In ye olden times, chivalric codes were drafted in the interest of guiding the courting behavior of men toward women: "Thou shalt avoid avarice like the deadly pestilence and shalt embrace its opposite"; "Thou shalt keep thyself chaste for the sake of her whom thou lovest"; "Thou shalt not be a revealer of love affairs"; "In practising the solaces of love thou shalt not exceed the desires of thy lover."

In modern times, however, the code of chivalry has certainly evolved a bit: Thou shalt pay for her Miller Lights, before you retire to thy bed; thou shalt withdraw her chair, in preparation for her ass; thou shalt open thy lady's door, in deference to her tiny dinosaur arms; and thou shalt punch out any man who stareth at thy lady's bosom.

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, join Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I talk chivalry, and its many splendored fucked-up-ed-ness.

SADY: Why hello, milady! Allow me to open this chat for you! And also, all your many doors!

AMANDA: I demurely accept your chivalric advances. Milord.

SADY: Should you not do so, my honor would be spurned! I think it's really awesome that you wrote about this, by the way. The idea of women as just sort of cred-building vessels for a dude's Honor. As if dudes were all Klingons and had to fight over Honor all the time because of their harsh Klingon ways.

AMANDA: Right, and of course, we are meant to be flattered by all the polite attention!

SADY: Right. I mean, people object to "chivalry" all the time on the grounds that it infantilizes women. WHICH IT DOES! The idea that I can't open a door or pay for dinner or walk on the side of the street that is nearest to traffic (this is actually something someone told me once: It's the dude's duty to walk on the outside, to protect a lady from traffic-proximity and, one supposes, mud from horse-drawn carriages spattering her dainty gown) makes it seem like you think I'm a freaking toddler. But it's also a way for dudes to reduce ladies to chips in the ongoing poker game between dudes, the stakes of which are deciding Who Is The Most Manly.

AMANDA: To me, chivalry is shorthand for "How can we treat women like they're not full humans in the most seemingly complimentary way possible, so that they can not object to not being treated like humans?"

SADY: "Oh, sweetie, let me pay for dinner. Everyone knows you can't do math!"

AMANDA: And because chivalry is seen through the lens of Doing Nice Things For Women, the idea is that if we get rid of chivalry then men will treat women poorly. I've heard people argue that men punching women in the face is a consequence of the loss of chivalry! Feminism causes men to hit women, essentially. But people who further these awesome theories are actually just leaving out the flip-side of chivalry, the one where Men Act Aggressively Toward One Another In Order to Protect A Lady's Honor, and that side has also got to go.

SADY: Right. That's the thing, the thing that was most interesting to me about your piece: The idea that Patriarchy is just some grand competition that dudes put on to show who is the MOST Patriarchal, and since our conception of a Patriarch includes violence and doin' a bunch of broads, dudes are inherently sort of pitted against each other in an eternal punch-off over the broads they do. Granted, one might have absorbed this lesson by watching, like, "Die Hard!" Or any given action movie! But your piece was kind of revelatory to me in that aspect. And maybe that's why certain dudes think that the only option, other than Patriarchy, is punching women ALSO. Like our only options are to have a Punching Class and a Non-Punching Class, and if we get rid of the distinction, civilization will devolve into one big ongoing bar fight.

AMANDA: Haha, right. Like: There is a set number of punches that a man must administer in order to get laid, or whatever, and the rules of chivalry dictate that those punches must be delivered to the faces of other men, not women. Once chivalry is dead, men will have no helpful rules informing them who to punch in order to get laid! This will be a very bad development for humanity! Punches for all!

Stay safe inside, milady, as I visit an associate for the purpose of calling him a "pussy."

SADY: And then, men who are seen as insufficiently punch-prone — men who are, in effect, like LADIES, or who take the sides of ladies in a manner other than punching some dude cause he was rude to the broad they're doing — are seen as defectors from the Manliness Wars. AND DEFECTORS GET PUNCHED! I'm really just super-interested in this; that misogynist violence gets aimed at MEN who are seen as insufficiently misogynist. I mean, you can see it all over; in homophobic hate crimes certainly. Because gay dudes are targeted because they're gay, but the underlying assumption in a lot of gay-hating thought is that this makes them somehow like women. And therefore appropriate to hit.

