When Reporters Hazard the Queer Turf

Gaycitynews.com
By Duncan Osborne
April 18, 2007
http://www.gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18229900&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=569476&rfi=6

The mainstream press has been tough on lesbians of color in New York City this week. It began with a piece in the Village Voice titled "Girls to Men" that purported to explore the lives of butch African-American lesbians, or aggressives. To be blunt, I did not like the piece. At all.

Often when the mainstream press covers any part of our community, the stories read like a trip to the gay zoo with the reporter marveling at us curious creatures and our strange behavior. "Girls to Men" looked like more of that, but I am a middle-aged, white gay man. What do I know about the lives of African-American lesbians?

My instincts were correct.

The latest issue of the Voice has eight letters responding to the story. Two approved. Six did not and they were not kind to Chloe A. Hilliard, the reporter, or to the Voice. Equally unhappy with the piece was Madison the Promoter who runs two parties that cater to these women.

"I have to hold a press conference because there are a lot of people who are very angry," said Madison, who was featured in the Voice story. "These are people who go to the club, but a lot of other lesbians as well."
These women are not interested in becoming men as the title implied.
"I think that the title really set me off," said Tania Savigne, Madison's assistant. "The youth don't aspire to be men. They don't want to be men."
Nor are thugged out toughs stealing each other's femme girlfriends or getting into fights as the story suggested.

"I just felt that she came in and she had her agenda set on what she wanted to write about," Savigne said. "These young girls opened up to her and I just felt she gave them no dignity whatsoever."

Just as offensive has been some of the coverage of a Manhattan trial of four young lesbians of color who were charged with gang assault and, in one case, attempted murder in a 2006 fight with Dwayne Buckle in the West Village. Three other young women have already pleaded guilty to attempted assault in the case and got six months in jail and five years on probation.

Buckle sustained serious injuries after, he claimed, he only flirted with one of the girls and they attacked him. The young women charged that Buckle was the aggressor and they were defending themselves.

On April 18, a jury acquitted Patreese Johnson, 19, of attempted murder and convicted her on two assault counts and one gang assault count. Johnson could get five to 25 years at sentencing on May 17.

Terrain Dandridge, 20, Venice Brown, 19, and Renata Hill, 25, were convicted on one count of gang assault and one assault count. They face three-and-a-half to 15 years.

The seriousness of all this did not stop some in the press from using jokes and adolescent sexual innuendo. Leading the pack was, of course, the New York Post, one of the worst newspapers in this country.

"Attack of the Killer Lesbians" was one Post headline. Another was "Crotching Tiger," a reference to Buckle supposedly having pointed at the crotch of one of the girls.

Laura Italiano, the Post reporter who covered the case, referred to the women as "seven bloodthirsty young lesbians" and a "seething sapphic septet" in one story.

At the New York Times, reporter Anemona Hartocollis described the women as "a pack of marauding lesbians" and Samuel Maull, an Associated Press reporter, wrote that they were "all avowed lesbians from Newark."

The trial did feature a moment that showed how these mainstream reporters can so easily use these characterizations.

Bruce Nussbaum, an assistant managing editor at Business Week, was screened as a possible juror on the case, but he was excluded after he expressed the concern that his wife might be threatened by this lesbian gang. For Nussbaum, "gang" connoted "a nationally organized gang, very powerful, that could reach out and try to influence members of the jury," he told the Times.

What does Nussbaum think he is dealing with? A lesbian crime family? A gay Mafia? Nussbaum was presented with four young lesbians charged with assault and he saw a sinister and vast criminal conspiracy.

It is no surprise that mainstream press stories about us are so consistently awful. As Nussbaum revealed, we remain alien and unknown to these benighted reporters. The result is that their stories are crap.