Petite But Ornery Girls Gone Buck Wild

In case you missed the story on Saturday, the New York Daily News reported (in language that has already gained email-forwarded notoriety) that "A gang of petite but ornery lesbians pummeled and stabbed a DVD bootlegger in the West Village early yesterday after he tried to pick up one of the women - and then spat on her when she rebuffed his advances, police and witnesses said."

(someone at the NYDN named this image file LESBIAN2.jpg, by the way)
That coverage of the 2 a.m. beatdown (featuring the quasi-racist hed "Girls gone wilding" and the lesbo-sensationalist deck "Lesbians locked up in W. Village beating") was, believe it or not, more fair and balanced than the NYT coverage, which failed to even mention that the women (and independent witnesses) claimed the man was commiting a hate crime against them, or even that they were openly lesbian and had just argued with him about it.

The Times headline indicates its bias immediately; "Man Is Stabbed in Attack After Admiring a Stranger."

It all began harmlessly, the victim, a 28-year-old man from Queens said, with a comment he made to a woman who walked past him early yesterday on a Manhattan sidewalk.

But things quickly escalated into an ugly and ultimately violent confrontation that led to the man, Dwayne Buckle, being stabbed in his abdomen with a steak knife, and to the arrests of seven women, ranging in age from 18 to 31 who are accused in the attack, the police said.

While the Times stopped short of branding these women Aileen Wuornos lesbian killers on the loose (and black!), the subtext was not subtle. In fact, there were no subtleties to the Times coverage at all. A complicated situation was reduced to an innocent man attacked by hysterical women.

The NYT ended its piece with the line "“It’s not a crime to say hello to a human being,” Mr. Buckle said. “Now, I think I’ll know which girls not to talk to.”" You're damn right you will. As musician and queer activist Reginald Lamar remarked when I told him about it, "I applaud those women. As someone who faces daily street harassment, I hope that maybe a few of those motherfuckers will think twice now. I think it's just beautiful."

Lesbian blogger Alana Post was more circumspect. "I kind of feel like this is a good example of why that doesn't work. Because in general all it does is give fodder to stories that are written to make the disenfranchised party involved look awful, the bigot look like the victim, etc. Fueling increased hatred from bigots in general, who can look to the news for justification."

At least the NYDN, despite its sensationalistic reportage, gave the women a voice:

"He called us [homophobic slur] and he said he was going to f- us all," one of the women said hours later as cops led the seven suspects out of the 6th Precinct stationhouse.

"He spit on us and threw a cigarette," another woman said. "This is a hate crime."

As my friend Caroline (who has vowed to write love letters to the women when they inevitably get sent to lockdown) remarked,

I wonder what the homophobic slur was. Muffdiver? Clammhuffer? Lickalottapus? Bulldagger?

I definitely support girl gangs kicking the shit out of shitty dudes. And especially whipping them with belts.

I'm still processing how intensely fucked up the media coverage of these black lesbians defending themselves has been (especially in the context of a recent uptick of anti-gay violence in New York, with a couple high-profile violent bashings). And I've read some fucked up reactions online, too.

So much of the story is so cinematic ("Foxfire!" as Caroline said). Here is Patreece's (severely tricked out) Myspace page, and here's Terrain's.

When Buckle hit on Johnson, she explained that she wasn't interested in men. Apparently offended, he spat on her, witnesses said....

"He made the mistake of spitting at one of them. They beat him up bad with belts, kicked and punched him," said Diego Rodriguez, 60...

"She's my girl, and no one spits on my girl!" one of the women yelled during the bloody beatdown.