AMANDA: And hey, sometimes it works into making that guy a misogynist! "I got punched for some lady? The world is sexist against men! I will spend my days fighting feminism in order to avoid getting punched again just because I'm a dude!" But my very favorite anti-feminist argument is that anytime a man treats a woman well for any reason, he's being chivalrous, and since feminists think that chivalry is bad, we have no obligation to treat women with respect anymore ever. The end!

SADY: Right. That's the thing. Like, "I helped you move! I held your arm so you could jump over that nasty-ass puddle! I refrained from sexually assaulting you! ALL EXAMPLES OF CHIVALRY. What will you do if it's gone? Get sexually assaulted by me?????" "Probably!"

AMANDA: Haha.

SADY: Like, there has to be some social contract in place so that treating women LIKE THEY'RE PEOPLE, with a minimum of empathy and decency, is not only possible if we also treat women like they are all T-Rexes with tiny little arms that can't reach doors over the length of their large and cumbersome dinosaur bodies. Or a less confusing metaphor! Like, I'd like to think that people are capable of recognizing that ladies are people and can do stuff, and that one ought to treat them well FOR THAT VERY REASON.

AMANDA: OK, but where is the part where I get to punch someone?

SADY: Haha, yeah, that's the part that puts the lie to my theory. Because Real Person Who Can Do Stuff status has historically been reserved for (certain) dudes, and apparently they're all punching each other CONSTANTLY. So! Like, I think this is honestly getting into a real and structural point about the Patriarchy, one which makes me feel very '70s to point out, but: A structure of society based on violent dominance perpetuates violent dominance even betwixt members of its ruling class. The idea is that power — or, hell, personhood — is based on being able to keep other people down by any means necessary, but it's not like dudes are all working together, because the only way they can understand their right to personhood within this context is by their utilization of violent dominance. So The Man is not only keeping us down, he has to keep The Other Men down as well. So that he can remain The Man.

AMANDA: And there's only one The Man.

SADY: I heard it was Willem Dafoe? Or Ernest Borgnine, but he might be dead. So.

AMANDA: Time for a Battle Royale! I do love that we have a sport where you win by punching someone until they can't get up anymore.

SADY: The Ultimate Expression of Manliness! And then we find out that sometimes those dudes actually hurt people in their private lives, and are like, "whoa. But we told you that your value was specifically dependent on your being really good at violence! I don't understand WHY THIS HAPPENED!" I mean, I was recently looking at murder statistics, and it is a fact that men simply DO kill each other more often. Women are killed less, and kill less, but when someone kills a woman, it is like really super-likely to be someone with whom she has an intimate or sexual relationship. I mean, that to me is How Patriarchy Works: Dudes kill ladies with whom they have private relationships, but then, they also go out and kill each other because they cut each other off in traffic or said something shitty at a barbecue or whatever. My point is, there has to be a way to maintain a social accord with our fellow citizens that is not based on (a) being the best puncher, or (b) being widely regarded as too weak and childlike to punch.

AMANDA: and (c) confining your punching of women behind closed doors because punching a woman in public makes you a sissy also.

SADY: Right. Because that's chivalry. Noting that "chivalry" itself is descended from ideas about knights and fair ladies formed in a time and place where women literally had NO RIGHTS WHATSOEVER; women were a "protected" class, but the "protection" was from, like, someone other than your husband who had the legal right to beat you for disobeying. "Chivalry" was code for, "stay in the house and I'll protect you from dudes what might sexually assault and impregnate you, that I might sexually assault and impregnate you with no worries as to whose baby you're having." "Also you're probably like fourteen."

AMANDA: Yes. It's just an organizing principle for perpetuating misogyny, not any sort of solution.

SADY: Exactly. But, I mean, what's the solution? For dudes to defect from the system? That makes them total pussies, bro!

