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Discrimination In The Lgbtq Community

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The LGBTQ community consists of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer. This diverse group is united based on their shared history of discrimination based on their breaking the norm of heterosexuality. The groups within this community, while vary in experiences, are able to maintain some amount of solidarity by agreeing on the importance of advocating for rights to better the safety of the LGBTQ people. Throughout history prejudice people who look down upon those with differing sexual orientations have bullied, harassed, raped and murdered people from all the categories of the LGBTQ community. It was not until 2009 where President Barrack Obama signed a law that has made it a federal crime to assault someone based on …show more content…

In a study conducted by Doug Meyer, he interviewed women and men who are gay and lesbian and have been the victim of violence and asked them why they thought they were attacked. The women who are lesbian tended to say that it was because they were being punished for “converting” their partner to being gay. A 50 year old black women named Latoya, had a violent experienced based portraying the hardships of not only being black and gay but also a woman. In the interview she states, “They act like I did this to her. And it’s like I’m not supposed to because then I’m making Black people look bad. Like if I left her alone, she wouldn’t be gay. . . They act like she has no control over herself” (Meyer 859). Because Latoya is butch, meaning she dresses and acts more masculine, they consider her to be more dominant since our society has socialized people into relating masculinity with dominance, and femininity with passiveness. Which is why society tends to think it is the fault of the butch lesbian for taking control of the feminine girl who doesn’t know what she wants. Latoya received prejudice based on not only because of her sexuality but because of her gender as well as being African …show more content…

Matthew Shepard was gay and white, which is why his death received the most publicity and managed to create foundations and programs. People like Islan Nettles receive less media coverage and less support because as is well known, those who are black and trans are not as respected in society. While much change is needed, there has been some amount of progress for the trans community with the development of The Transgender Violence Tracking Portal (TVTP) in May of this year. A.J. Walkley, one of the writers for Huff Post Gay Voice, writes, “TVTP is still getting numbers in from countries around the world and hope to update their statistics over the next few months . . . The fact that we at least have information about these 102 violent acts, however, is a tremendous step forward” (Walkley). Before this organization there was not a place to find the statistics for violence against this side of the community. More work needs to be done to improve the lives of all members of the LGBTQ community but there needs to be more focus on the transgendered

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