Lesbians In The News

[Esme nha Maire]

That's apalling! How on earth could any commercial organisation think that it is OK to allow someone in their care to be assaulted, no matter what the excuse for doing so was? That's a failure of care in anyone's book. And as for it needing a court case to get protection 'extended' to LGBTQ folk - doesn't the US constuitition guarantee equality in law for everyone?

[*Anya*]

Originally Posted by Esme nha Maire

That's apalling! How on earth could any commercial organisation think that it is OK to allow someone in their care to be assaulted, no matter what the excuse for doing so was? That's a failure of care in anyone's book. And as for it needing a court case to get protection 'extended' to LGBTQ folk - doesn't the US constuitition guarantee equality in law for everyone?

Equality under the Constution is selective and then the person would have to pursue it legally.

I don't know if Ms.Wetzel is living in a licensed facility or non-licensed. If licensed, there should have been a remedy but since it is now going to a court of appeals, whatever suit she brought at a lower level, failed.

I don't know why elder abuse laws in Illinois did not protect her but I did not do further digging to find out the timeline of everything involved.

According to HUD.gov:

The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits housing discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, and familial status (i.e., presence of children under the age of 18 in the household or pregnancy).

The Fair Housing Act does not specifically include sexual orientation and gender identity as prohibited bases. However, discrimination against a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) person may be covered by the Fair Housing Act if it is based on non-conformity with gender stereotypes.

For example, if a housing provider refuses to rent to an LGBT person because he believes the person acts in a manner that does not conform to his notion of how a person of a particular sex should act, the person may pursue the matter as a violation of the Fair Housing Act’s prohibition of sex.

[Breathless]

Breaks my heart that this has happened to her, and the oh so many others that have not, or will not speak up, and suffered in silence. I am very happy that she is taking a stand for herself, and others. Proof that there is still so much to be done, and I am profoundly thankful to all the women before me for what they have endured and stood up against and fought for, so that we humans have a chance at a better life. I will be following this story. Thank you Anya for sharing!

[afemmenatalie]

This story just breaks my heart. That poor woman, and I am sure there are plenty more LGBTQ people who have suffered just like her.

I did some research, and see that Marsha Wetzel is receiving legal representation from LAMBDA LEGAL. I also found a GoFundMe page for her, which began in 2016, largely I believe, to defray the cost of her legal counsel/case(s). https://www.gofundme.com/2i0q5tg


I found many links to newspaper articles as well, just by putting her name, Marsha Wetzel, in to the search engine I use.

I am hoping I may somehow be able to help her without giving money to GoFundMe, as they make money by keeping a (small) percentage of the monies donated, and then the remainder she likely will not see as it will go toward her legal fight.

Perhaps an idea would be to write an uplifting card to her at the address provided for her on the GoFundMe page, or to send her a card care of LAMBDA LEGAL. Just a thought.

[Gayandgray]

Originally Posted by afemmenatalie

This story just breaks my heart. That poor woman, and I am sure there are plenty more LGBTQ people who have suffered just like her.

I did some research, and see that Marsha Wetzel is receiving legal representation from LAMBDA LEGAL. I also found a GoFundMe page for her, which began in 2016, largely I believe, to defray the cost of her legal counsel/case(s). https://www.gofundme.com/2i0q5tg


I found many links to newspaper articles as well, just by putting her name, Marsha Wetzel, in to the search engine I use.

I am hoping I may somehow be able to help her without giving money to GoFundMe, as they make money by keeping a (small) percentage of the monies donated, and then the remainder she likely will not see as it will go toward her legal fight.

Perhaps an idea would be to write an uplifting card to her at the address provided for her on the GoFundMe page, or to send her a card care of LAMBDA LEGAL. Just a thought.

That’s a good idea! I can’t really afford to help her out financially right now, but I’d like to send her a letter/card to et her know I’m praying for her.

[*Anya*]

Republican Senate candidate’s parents donate as much as they can – to his lesbian Democratic opponent

Josh Jackman 14th February 2018, 6:57 PM

The frontrunner for a Republican US Senate nomination has seen his parents donate the maximum amount allowed – to his potential Democratic opponent.

Kevin Nicholson is running for the Wisconsin Senate seat currently occupied by Tammy Baldwin, who became the first openly gay US Senator in 2013.

But months after he announced his candidacy in the Republican primary, his parents donated as much as they could to Baldwin.

In December, Donna and Michael Nicholson each contributed $2,700 to Baldwin for her re-election campaign, according to CNN.