AMANDA: Yeah. I mean ... I have yet to solve the cultural problem of guys punching each other. I'm working on it. Right now, the tactic that chivalry takes is to say, "if you perform this certain type of violence, you're a pussy. Only this other kind of violence makes you not-a-pussy."

SADY: Right. I don't know, I think focusing on how Traditional Masculinity Hurts Men is totally fun and I like to do it, but also, they're going to be in the same situation as every other ally, which is: If you stop hating us, you're going to get treated like us.

AMANDA: Right. Have fun with that!

SADY: So... stop hating us anyway? I guess?

AMANDA: Stop hating us and then realize that associating with guys who punch guys for being pussies may get you punched, so stop engaging with those types of people. Stop appearing on the "Jersey Shore" program, basically.

SADY: Yeah. We should make a pamphlet! "Have YOU, friend, been invited to appear in a reality TV show program for awful people? Perhaps you should consider your level of exposure to awful people! And not be awful!" That, I think, would solve a lot of problems. Except, like, Snooki's.

AMANDA: Snooki's problem is interesting, because, having watched the show, Snookie REALLY WANTS TO GET LAID. But she can't just punch somebody in order to do it, because she's a woman! Chivalry is preventing Snooki from getting laid, basically, and it needs to end, for that reason.

SADY: Yes. FREE SNOOKI!

Photos via Svadilfari, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

District resident Anthony Wright, 42, has been found guilty of "Bias-Related Simple Assault and Bias Threats To Do Bodily Harm" for harassing and threatening a neighbor over a period of two years. The harassment, which centered on his neighbor's sexual orientation, culminated in Wright attacking his neighbor outside his home, threatening to stab him, and then telling him, "They don't lock you up for hitting faggots."

The details, from District anti-hate crime group Gays & Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV):

WASHINGTON DC, May 7, 2010 — A DC Superior Court jury found 42-year-old DC resident Anthony Wright guilty of Bias-Related Simple Assault and Bias Threats To Do Bodily Harm in a June 6, 2009 assault against an elderly man in SE Washington. Wright repeated threats to the same victim on August 27, 2009.

The USDOJ chronicled two years of a nearly constant barrage of name calling and harassment the 67-year-old gay man was subjected to by his neighbor which eventually escalated into an unprovoked attack in front of neighbors and friends on June 6, 2009. Wright was quickly released but continued to harass the victim, proclaiming, "They don't lock you up for hitting faggots."

On August 27, 2009 Wright confronted the victim in his own home and threatened to stab him and was again arrested. Wright was found guilty on both counts on April 28, 2010 and is scheduled to be sentenced on May 12, 2010.

While GLOV commends the work of the USDOJ and MPD to bring the hate crime charges forward successfully, we are anxious to see that Wright recives the maximum penalty for his egregious crimes and for the suffering he caused his victim to endure for so long.

Last week, 27-year-old Christopher McDonald was sentenced to 120 days in jail for his "unprovoked assault on a group of gay women" in Adams Morgan last year. McDonald approached the women while they ate pizza on the 18th street sidewalk. Then, he made derogatory remarks about their sexual orientation and then threatened them with a knife. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, here's an account of the incident:

According to the proffer of facts to which McDonald admitted, on September 7, 2009, McDonald approached a group of women who were eating pizza along the sidewalk of 18th Street in Adams Morgan. He confronted the women about their sexual orientation and made derogatory,  profanity-laced remarks about their appearance and sexual orientation.  With no provocation, McDonald, who was born in Jamaica, pulled out a  knife and began advancing toward one of the women, saying that “if we were in Jamaica I’d shoot you in the face for being gay.” The stunned victims, fearing for their lives, called the police, and McDonald was  stopped while attempting to flee. He admitted that he made the threats  and brandished the knife based upon his prejudice against the victims’ actual sexual orientation, or what he perceived it to be.

