Kate Lamothe, (formerly known as Patty Lamothe) WAS JUST GENDER-BASHED AT THE CORNER OF MAIN AND DULUTH, MONTREAL, 4:10pm Monday, Jun 25 2007.Here's her story, in her words...
So following a tradition put forth by millions of queer folk worldwide, but most recent in my mind is that of on of Ivan E. Coyote's stories in hir book "loose ends," I am going public with my story of being gender-bashed right in broad daylight, in the street! Here's how it unfolded: So I was coming out of Seagall's epicerie...
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and walking to where I had locked my bike up when all of a sudden this really, super cute guy/girl couple walked by me on the left hand side...as we walked by each other there was mutual checking out going on, and as they were to the left of me, well naturally my head was turned all the way around to the left! The guy and I even exchanged smiles! As I was turning my head back to the centre...almost at my bike I was punched in the nose/lip area of my face and I dropped to the ground! It was exactly the feeling of fainting, in the sense that I was standing up and then all of a sudden I was lying on the ground with almost nothing in between that reminded me of how I got somethere! Well tha lasted about 2 seconds before I wiped my hand across my face and realized I was bleeding! I stood up and there was a guy with a clenched fist standing 1 foot away from me! I immediately started screaming at him as to "Why he had done that?" But he kept denying it...saying that I had merely bumped into him! I again wiped my hand with my own blood, showed it to him and said something along the lines of "Then why the fuck do I have blood coming from the inside of my nose??" He just kept shaking his fist, clenched extremely tight and saying "You fell You fell!" Meanwhile, the couple had come back over and started defending my side of the story, as well as one of the workers of the adult cinema who had been taking a smoke break outside and witnessed the entire thing. I just kept screaming at him, at this point almost in tears "Why the fuck would you do something like that?" And all he kept doing was denying it! So here it is: I got gender-bashed on June 25th, 2007 at 3:00pm at the corner of St. Laurent and Duluth....there were about 20 people around us when we started yelling at each other...but 3 people who confirmed that they had definitely seen him punch me! But he ran away before I could call the police or something....not that I have much faith in the popo because really they would just ask for my legal name, etc etc and most likely not file the case because of my being a tranny! It definitely confirmed two things in me though that I had been arguing theoretically before but now am living proof of...regardless of whether the general public perceives me as a man or a woman....I am indeed ALWAYS IDed as QUEER! And whenever some bitchy straight person asks me why we feel the need to have our own spaces (ie cafes. bars, community neighbourhoods) I will respond with this example! Here's to making the world a safer place for queer & trans-folk! xoxo Patty -----
1 comment:
Lina it took me all the way until the transgendered part to realize you didn't write this. It's still sad.
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