In response, their 40-year-old son distanced himself from them. “My parents have a different worldview than I do, and it is not surprising that they would support a candidate like Tammy Baldwin who shares their perspective,” he said.

Nicholson was at pains to emphasize that his political outlook should not be in any way associated with his upbringing. “I’m a conservative today not because I was born one, but because of the experience I earned as a Marine in combat, my experience as a husband and father, my choice to be a Christian, the schools I chose to attend and the decision to pursue the career that I have,” he said.

“Regardless of who may disagree with my life decisions, I would not trade these experiences for anything, and they will always guide my views as Wisconsin’s next US Senator.”

Nicholson has previously tweeted his joy over gaining support from Steve Bannon, who left his position as President Donald Trump’s chief strategist in August.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/02/14...atic-opponent/

[homoe]

Originally Posted by afemmenatalie

This story just breaks my heart. That poor woman, and I am sure there are plenty more LGBTQ people who have suffered just like her.

I did some research, and see that Marsha Wetzel is receiving legal representation from LAMBDA LEGAL. I also found a GoFundMe page for her, which began in 2016, largely I believe, to defray the cost of her legal counsel/case(s). https://www.gofundme.com/2i0q5tg


I found many links to newspaper articles as well, just by putting her name, Marsha Wetzel, in to the search engine I use.

I am hoping I may somehow be able to help her without giving money to GoFundMe, as they make money by keeping a (small) percentage of the monies donated, and then the remainder she likely will not see as it will go toward her legal fight.

Perhaps an idea would be to write an uplifting card to her at the address provided for her on the GoFundMe page, or to send her a card care of LAMBDA LEGAL. Just a thought.

I'm not sure I can help financially, but I will most definitely send her an uplifting card!

[*Anya*]

Alison Van Uytvanck comes out: 'Being lesbian or gay is not a disease'

Tennis - The world no. 50 is dating the player Greet Minnen

Another tennis player has announced that she is a lesbian. In September 2017, Johanna Larsson had made it public, then in December 2017, Conny Perrin and Tara Moore announced that they were going to get married.

Now, it has been world no. 50 Alison Van Uytvanck's turn. The 2016 Roland Garros quarter-finalist is involved in a romantic relationship with her colleague and player Greet Minnen, who is outside the top-1000 of the WTA ranking. 'I don’t find it a taboo, [the relationship] makes me happy,' Van Uytvanck said, as quoted by OutSports.

'Soon we are going to live together. We do feel super happy together and that’s what we will show to the world. Nobody has to justify why they are lesbian or gay, it is not a disease. We are very open about our relationship and my parents are proud about it.

That’s important because the support made us feel good.' Van Uytvanck also commented on the other people's prejudices and bullying: 'Now I go to the kids and say "no bullying" and I confront those who made my life so difficult with my success so they can understand the pain I had to go through.

http://www.tennisworldusa.org/tennis...ot-a-disease-/

[homoe]

Originally Posted by homoe

I'm not sure I can help financially, but I will most definitely send her an uplifting card!

Today the card I had mailed out came back! "Not A Resident" was hand written on the envelope. Hopefully some agency has gotten her out of that horrible situation and into someplace much safer.

[*Anya*]

Introducing a Major New Voice in Comedy (Who Also Attacks Comedy)

By JASON ZINOMAN MARCH 19, 2018

It was only a matter of time before a stand-up comedian channeled the righteous rage of the current feminist moment.

Dave Chappelle released a special about #MeToo, but he didn’t respond to events so much as shoehorn them into his usual preoccupations. Other comics weighed in, but none have produced a show with as much unsettling urgency as Hannah Gadsby’s “Nanette,” a riveting New York debut at SoHo Playhouse that announces a major new voice.

Ms. Gadsby calls out Louis C.K., Harvey Weinstein and Bill Clinton, not to mention Pablo Picasso, in an ingenious indictment of the sexism and sentimentality of our narratives about genius, but her real target is the culture that enables and excuses abuse. That doesn’t sound funny, I realize, but she is that, too. Still, the laughs of her show are a means to an end, which is, at its core, a ferocious attack on comedy itself.

Ms. Gadsby, a 40-year-old Australian comic, is an unknown here, but the way she weaves intellectual arguments into taut jokes makes it clear she’s no novice. After more than a decade of stand-up, she developed a following in Europe and Australia with self-deprecating comedy about her family, her weight and coming out as a lesbian in a homophobic community. “Nanette” — which won awards last year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and has since been picked up by Netflix for a future release — begins in that quirky vein.

