While the LGBT community waits to see if MMA fighter and self-proclaimed 'advocate for the LGBT' Tamikka Brents will respond to So So Gay's repeated requests that she publicly repudiate the transphobia of her fans, some of those fans have decided to attack me, the magazine's Deputy Editor, for holding her accountable - and they include a self-styled 'gay advocate' with a conviction for possessing and promoting child pornography.
That's what I discovered yesterday morning, when contacts in the trans community informed me of a blog written by one Nelson Garcia. Garcia accuses me and 'many trans activists' of already deciding who 'is the favorite to win' the upcoming fight between Brents and trans MMA competitor Fallon Fox, misgenders me as 'a heterosexual man who thinks he's lesbian' throughout the piece, and also criticises as 'nonsensical' a poem which I wrote about Brents:
Mr Garcia's literary criticism would carry more weight were he critiquing the correct poem, however. Garcia quotes me making a reference to Peter Parker in the Brents poem - a reference I never made. I did, however, make reference to Peter Parker as one of a list of fictional reporters to whom I unfavourably compared Caleb Hannan, a journalist who wrote a sensationalist Grantland article about a trans woman who later committed suicide, in this poem:
It turns out, though, that failure to distinguish between two different YouTube videos is not the biggest flaw in Mr Garcia's character. The same source who informed me of Mr Garcia's blog about me also informed me that he appears to be the same Nelson Garcia who was convicted on a charge of 'promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child less than 16 years of age' in 2003.
A press release from the Bronx District Attorney's Office reports Garcia's arrest. The annual report(PDF) of the same DA's office confirms that he pleaded guilty to the charges, and was sentenced to one year's incarceration without the possibility of early release (page 26), and notes that 'he is required to register with the New York State Sex Offender Registry as a Level 1 Sex Offender'. And posts on both The Bilerico Project and the defunct (and somewhat over-zealous, it has to be said) anti-paedophile site Evil Unveiled confirm that Garcia the activist and Garcia the offender are one and the same person.
Here, and at So So Gay, I've repeatedly asked whether or not Tamikka Brents will publicly disavow the transphobic groups and individuals who have cynically thrown their support behind her merely because, on 13 September, she will fight an opponent who happens to be trans. Repeatedly, Ms Brents has refused to comment. But how happy is she with her latest supporter? Accepting the support of transphobes is one thing: accepting the support of paedophiles is quite another. So, once again, I ask the question: Ms Brents, is there any support you won't accept?
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