McDonald was convicted of Bias-Related Threats To Do Bodily Harm and Simple Assault. In D.C., the maximum penalty for bias-related crimes is one-and-a-half times that of crimes that aren't bias-related. After serving his 120 days, McDonald will be on probation for two years, during which he "must complete fifty (50) hours of community service, seek substance abuse treatment, and complete courses in anger management and sensitivity to issues of sexual orientation." [Thanks to Holla Back DC for the tip].

Photo via krossbow, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Last month, D.C. police released a report breaking down every hate crime reported in D.C. [PDF] over the past five years. In 2007, changes to the D.C. Human Rights Act required police to begin recording hate-bias crimes motivated by the victim's "gender identity or expression"—in other words, crimes that specifically target transgender victims. Since then, crimes against the transgender community have been the second most frequently recorded type of hate crime committed in D.C., after sexual orientation.

Since 2007, D.C. police have recorded 16 bias-related crimes based on gender identity. Last year, D.C. recorded seven of these crimes (which can include anything from destruction of property to assault to murder). But as trans activist group the DC Trans Coalition notes, transgender victims often face barriers to having crimes against them reported, investigated, and properly coded as a hate crime. According to the DCTC, "Since many trans communities (particularly low-income trans women of color and those who are sex workers) experience violence at the hands of police themselves, it is likely that anti-trans crimes in general are under-reported. Further, DCTC has also learned via a Freedom of Information Act request that MPD still is not tracking statistics about police response rates to cases involving trans individuals."

And because the transgender community in D.C. is so small, seven crimes in a year is an extremely significant figure. We're talking about a very limited population of potential targets, which means that any hate crime against a trans person holds more power to terrorize the entire community.

In 2009, D.C. experienced several highly visible bias crimes motivated by the victim's gender identity. Last March, a transgender man was assaulted outside of Fab Lounge by some of the gay bar's other patrons. In August, Tyli'a Mack and a friend, both trans women, were stabbed on the street in the middle of the afternoon. Mack was killed. The most recent hate-bias crime based on gender identity occurred last weekend, when two transgender individuals were assaulted in Petworth with a metal pole.

The new D.C. police report resolves one reporting problem for D.C.'s transgender community: In an original hate crimes report released in November of last year, D.C. police failed to distinguish between gender identity and sexual orientation in its data, leaving the transgender community with no information on how many victims were being targeted specifically for their gender identity. After some prodding by activists, D.C. released the fully differentiated data last month.

Despite the snub, CUAllies has carefully attempted to conform its advocacy work to the teachings of the Catholic church. The Post story notes that CUAllies has formulated a "self-imposed list of topics that are off-limits: pre-marital sex, gay sex, birth control, gay marriage and behavior not permitted by the Catholic church." With sex, marriage, and "behavior" off the table, what can CUAllies talk about?

Catholic University senior Robby Diesu, one of the group's founders, explains how to cultivate an LGBT group while keeping it Catholic: Avoid "advocacy," distract administrators from the dreaded combination of gays and food, and invent some clever condom wordplay.

"The three goals of CUAllies are to make Catholic U. a safe, welcoming, and affirming place for GLBTQ peoples," Diseu wrote to me. The purpose of CUAllies is hardly controversial: The group is devoted to preventing gay-bashings, providing some visibility for gay students on campus, and affirming the "dignity of the human person" for gay and straight students alike. Diseu insists that the group's goal is "not to change the Church," but rather to find a safe space within church teachings for LGBT students. In order to make life at Catholic University better for CUA's LGBTs, Diseu has found that it benefits the group to keep quiet on the political front. "We as a group do not have an official position on issues like gay marriage or birth control, so the group never diverges with the administration on those types of issues," he writes.

CUAllies has reason to step carefully: The group was formed in the aftermath of Catholic University's first gay-straight alliance, which ultimately conceded to university pressure. The first iteration of the CUA gay group, the Organization for Lesbian and Gay Student Rights, operated as an official student organization from 1988 until several years ago, when "the group was forced to dissolve . . . because it became an advocacy group," Nakas told the Post. "The university has chosen not to go down that path again," Nakas said.

