JD was the alias given to the Latina Butch who was severely beaten and gang raped by a group of men in boys in Richmond, California in late 2008.


FOR JD

I

Those men and boys came to take
What was not theirs to take.
They came to maim and inflict pain as a way to to claim what was not theirs to claim.

Don’t tell me two of them are “only boys,”
When boys are chosen by dictatorships
who know they make the most willing
rapist and killing machines.

Don’t tell me they must have had terrible,
Abused childhoods, to be so cruel,
So deliberately evil.
If that were true, most women and girls
would be rapists and serial killers.

They understand what they have done
Because they would never want to done to them.
No, don’t take the blame away from them.
Instead of patronizing them,
give them the respect they deserve,
to be held accountable.
Let them pay in every way for their crime.

Let them see what comes from
committing such atrocity.
This could not be the first time
they worked together to inflict
so much terror, cruelty, brutality.

Let their punishment be a warning to all others --

Leave Lesbians alone.

Make it be that they are not continuing,
That she doesn’t every day
have to steady herself like steel,
in case she suddenly just sees them.
Make it be that they can’t continue until
They finally kill (if they haven’t already).

Give their victim a bit of justice.
It will not heal her, but it has to help.
They did not just try to damage her body –
They wanted to destroy her soul.
They tried to kill the Lesbian in her.
They so much don’t want us to survive
In heart, spirit, and mind.
If they thought they would pay no price,
They wouldn’t stop at rape, torture,
Humiliation, and terror.

There is no excuse for such abuse.
No reason at all for doing such a thing,
For hating Lesbians that much.

They don’t want us to be Lesbians
-- so they are the other choice?

II

What a choice –
To be willingly with those men,
Like their girlfriends are,
Or to be a Lesbian.

They choose to be pure evil,
While she chooses to love another woman.
Love, what a crime.

There are them --
And then, there are the Lesbians.
Strangers who come to help,
Who send her their love,
Who understand too well,
Lesbians who want to protect and heal her,
A whole community of Lesbians who think
of her and send support.
We cannot heal her, but it has to help.
I have never seen such a response of so
much love sent to a Lesbian victim of hate.
I have never seen such a wider community response,
from so many kinds of people.
After almost 40 years in a Lesbian community,
where the outside world mostly hated us
and gave more support to the rapist than victim.
So often it’s been Lesbians who support so many others.
But now it is changing.
I saw it that night,
in so many kinds of faces lit by candlelight.
Old amazon warriors from decades ago,
New friends I’d only seen dancing wildly,
And all the others who were not Lesbians.

It warmed my heart.
I hope it is warming hers.
Bev Jo

January, 2009