Feeling a Little Hopeful At Last

Crossposted on Pam's House Blend

Before I begin, please read these older blogs I wrote in January for some background on my ongoing legal drama.

Consider Me Reminded
Giving Up Is Sometimes Survival

Now, after I had written both of those, I found out at my preliminary hearing I was in fact by LAW in Canada, NOT allowed to enter a Guilty plea if I did not believe I was in any way guilty of the crime I was charged with. After telling the Duty Counsel and the Justice Of The Peace my story and why I was pleading guilty, they informed me that by admitting that I did not feel I actually WAS guilty they refused to accept my plea. They understood why I wanted to, but assured me that Jail Time was NEVER a likely sentence for a minor shoplifting offense and that it would be tantamount to lying under oath. In tears I plead Not Guilty at the reccommendation of a judge and an agent of the crown whose job it was to prosecute criminals.

So yesterday, August 19th, was my trial date. I was apprehensive. My treatment at the Port Coquitlam court in January had not left me feeling terribly reassured in the fairness of the Legal System, and I had still been unable to re-locate my witnesses from the Safeway Parking lot.

And then the Judge called me Miss. He made it a point to clarify with me what titles and pronouns were appropriate for me, and on the rare occasion he fucked up a pronoun he caught himself and immediately apologised. While he did at times seem a little condescending in his need to explain every single procedure to me, he was otherwise bending over backwards to be accepting and supportive.

That alone gave me hope. But that's not all.

Only one of the security gaurds involved in the original incident in June of 09 showed up. The one who made the transphobic statements didn't attend, and the one who did had gone out of his way to exclude any mention of him from his official report.

And the gentleman who DID show up stumbled badly. He had trouble remembering details without his notes. He fumbled badly at EVERY turn. And I caught him in BLATANT lies that even the Judge scolded him for. Among the biggest lies was, when asked by the crown about my emotional state, he claimed I was neither emotional nor upset nor crying, but he felt I was angry and wanted to hurt him.

There was just one problem with that claim. And when it came time for me to cross-examine him with my own questions, (I can't afford a lawyer nor do petty shoplifting offenses qualify for legal aid), I nailed him with his own evidence.



This is the photo the LPO took the day of the false arrest. It was submitted into evidence months before the trial. Holding my copy of it, I asked Iyer, the LPO, to confirm his contention that I was neither crying nor emotional but simply angry I'd been "caught". He stuck to his story.

So I asked the Judge to look at my eyes in the photo and tell me what he saw.



The Judge said he saw, as this close-up shows, "Red puffy eyes, clear evidence of recent or current crying, and tears visible on my cheek. As it's a scan of a photocopy of a print-out the tears may not be fully visible here, but the Judge saw them clearly enough on his copy.

When the Judge asked him to explain why his own photographic evidence contradicted his memory of events, Iyer was at a loss, and hung his head mumbling a vague excuse about not remembering.

The trial ran long and the Court neared closing time, so I unfortunately had to have an adjournment until October, the earliest possible date in which the Crown Prosecutor could be free to resume trying my case. So sadly the ordeal isn't over yet.

However while I'm not going to jinx anything by saying this might be a slam-dunk, I AM very hopeful right now for a number of reasons.

- Iyer was caught in enough inconsistancies and outright lies that even the Judge scolded him.

- Despite my best efforts to maintain my composure while explaining my juvey rapes to the court as my reason for going out of my way to NOT break the law as I would rather die than go through that ever again, the Judge could see the tears and emotion I was fighting to NOT show and expressed sensitivity and understanding to it.

- The Crown, whose job it is to prosecute and convict me, when going over the adjournment with me and asking me about my dumpster-diving for restaurant leftovers, expressed far more concern about whether there were aid resources I could look into to survive better than garbage food than about any details of the case.

Get that last one folks? The GUY WHOSE JOB IT IS TO CONVICT ME was more concerned about my health and living situation than about discussing the actual trial.

As I said, I won't jinx anything by garaunteeing an outcome, but I feel very hopeful right now. Things SEEM to be leaning in my favour. And it gives me hope that there are places in the legal system where a trans/is woman like me can and will be respected, treated kindly, and taken seriously.

And hope is a very wonderful feeling. And I feel it so rarely that I need to share it. I hope that the hope I'm feeling right now might creep into the hearts of all my Trans Sisters and brothers. Hope that sometimes, people in Authority ARE capable of accepting and respecting us, and sometimes, just sometimes, the truth actually matters when it comes to our lives.

I'd rather share hope than misery. So the buffet is open brothers and sisters! Help yourselves! And wish me luck come October that this thing will finally end and I can move on with my life.

A Debate Precaution (UPDATED)

UPDATE - Mantronikk, after being caught in a bald-faced lie even he couldn't weasel out of, has deleted the blog entry that mocked me as fleeing from the debate accompanied by a picture of Jabba the Hutt altogether rather than have his lie publicly viewable. He had claimed in the blog that he had deleted my last 5 comments to his blog because, and ONLY because, I refused to answer his scathing decisive question, which is a lie to begin with, but I can prove with screenshots and the publuc record on 4 different blogs that when I gave up on him ever GROWING up and apologising for juvenile comments, I answered his question as a consolation prize for his so badly losing the debate. Rather than have a lie he can't lie his way out of be public, the entire entry is now gone. I win yet again!

