Tag Archives: journalism

Spain: lesbian journalist attacked at home

A few days ago, on December 13 [2020], the journalist Irantzu Varela suffered a lesbophobic attack at the hands of some neighbors  This is how it was explained by Pikara Magazine, the media outlet at which she works: “They were annoyed with Varela for having left some cardboard to recycle next to the door of her apartment. At night, the couple rang her doorbell and entered her house showing their anger and throwing various objects in the journalists house to the ground.

In addition to punching her several times in the face, they called her a “fucking lesbian,” “degenerate,” and “tomboy.” Varela denounced the attack on the Ertzaintza. However, it is not the first time that she has had to do this: as a feminist activist, she has been subjected to harassment and abuse on social media for years. Beyond social media and in the premises shared with the editorial staff of Pikara Magazine, she has also dealt with fascist graffiti repeatedly in the last year.
(Translated)

Hace algunos días, el 13 de diciembre, la periodista Irantzu Varela sufrió una agresión lesbófoba por parte de unos vecinos. Así lo explicaban desde Pikara Magazine, medio de comunicación del que es colaboradora: «Estaban molestos con Varela por haber dejado unos cartones para reciclar junto a la puerta del piso de esta. Por la noche, la pareja llamó a su timbre y entraron en su casa mostrando su enfado y tirando al suelo varios objetos de la casa de la comunicadora».

Además de propinarle varios puñetazos en la cara, le llamaron «lesbiana de mierda», «degenerada» y «marimacho». Varela denunció la agresión a la Ertzaintza. Sin embargo, no es la primera vez que lo hace: como activista feminista, lleva años recibiendo acoso y violencia en redes sociales. Fuera de ellas, y en el local que compartía con la redacción de Pikara Magazine, también ha lidiado con pintadas fascistas, episodios que se han ido repitiendo desde el año pasado.
(Original)

Continue reading at: https://www.lamarea.com/2020/12/21/la-agresion-a-irantzu-varela-es-el-colmo-mujeres-con-presencia-publica-piden-que-la-violencia-que-sufren-se-considere-tortura/ (Source)

New York, USA: DNA Vindicates Lesbian Rape Victim Smeared by Daily News and NYPD 24 Years Later

Mike McAlary Rape Hoax vindicated

On an afternoon in late April 1994, a young woman was raped in broad daylight in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Two days later, the biggest columnist in New York City’s biggest newspaper called her a liar.

The woman—black, a lesbian, and an activist—became the target of a vicious smear campaign by a Daily News columnist and sources within the NYPD, who charged that she had made up a “hoax” to advance a political agenda.

“I have had the misfortune of being raped twice—once in the park and again in the media,” she told her lawyer, Martin Garbus, after the attack.

Continue reading at: https://www.thedailybeast.com/in-1994-nypd-brass-called-her-rape-a-hoax-in-2018-they-found-her-rapist (Source)

Lydia Polgreen: Black Lesbian Changing Journalism

The last time Lydia Polgreen felt boredom — real boredom, the soul-crushing kind — she was 21 and working for a company in suburban Virginia that helped applicants for H-1B visas. The job was a stopgap between college, where she’d studied Marx and Hegel, and a hazy, uncertain future in which she imagined she might teach philosophy. In the meantime, there she was toiling in some random job, waiting for each day to end. “At some point I thought, This can’t be how my life is going to go. This isn’t for me,” she recalls. “I’m not a person who should ever be looking at the clock, waiting for things to be over — that’s not my destiny.”

Continue reading at: Lydia Polgreen: Meet the Queer Black Woman Changing Journalism | Out Magazine (Source)