Behold! A Spectacle
all those historical revisionists got it wrong / stonewall was a parade / procession of contagious breath / illicit ceremony of rubber clubs & handcuffs / grinding on dance floors / built on smashed glass / own this history / girl / tuck this inheritance / into your heels / wear each queen’s split skull / like a crown / remember this / when you walk home alone / afraid of men who name you / pretty thing / praying they don’t come closer / you can already imagine them / draping your majestic body across the pavement / bleeding disco lights & spilling all over / each fist raised in celebration / full of so much party / laughing / cheering you on / to your own funeral march
On Using the Trans Panic Defense
“He said they began fighting when he discovered that she had a penis ,” Emilie Fe Delos Santos, the prosecutor in the case, said by phone from Olongapo City, about 80 miles north of Manila. In his testimony Corporal Pemberton said that he pushed Ms. Laude, she slapped him, he punched her then he choked her with an arm lock until she was no longer moving. He also testified that Ms. Laude was still breathing but appeared to be unconscious after being put into the arm lock. He said he then brought her to the bathroom to try to revive her and left her slumped over the toilet. He said he then took a taxi back to his ship, where he told a fellow Marine, “I left her unconscious ” “Pemberton did not kill Laude,” Corporal Pemberton’s lawyer, Rowena L. Garcia-Flores, wrote in an email on Monday. “He left Laude in the toilet alive ” Ms. Garcia-Flores said that Corporal Pemberton had no criminal record and had never been in a fight before his altercation with Ms. Laude. She said that he acted to defend his honor when he discovered that Ms. Laude had a penis but that other factors led to the altercation, including his fear of being scammed “He was a victim of the fraud committed by a sex worker” who was older than him, she said in the email. “Pemberton testified, ‘I felt like I was raped by Laude,’ ” she wrote in a subsequent email. “He was repulsed felt violated and angry that he would not have agreed to have sex with him if he knew he was a man.” “It is a major admission that he performed an arm lock on Jennifer until she stopped moving ,” said Harry Roque, a private lawyer who is helping Ms. Laude’s family. If Corporal Pemberton is convicted of murder he faces 40 years in prison, Mr. Roque said. If his lawyers can persuade the judge that there were complicating circumstances, like self-defense or deception regarding the victim’s gender , the court could lower the charge to homicide which is punishable by 12 to 20 years. In the Philippines, there are no jury trials, and cases are decided by a judge The case against Corporal Pemberton has complicated diplomatic relations between the United States and the Philippines. The countries entered into a military agreement last year that would bring thousands of United States service members, as well as ships, planes and equipment, to the Philippines on a rotating basis. The agreement is in limbo while the Philippine Supreme Court considers several cases that claim it is unconstitutional —