Self-Proclaimed Hetero-Separatist blogger mantronikk, the man who tried to convince me to stop defending marriage equality in the comments over on Luois J Marinelli's blog about NOM's summer tour with THIS charming example of disconnection from reality...

mantronikk said...

Shaman of Hedon, I have a question for you concerning homosexual "marriage." How would you feel if you bought an expensive ticket to an IMAX movie and, after you were seated, you saw a person get up and let their friend into the theater via the exit door, and the two sat down next to you and began talking loudly on their cell phones after the movie began?
July 18, 2010 12:32 AM

... has openly challenged me to a public debate on his own blog. This could be fun since he's among the more extreme and openly hateful wingnuts I've ever read. Just a brief scan of his blog reveals the usual bullying lies and blatant distortions of facts I've come to expect from his type, and more openly aggressive and hateful than some. Why he'd challenge me when I've already once publicly dissected his dubious grip on reality and gotten him laughed at and mocked by others doing so is beyond me, but I took him up on his offer.

I WAS going to copy/paste the text of my first comment on his blog here to make sure he doesn't try and pull a fast one by editing, altering or outright deleting my comment and then claiming it's what I posted or that I didn't accept his challenge, which I can clearly envision him doing, but as I'm running on 34 hours without sleep, I admittedly fucked up and copied his blog url for the link above BEFORE I remembered to paste my comment text here, and it's already in holding awaiting his approval on his blog so I can copy it again. My fuck-up, I admit it. So we'll just have to hope he has the integrity to allow my comment through unaltered, as if he does alter it I can't prove such, and if he disallows it to claim I never met his challenge I have only my own word otherwise.

While I'd like to think given my proven history of being terminally honest and having a high level of integrity would speak for itself, I know full well that other bigots who WANT to believe him simply will, and use this to prove I'm too cowardly to meet his challenge.

If however, he has not put through my unedited comment by tomorrow evening, I'll comment AGAIN, and THIS time I'll immediately remember to copy/paste whatever I comment unedited as a comment on THIS VERY BLOG POST. Hopefully, despite his propensity for hateful speech, lying, and relying on known anti-gay liars for his facts, (he links to Peter LaBarbera's site as proof that preachers will be arrested if gays get equality for fuck's sake!), that he will, since HE laid down the challenge, have the honesty and integrity to post my comments unedited.

We shall see.

UPDATE!

Manntronik, despite his version of events, has forfeited the debate completely and has left absolutely NO doubt about what a cowardly lying idiot he is. See his latest blog entry wherein he publicly admits to censoring me for a bullshit reason and uses a picture of Jabba the Hutt to signify that *GAPS!!!* I'm fat. Also, trees have bark, water is wet, ice is cold, and Manntronik is a complete idiot. Oh, and just in case he actually grows enough of a brain long enough to realize how badly he fucked his own ass posting that blog entry and removes it so he can claim he never censored me et al, here's a lovely screenshot for you all!



So let's review here. Manntronik, after already proving his grasp of reality is tenuous at best with his ridiculous movie theatre anaology, challenges me to a debate on HIS blog. Why? For the very reason I made THIS blog; because on HIS blog he can censor me in his favor. On THIS blog he can't delete anything I say he can't outwit or twist.

Then he proves he has no intention of having a mature adult debate by posting this blog entry,



... insulting me in a childish homophobic way before we've even gotten started.

As you can see in the comments below, he came here to get even more insulting while trying to act all mature and beleagred on his own blog. I made it crystal clear that the debate was only on hold until he apologised for being juvenile, and that once he had we could happily continue. He tried, and very clearly failed, to twist things into him being the victim of my hateful homo bullying, and said that I was making excuses to run away because I couldn't beat him and was all butthurt because of his little insults.

Well let's review. HE couldn't answer anything I posed to him and acted like a teenager. For the record, his insults themselves barely phase me. I've heard MUCH worse. I wanted an apology because HE was the one who issued the challenge, HE should have the balls to be the mature adult he claims to be.

HE refused repeatedly to apologise, holding the debate hostage and trying to control it. He was bullying me, refusing to apologise unless I answered one of his badly thought out twist questions first. You know, the questions haters come up with designed to sound rational but carefully worded so that they can dismiss your answer as not answering the question honestly even when you do so. By holding the debating hostage and trying to force conditions onto the apology, he proved he's the one doing the bullying and FURTHER proved he had ZERO interest in a real debate, as I suspected from the beginning.

Finally, by censoring my last few comments which said that very thing, he tried to twist it into me being some crazy dyke hater stalking him, the poor victimized homo-hating bully.



See what he did there folks? After deleting comments wherein I clearly said I would stop talking to him IF he refused one last time to grow up and apologise, and by leaving the extended bullying and hate here on my blog while limiting it on his blog to one wordplay insult which he now claims was retaliatory brilliance to deflate my crushing ego, and generally lies through his teeth to play the intellectual victim.

I dare any of you to go read his manifesto and not laugh your ass off at his insistance that there's NO homophobia or hate or bigotry in it.

The debate, if you can even call it that, is done. And Manntronik can blame whoever he likes but the facts prove he's the one who killed it, really before it even began. So he's welcome to twist things however he needs to so he can feel like he won, but all he's accomplished is proving he's just another dishonest bullying lying even to himself spreading hatred and bigotry and lies and distortions trying to justify keeping GLBT folks second class AT BEST.

Shemale of Heroin 1, LittleBoyTronik 0.