Diseu says that CUAllies' strictly apolitical activities are an attempt to avoid the dreaded accusation of "advocacy." "The reason why we have 'self-imposed' off-limits topics is to show the ridiculous nature of the fact that Catholic is refusing us official status as a group," Diseu writes. But no matter how much CUAllies members censor themselves, Catholic University will always raise the bar for inclusion: "Their definition of advocacy is to have food at your meetings or wanting to talk about hate crimes! Ahh the horror!!" According to Diseu, Catholic's former gay group was hardly controversial. "They were having food at their meetings, and if the gays have food you know what happens. . . . The school put a stranglehold on the group, and we were not going to let them do that to us." (Despite the evident controversy of gays serving food, Diseu says CUAllies does have refreshments at meetings).

Besides fighting off dissolution, what can CUAllies do? Plenty, as long as they frame it right. "We went to the National Equality March as a group because we support full equality for all people," Diseu writes. "In the spring we are having a 3-week series on GLBTQ health and safety and we have a whole week set aside to talk about HIV/AIDS." Diseu says that last subject may take a little bit of verbal acrobatics. "It's basically a word game, we find the loopholes and use them to our advantages," he writes. "Will we talk about condoms? Most likely. But will we directly say, 'When you have sex, use a condom'? No. It will more likely be, 'One of the ways to prevent getting HIV/AIDS is to use a condom.'"

Remember Parents & Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX), that rag-tag group of heterosexual activists that just can't seem to find many "ex-gay" people to advocate for? Last we heard from PFOX, the group was celebrating a court decision which said that "ex-gays"—people who were once gay, but are now totally heterosexual—should be covered under the District's sexual orientation protections. PFOX was psyched with the ruling, because it meant that the group could begin to capitalize on protections that have been afforded to the LGBT community (hate crime legislation, anti-discrimination policies, etc.) and open up the possibility of suing on behalf of persecuted "ex-gays."

I've never seen nor heard of an "ex-gay hate crime," but I assume it would involve screaming epithets like "curse you, former homosexual!" while committing an assault, or refusing to hire an employee based on the fact that he doesn't have sex with men like he used to. Alas, the world may never know: Yesterday, PFOX posted a blog entry encouraging supporters to help oppose hate crime legislation in Texas.  A couple of months ago, PFOX was ecstatic that "ex-gays" would finally be protected against discrimination. Now, the group is rallying opposition to those same protections across the country. What gives?

As I detailed in a story a few weeks ago, PFOX doesn't so much advocate for ex-gays as it does advocate against gays. The group's main interest is sabotaging the acceptance of homosexuality by arguing that sexual orientation is changeable, nobody has to be "gay forever," and "ex-gay is okay." PFOX will use whatever tactics available to them to protest the gay movement. When it suits the group's interests, PFOX will celebrate sexual orientation protections. When it doesn't, PFOX will rally the troops by penning sentences like this:

"Oppose Effort to Include Anti-ExGay Hate Crimes in Annual Defense Authorization Bill"

Woo, that is a doozy! Let's try to pick that one apart, shall we? According to PFOX, hate crime laws protecting gays and lesbians themselves constitute hate crimes against ex-gays. Because if you tell people that they can't beat up people because they're gay, you discriminate against the people who beat up gay people because they are gay! It is you who are committing the "anti-ex-gay hate crime," because if people aren't allowed to hate gay people, how will PFOX ever find any ex-gay people? Shame on you all!

"It makes sense for a group of people who would be protected by hate crime legislation to support something that would let them defend themselves before or after the crime," said one Republican Senate aid familiar with the discussions. "It’s relevant, and we want to work together with gay groups to get the message out."

Because when crimes against gays are punished harsher than regular crimes, only the gays will have guns? Whatever, I don't understand Congress.

The deets:

Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Foundry United Methodist Church
5:00 – 6:00 pm Community discussion on public safety and anti-GLBT crime
6:00 – 7:00 pm DC Chief of Police Cathy Lanier joins the discussion

According to the press release, "Chief Lanier is expected to discuss the status of MPD's efforts to combat crimes in general and hate crimes in particular, as well as discuss her plan to staff the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit of the MPD."

