#donna minkowitz

[yourdailyqueer]

Donna Minkowitz

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: Born 1964  

Ethnicity: White

Occupation: Writer, journalist, activist

[dandeliondelee]

Looking Back: A Take On Donna Minkowitz's "How I Broke, and Botched, the Brandon Teena Story"

Blog Post 2

“Stories constitute the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.” - Dr. Howard Gardner

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With a title as straightforward as “How I Broke, and Botched, the Brandon Teena Story,” Donna Minkowitz wastes no time to tell the world of her shortcomings in delivering the tragedy of Brandon Teena. Minkowitz’s youthful and ignorant mistake has garnered great criticism from trans activists during its time for reasons she used to not understand. But now in a time of fervid debates about body politics, she realizes her fault in the matter and attempts to reconcile the harm she has done by revisiting the pages long forgotten and setting the story straight. Her apology puts great caution on the role of how our preconceptions shape the way we tell the story of others and how our audience will perceive these based on our words. 

Brandon Teena is transexual male, originally from the conservative Lincoln, who had recently moved to Falls City. In his new home, he had managed to find both happiness and problems— the two things that would ultimately set the stage for his death. Falls City was not only where he met his girlfriend Lana Tisdel, but also where he would be later discriminated against after the police department’s hand in publicly declaring his biological sex to the public in the news report of his check-forging charge. A few days after the report came out, he was physically and sexually assaulted by Tisdel’s friends, John Lotter and Tom Nissen. The police’s inaction against this incident is what further led to the same perpetrators’ coercion in his murder a week later. 

This story captured the attention of publisher, The Village Voice, which tasked Minkowitz on the hunt to write a feature article about the events leading up to the death of Brandon Teena. Her take on the issue inadvertently casted Teena as a lesbian who hated his body because of prior experiences of childhood and adolescent sexual abuse. She stated as much in her original article that the very action of Teena converting genders was “bold,” but she also made the wrong choice of assuming this was an action prompted by fear, as a result of internalized homophobia. Looking back at the original article, Minkowitz acknowledges her misconceptions about the context of the circumstances. Hence, the way in which she wrote the article reflected the subtleties of her anti-trans ideologies, ones that she failed to take heed of— but they weren’t subtle enough to go unnoticed by her readers. 

From this, several external factors may be pinpointed as to why the death of Teena and its telling took its sinuous path. Firstly, culture is a domineering presence in almost all aspects of life from the moment we’re born that no person is immune to its influence. The culture in the traditionalist hometown of Teena has helped Minkowitz diverge into speculations about how his environment contributed to his decision to identify as a transexual person. For instance, she cites that the sexual abuse he endured as a child became the avenue for him to favor female partners, rather than male ones. Aside from this, the article she released branches out wildly from her original notes— those taken raw from the mother of Teena. At first, she had always seen Teena’s mother as a homophobic parent because of her extreme, albeit justified, reaction to Teena’s transition. Failing to see the gray areas that people under the immense pressure of culture tread over, Minkowitz never once asked the question of how Teena’s decisions affected his mother and what the rationale was behind the next steps his mother took upon processing this news. 

Another thing is the confusion about gender and sex. These are two terms that are often used synonymously— despite being vastly different from one another in definition and in nature— that it’s funny when people become offended over the realization that gender and sex are two separate things that stand independently. And to rub salt into the wound, there used to be very little distinctions made between the different descriptors for how LGBTQ+ people identified themselves on the spectrum. Minkowitz fell victim to these ideals at the time, which led to more of her conjectures about Teena: becoming trans was a way of living a relatively heterosexual life with the body that he was not given. 

Lastly, the law seemed to reflect these transphobic notions, which— again, like with culture— helped Minkowitz’s appeal to cast Teena as a victim of society’s keen eye and authority. The police department of Falls City did nothing to shield Teena from the discrimination that would come his way after they revealed his birth sex, all because of a petty forgery charge. If that wasn’t already bad enough as it is, after Teena’s rape, the police refused to arrest the perpetrators for reasons that would not hold up on court. There is only one common denominator from these three aforementioned themes that has muffled Teena’s voice after his death; assumptions about other people is what leads us into the trap of seeing them the way we’ve been told to do so by our upbringing.

