The community is finding itself in the spotlight after it came together to send a message to the anonymous neighbor who mutilated and killed Angelina's cat after sending hateful transphobic messages.
They don't know who it is, so they can't handle things through the legal system. Instead, they decided to be perfectly petty and we're here for it.
They knew the cat murderer hated rainbow flags, so Angelina and her community came together and painted her entire house in bright rainbow colors.
Angelina says the harassment began in 2017 when she received the first of several threatening letters. She had recently put a pride flag up under her American flag and the letter writer was not a fan.
That letter was just the beginning. Angelina called the harassment "unrelenting" over the years, but could never have predicted how far the neighbor would go. She found out just what they were capable of in a horrifying way.
While in her garden one day she discovered the remains of her beloved cat, Rambo. To be more specific, Angelina discovered some of Rambo's remains.
The neighbor had murdered him, chopped him in half, and placed the back half of his body in her garden. If there had been any doubt about who did it, the transphobe took credit for the cruel murder.
RIP Rambo.
Now This / Youtube Screenshot
Police were contacted and Angelina has been working with them by reporting each incident and providing all the evidence she can. Mail has been taken for tracing, Rambo's body was examined, etc.
Rambo was murdered in the summer of 2019, but authorities have not been able to make any arrests.
Angelina took her time grieving, but it wasn't long before she decided she needed to fight back somehow. She didn't like feeling helpless and the police were handling things on their end.
She had already taken steps to make sure she was safe, but she also wanted this neighbor to know she wasn't afraid or ashamed. Angelina needed to send a message.
But how?
It was a rainbow flag that initially irritated the neighbor enough to start sending the letters. So she decided to just turn the rainbow up to full blast.
"You hate rainbows, transphobe? You're gonna get ALL the rainbow!" ~ Angelina, probably.
Angelina didn't want to just make a statement for herself, though. She wanted to speak as a community, so she invited neighbors to paint the house with her.
We don't just mean her next door neighbors.
We mean Angelina invited basically the whole neighborhood. If you're going to make a statement like this, you go big.
She created a Facebook event and put flyers up around town to let people know what she was doing and why. Painting the biggest, brightest rainbow possible was a peaceful solution that's also just a smidge petty.
So obviously people LOVED THIS IDEA.
A local hardware store got wind of the event and donated all of the paint Angelina would need to paint not just the house, but also the fence and pretty much anything else she wanted to cover in color. On the day of the event, she expected maybe 50 people counting herself and her friends.
That's not what happened.
Instead, hundreds of people showed up. They brought out grills, chairs, music and more.
The community turned it into a painting picnic party to show support for Angelina. At the end of the day, they had the house covered in color.
This has to be the prettiest proverbial "eff off" ever.
Now This / YouTube Screenshot
Check out this YouTube video about it.
Angelina's story started making the rounds on Twitter.
A neighbor sent her anonymous threatening letters for 3 years and then murdered her cat by chopping it in half. And… https://t.co/ZnZeuyFVQ5— Katelyn Burns (@Katelyn Burns) 1580306143
@nowthisnews If someone tortures and kills an animal, their issues go far, far, far deeper than bigotry, transphobi… https://t.co/s0aYxDF6Ra— ClickitCricketHarley (@ClickitCricketHarley) 1579819134
@LilithLovett Some sick people just need an "excuse" to do horrific things to pets.— Guy Fieri Stan account #1776 (@Guy Fieri Stan account #1776) 1580330350
@maagdalene17 @nowthisnews I have ZERO fear. If they killed me they’d only make my voice stronger and louder.— Angie V. (@Angie V.) 1579854442
Angelina and her community are determined not to let hate win.
If you or someone you know is experiencing harassment, please take the proper steps to make sure everyone is safe before creating any fabulous response.
Kaitlin has had people yell at her, disagree with her, mock her, attempt to educate her, straight up walk away....
This guy, though... this newly-crowned internet legend... he fought back against Kaitlin's ignorance in the most beautifully college way possible.
By harnessing the power of apathy.
His "meh" attitude leaves her with nothing to work with for her interview and the internet loves it.
Bennett begins the interview by asking the young man's opinion on adding urinals to women's bathrooms. He tells her he doesn't care. She presses for a yes or no. He, again, doesn't care.
Bennet asks his opinions on putting menstrual products in men's rooms. Interviewee still doesn't care. He goes on to not care about pretty much everything else she asks him. We don't know if he legitimately doesn't care or if he just outright refuses to give her the transphobic soundbite we she was clearly digging for.
