Good Evening, Kossacks!
Today, Sunday May 17th 2009, as some of you may know, is the *5th Annual International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia* (IDAHO). This day is a time to reflect on the struggles of people who have dealt with homophobia, and also hold a dialogue about what can be done to stop homophobia. Yesterday, I wrote a Diary Here, which shows a bit of history about the day, and I and displayed some facts about the problems involving homophobia. For today's diary, I wanted to share some news about the day (including a story of some internet hackers), and why this day is important to me and others. Follow me below to learn more about some hackers who tried to disrupt one of the Day's major online venues, and ideas for how we can create a better future...
Update ~ The social networking website Gays.com just published their Video Awareness Project on Youtube (as I discuss below). You can find it below in my diary, or by clicking Here for Youtube :o)
First, Some Pictures That Speak to the Spirit of the International Day Against Homophobia ~
Second, the news about the internet hackers. Yesterday, a couple of major LGBTQ websites (i.e., Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer websites), were disabled by a series of well-coordinated Distributed Denial of Service Attacks. This news comes from the Joe.My.God Blog, and Gays.com. The websites that were disabled - included the WashingtonBlade and Gays.com. The attacks against these popular sites apparently emanated from Eastern Europe (although, it's tough to know all the details since that is merely where the attack originated). The organizers at Gays.com explain more ~
*On 05.15.2009, the Social network site Gays.com today announced that it experienced a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that began at approximately 7.10am Hong Kong Time on May 15, 2009, causing the entire website to be inaccessible.
A distributed denial of service attack occurs when a multitude of systems attempt to flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system with illegitimate website requests. The flood of traffic by these requests cause the Internet bandwidth of the attacked site to be consumed to such an extent that the website is inaccessible to other legitimate users.
Said Kenneth Tan, spokesperson for Gays.com, "It is by no means a coincidence that this DDoS attack on Gays.com came today. We have been working for weeks on a high profile video campaign called 'Take Up the IDAHO Challenge' together with the Committee for the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. The final product of this campaign, a public awareness video, was going to be launched on the campaign site at http://gays.com/... on Sunday. This is a well-timed, well-orchestrated assault by a large botnet with tens of thousands of PCs sending requests to our site. Engineers with our Internet Service Provider remarked they have never seen an attack of this intensity before. We deplore these unscrupulous actions by an organised group to harrass, intimidate and silence us for what we are doing.".
Regardless of this attack against Gays.com, the online group (Gays.com) has just published their Public Awareness Video Project on their Youtube Channel Here. I've just posted their video below. I will also post another diary about the International Day Against Homophobia tomorrow here after 12 noon (if the DailyKos site allows). Please share this video with friends, family and Facebook!
It's attacks like those described above that remind me of some of the jerks I dealt with when I was in high school. As a gay person myself, I've had to deal with both the homophobia of my family, and that of my classmates. School was perhaps the worst though because it was a time when I didn't know how to respond or what to do. I don't want to bore you all with all the details of my life, but one event stands out. There was this one kid (let's call him Tom, for anonymity's sake) who used to be in several of my classes. Tom would throw things at me in class, call me faggot, harass me and other things like that. It was really, really frustrating because the teachers didn't do anything to stop it, and I felt powerless to stop him. I eventually got into a shouting match with him before a teacher intervened and told us to stop. That day continues to haunt me, but I was glad that I finally spoke up and said something to him. I was lucky though because I survived. Not everyone does. For me, homophobic bullying is like slow torture. It grates on you day in and day out, and there's few options because sexuality is such a private matter. Homophobia is so destructive to the mind and the classroom.
So I want to leave you with some ideas on what we can do to work towards a better future, and I want to show you a quick video of what Gays.com is doing to foster more visibility and understanding of LGBTQ people. Here are a few ideas that I came up with, but I'd also like to hear yours too. For one, just talk to your friends and family about why you oppose homophobia. Just talking can do a lot. Another idea is - send a link to this diary to five of your friends, and ask them to send it to another 5 friends. That's what's great about e-mail - it can help a movement to really take off. That's it for me, so please share your ideas below, and I'll be writing again tomorrow after 12 noon. Thanks!