The actions of Minkowitz sheds light on the weight of our biases guiding the way we think and act. Take for example the murderers of Teena and Minkowitz, they were all motivated by the underlying ideas they had of LGBTQ+ people which led to their failure to regard this population as people same as them, only with different ideals. However, that’s not to say that they are the same, far from it. They are dissimilar by a giant leap— a misinformed article is nothing next to the murder of a human being— but it’s also undeniable that they have caused significant negative effects to the people around them. Mainly, it was Minkowitz’s own prejudices that allowed the story of Brandon Teena to take the path it did, rather than the narratives of those who knew him. Now, Minkowitz offers the option of living in a world where we tell the stories of others the way they want to be remembered, far from the illusions that fog our rose-tinted lens.

[sodomyordeath]

How I Broke, and Botched, the Brandon Teena Story

The original writer of the Village Voice story that inspired “Boys Don’t Cry” looks back on her reporting — and the huge error she still regrets

“It  proved to be the most insensitive and inaccurate piece of journalism I have ever written.For years, I have wanted to apologize for what I now understand, with some shame, was the article’s implicit anti-trans framing.

 Without spelling it out, the article cast Brandon as a lesbian who hated “her” body because of prior experiences of childhood sexual abuse and rape. (One of Brandon’s acquaintances had told me he’d said he was “disgusted by lesbians,” and several friends said Brandon had said, “I can’t be with a woman as a woman. That’s gross.”)

I saw this youngster’s decision to lead a life as a straight man as incredibly bold — but also assumed it was a choice made in fear, motivated by internalized homophobia.

At the time, I was extremely ignorant about trans people. Like many other cis queer people at the time, I didn’t know that there were gay trans men, trans lesbians, bisexual trans folks, that being trans had nothing to do with whether you were straight or gay, and that trans activism was not, as some of us feared, an effort to stave off queerness and lead “easier,” more conventional heterosexual lives.“ -  Donna Minkowitz

It’s never too late to admit you fucked up.

[thetarotman]

7th Annual New York Rainbow Book Fair...

7th Annual New York Rainbow Book Fair…

Yesterday, Saturday, April 18, 2015, I had the opportunity, honor and pleasure of attending the 7th Annual New York Rainbow Fair, which is touted as “The Premier LGBT Book Event in the U. S.”

I was in sheer heaven!  Remember, I AM a certified bibliophile, and when I look at some of these photographs on the Internet showcasing some of the most GORGEOUS Libraries on the Planet, I experience…

View On WordPress

[rkb]

New York reading tomorrow night with Slash Coleman, Sweta Vikram and Donna Minkowitz

Tomorrow night, November 26th, I'm reading at Loft 227; all the details are on Facebook and Slash's site and below. I'll have copies of The Big Book of Orgasms, which I'll be reading from, and a few other books to sell, and postcards and bookmarks to give out. November 26, 7 p.m. Loft 227, 227 W 29th Street Suite 4F, NYC Literary Mischief w/ Slash Coleman: Season 1 Show 5 New York, NY (NYC) - 11/26 Hashtag: #MissLit Slash Coleman (PBS producer and author of “The Bohemian Love Diaries”) hosts an evening of inspired literary mischief with three of New York City's most eclectic authors: Sweta Vikram, Donna Minkowitz & Rachel Kramer Bussel presenting stories from their latest books, compelling, offbeat interviews with the writers with time to spare for Q&A and stimulating conversation.

[jewishbookworld]

Donna Minkowitz was raised in Brooklyn, one of three sisters in a working-class, intellectual, largely secular family. In Growing Up Golem, she recalls her childhood, her career as a lesbian radical journalist at the Village Voice, her difficult love life, and the debilitating illness that derailed her professionally. And she does it using the conceit that instead of giving birth to her, her mother—who told the entire family she could do powerful magic from the Kabbalah—actually created her as her own personal golem.