Either way, his apathy was a thing of beauty that totally stonewalled Ms. Bennet. As we mentioned before, the video is quite popular online, but we can't figure out why Ms. Bennet would release it as it makes her look, shall we say, not good.
You read that correctly.The young man didn't release the video,
Bennet did. She must not have had a lot of successful interviews to share if she opted to release this nothingness.
Whatever her reasoning, Twitter is oh so very glad she did.
Enjoy the minute of cringe.
Oh comments, you never cease to amaze us.
@LilithLovett I’m confused about what her actual position is? If she’s criticizing the idea of putting tampon machi… https://t.co/yVgOcwzuEb— (ty) (@(ty)) 1578782511
@LilithLovett Wish someone would have told her that feminine hygiene products make great first aid supplies in the… https://t.co/dQniIBq738— Widget & Gizmo 🌈 (@Widget & Gizmo 🌈) 1578857148
@LilithLovett It's hilarious when extremist realize normal people aren't concerned with controlling what other people do with their bodies.— 90$babe (@90$babe) 1578785596
@rogertansey @LilithLovett I suspect she wants to give supporters an idea of the apparent insanity of openness of i… https://t.co/bP253NHziy— This Hobbit (@This Hobbit) 1578903775
@LilithLovett Not surprisingly this confused cave dweller thinks its outrageous to have tampons in mens toilets but… https://t.co/4wpZFGyXZE— tom maccoy (@tom maccoy) 1578913290
@LilithLovett She tried so hard to bait this guy into saying something controversial. He didn't fall for it.— Sotheary (@Sotheary) 1578924933
There are more of Kaitlin's "interviews" and pretty much none of them go well. If the comments are to be believed, Kaitlin graduated years ago and has just stuck around campus harassing and "interviewing" people for Infowars and other far-right outlets.
This has earned her quite a bit of ire from the current student body.
Isn't there a gun range somewhere that she can hang out at?
The book Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Trans (But Were Afraid to Ask) is available here.
Put slightly differently, Drag Queen Amrou Al-Kadhi was NOT about to patiently sit through Spiked magazine Editor Brendan O'Neill's unceasing refusal to humbly accept another person's preferred pronoun.
The debate comes on the heels of a recent announcement by the American Dialect Society.
They named the singular "They" pronoun the word of the decade, no doubt a nod to some great strides—albeit with WAY more work to go—made in that time by the Trans community, as people aim to be recognized as the person they are.
The 2019 Word of the Year is “(my) pronouns,” and the Word of the Decade is gender-neutral singular "they." #woty19 https://t.co/PsjtkEkfUh— American Dialect Society (@American Dialect Society) 1578100537
Much of the ensuing debate amounted to a repetitive back and forth as O'Neill would not give an inch to Al-Kadhi's arguments.
The drag queen kicked off the discussion by asking O'Neill why he "throws tantrums like an insecure child" when trans people ask to be called a simple pronoun.
O'Neill, after calling 'they' a "quirk of the English language," returned:
"I am very worried about the creation of this elitist new language, with words like "they," "cisgender," "nonbinary," "heteronormative."
"[Those words] are used by a new elite to signal that they are good people, that they are a part of the 'in-club."
With no hesitation whatsoever, Al-Kadhi fired back.
"Trans people are not a movement, as you say. They're not an ideology. They're not a belief system."
"Trans people are merely people trying to live their lives who don't, for whatever reason, fit into whatever binary."
Al-Kadhi made this similar point throughout the debate, reminding everyone how problematic it is that a trans person's existence is regularly moved from declared fact to debatable opinion.
Check out the entire debate for yourself below.
Shortly after the debate, Al-Kadhi posted the interview to twitter with a further take on the whole thing.
Here’s the full @SkyNews feature where I challenge professional troll Brendan O’Neil on his idiotic claims that res… https://t.co/93ntCQGTo5— Amrou Al-Kadhi 🦄 (@Amrou Al-Kadhi 🦄) 1578575266
The activist's twitter followers were all in.
@Glamrou Just sent this to my mum to illustrate why we all need to be on board with trans rights and respecting pro… https://t.co/xsU4IDIAOv— Rainbow Dark (@Rainbow Dark) 1578664128
@Glamrou @SkyNews Your eye rolls are everything! Proud of you going on and speaking up so powerfully 💛✊🏻— Jeffrey Ingold (@Jeffrey Ingold) 1578591685
@Glamrou @SkyNews Brendan: you are using elitist terms Also Brendan: Orwellian!— FatGayFriend (@FatGayFriend) 1578576390
Keep speaking up and wigging out Amrou Al-Kadhi!