Walking onstage, she is all stammers and fidgets and overly articulate neurosis, adjusting the microphone stand and repeatedly pushing her glasses up her nose, evoking no one so much as Woody Allen. She makes fun of Tasmania, where she grew up and where gay sex was not decriminalized until 1997, and even jokes about how lesbians don’t have a sense of humor. The title “Nanette,” she explains, refers to a barista who was going to be the subject of the show, but she couldn’t make it work. Failure is the theme of her early material.

Her self-mocking nebbish is a familiar persona, but there comes a moment when she drops and deconstructs it, and that turning point makes you re-evaluate everything you saw before. “Do you know what self-deprecation means coming from somebody who exists on the margins?” she asks. “It is not humility; it is humiliation.”

Then she goes on the attack, cheerfully smashing pieties like the one about comedy being the best medicine. “I reckon penicillin might give it a nudge,” she says. “Your baby is sick? Just give it a tickle.”

Breaking down comedy with mathematical precision, she explains that good stories have three parts (beginning, middle and end) while jokes require two (setup and punch line), which means that to end on a laugh, comics often need to cut off the most important and constructive element, where hindsight, perspective and catharsis exist.

“A joke is a question, artificially inseminated with tension,” she says, before explaining the mechanics of her job. “I make you all tense and then I cure it with a laugh. And you say: ‘Thanks for that, I was feeling a bit tense.’” Then in one of many tonal shifts, she raises her voice, irritated at the audience’s hypothetic gratitude: “But I made you tense."

Then she points to the audience and back at her and quips, darkly: “This is an abusive relationship.”

Skepticism about comedy, which dates at least to Plato, is older than the romanticized view that prevails today, undergirding both the comics who champion it as well as critics who suggests the best jokes punch upward and are rooted in truth. Ms. Gadsby is at her most radical pushing back on this idea, explaining that funny comedy isn’t always honest, and in fact rewards deception.

She said that in her homophobic town, she lived with shame that she turned into comedy, but that she paid a price. She never entirely grew out of her own self-hatred. When she retells her story without the jokes, it’s bracing. By stopping at the punch line, she says, she froze “an incredibly formative experience at its trauma point and sealed it off with jokes.”

In explaining how she turned her story of coming out of the closet into a bit, she upends the cliché of the comic who finds salvation by turning pain into laughter.

This is a show where, more than once, the performer makes the crowd laugh and laugh and, suddenly, turn deadly silent. She also nimbly leaps from personal stories to big-picture analysis, including a damning digression about Picasso, whom she calls a misogynist, citing both his own statements and an affair with a 17-year-old.

After drawing attention to the silliness of discussing art history in a stand-up show, she gets serious again, saying comics have been more likely to make dismissive jokes about Monica Lewinsky or “throwaway gags” about Mr. Weinstein. It’s on this subject that her jokes stop and her tone becomes grave, saying we care more about the reputations of artists like Louis C.K. and Bill Cosby than their accusers.

Does that mean that “Nanette” is no longer comedy? I don’t think so.

Comedy is much broader than Ms. Gadsby suggests. It can double down on prejudices or challenge them. Rape jokes have shamed victims and one bit by Hannibal Buress helped kick off the backlash against Mr. Cosby. Despite Ms. Gadsby’s formulaic definitions of comedy, a whole tradition, which includes Andy Kaufman and Tig Notaro and various proponents of cringe comedy, experiments with the tension-release dynamic of the setup and punch line.

“People really only feel safe when men do the angry comedy,” Ms. Gadsby says. “I do it and I’m just an angry lesbian ruining all the fun and banter.”

She’s right that angry stand-up has long been the province of men, and that there’s a double standard at work, but comedy isn’t frozen in time. We’re at a moment when I suspect audiences are not as interested in hearing from angry male comics, and yet the work of Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks laid the groundwork that allows us to see Ms. Gadsby’s roaring polemic wrapped in jokes as firmly part of a stand-up tradition.

The best defense against Ms. Gadsby’s assault on comedy is her own show — an irony she is clearly aware of, and even perhaps nods to in a tangent about the ridiculousness of gendered parenting. Instead of dressing babies in pink or blue, she proposes they all wear blue, pointing out that the color evokes a cool temperature while also being the shade of the hottest part of a flame. “Blue has the flexibility to accommodate contradiction,” she says.

So does great art, which is why the paradox at the heart of this remarkable show — it’s a comedy arguing against comedy — actually elevates it. How funny is that?

“Nanette” runs through April 15 at the SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street. See sohoplayhouse.com for more information.

A version of this article appears in print on March 20, 2018, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Taking On A Culture Of Sexism.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/a...y-nanette.html