimination, weighing in on the case of a Georgia lesbian fired for being gay.
Continue reading at: ACLU backs Georgia woman fired for being gay — Project Q Atlanta (Source)
Posted in News
Tagged Discrimination, homophobia, law, Lesbians in the U.S., Lesbophobia, persecution, workplace discrimination
Since we posted in fury at being unable to have a username @listening2lesbians for our Facebook page, we discovered that many words are banned.
What’s particularly interesting is the list of what is and isn’t banned, particularly around sexuality.
Lesbian is the only group in the LGBTIQA community who is point blank banned.
This time we screen capped it all for clarity and proof.
Lesbian is a banned word:
But all of these other labels are allowed:
The word gay is fine.
Gay women are also kindly permitted:
The word sexual itself is banned
But, bi, biwomen,and bicurious are allowed:
Questioning is fine:
Queer is fine:
Intersex is fine:
Trans, transman, transmen, transwoman and transwomen are all permitted:
Broad terms are fine:
We wondered about words used both as insults and identity and dyke is allowed but faggot is banned.
Tellingly, hetero is permitted but homo itself is not:
Lastly the suggestion was made to us that lesbian was perhaps banned because it’s used as a pornography category. Not only would this be the wrong response to fetishising women but it’s also not accurate since the word porn is totally fine according to Facebook username criteria.
So there you have it. Lesbian is banned when others are not. Only homo and faggot were also banned.
Does this mean Facebook thinks the word lesbian is itself an insult or is it a case of deliberate discrimination and silencing?
Side note: we put our username in capitals and used an lowercase l for the I to get our username so it is @llstening2lesblans but it looks ok in uppercase as @LISTENlNG2LESBlANS. We couldn’t bring ourselves to drop the word lesbian.
We were keenly aware of the irony of listening also being banned in Facebook page usernames but in the few days since we originally posted this seems to have changed as per the pictures below. 
Listening to Lesbians 