"We had an amendment offered by one of our colleagues to this particular legislation, and i guess it was done in a creative fashion and certainly the author of it did spend some time looking in the dictionary or creating new terms," says Hastings. The proposed amendment was meant to ensure that the following sexual conditions would not be covered by the bill. They are:

Hmm. Yeah. I'm really feeling for the toucherist on this one.

A complete list of the sex acts is after the jump.

apotemnophilia

asphyxophilia

autogynephilia

coprophilia

exhibitionism

fetishism

frotteurism

gerontosexuality

incest

kleptophilia

klismaphilia

necrophilia

partialism

pedophilia

sexual masochism

sexual sadism

telephone scatalogia

toucherism

transgenderism*

transsexual*

transvestite*

transvestic fetishism

urophilia

voyeurism

zoophilia

* umm ... actually, aren't these specifically covered under "gender identity"?

Tomorrow, the U.S. House will vote on HR 1913, the "Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act." Also known as the "Matthew Shepard Act," it would add the categories of sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and disability to federal hate crime legislation.

The Human Rights Campaign is urging you to voice your support of the bill to Congress. Others want you to contact Congress, too—to protest the "un-American" bill with the sole aim of "punishing wrong beliefs about homosexuality" that "could lead to the criminalization of the Biblical view of homosexuality in sermons and elsewhere."

Oh, bills—they "could" always "lead" places.

In California, political action courts political violence

Santa Clara County, the California county south of San Francisco, has released its hate-crime data for 2008. In 2007, 15 percent of hate crimes were classified as homophobic; in 2008, 56 percent of hate crimes were motivated by homophobia. What changed? Deputy District Attorney Jay Boyarsky told The Mercury News that it is "headlines and controversies of the day" that lead to "surges in types of hate incidents"—meaningthe ongoing battle over Prop 8 may have turned some Californians violent.

To some, the increase in anti-gay violence reveals the flip-side of bringing GLBT issues to the political forefront. Leslie Bulbuk, president of local GLBT political action group BAYMEC, said: "When there's a lot more information about gays and lesbians on TV or in the news, it brings out the worst in people who have an inherent bias against groups they don't belong to. . . . It seems like visibility makes people come out of the woodwork.''

Prop 8 supporters claim that the fight over the anti-gay-marriage initiative increased violence on both sides of the gay marriage aisle. "I certainly hope Proposition 8 did not result in more crime," said Protect Marriage rep Frank Schubert. "But if it did, it did so on both sides."

If Prop 8 protesters were responsible for increasing hate crimes, however, the data does not reflect a substantial increase in crimes against, say, Christians or Republicans. Though the new figures mark a tripling of anti-gay hate crimes in the county, hate crimes in general in the area remained relatively constant last year. In 2007, 3 out of 20 hate crimes were anti-gay; in 2008, 14 out of 25 were.

Photo by HBC4511

Despite GLOV's many requests to meet with Mayor Fenty to address concerns about the violent attacks occurring against DC's GLBT citizens, the Mayor has yet to respond. He did however have time Thursday to speak to Fox News about the issue saying simply, "Hate crimes, I think, are down for the most part in DC this year. We take all of them (bias crimes) seriously and look for trends."

GLOV cites the recent Logan Circle killing of Durval Martins as evidence that hate-motivated crimes against gays have reached a critical point in the District of Columbia. GLOV's letter to Fenty, after the jump:

Mr. Mayor:

Over the past several months, members of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual
and Transgender (GLBT) community have become increasingly concerned
with violent crime that seems to be targeting our community. Just
yesterday, a man named Durval Martins was shot to death on his way
home from visiting gay bars on the popular 17th Street strip.

GLOV (Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence) has requested on numerous
occasions through your office to meet with you, but we have been
repeatedly informed that you are not interested in a meeting at this
time. We write to ask that you reconsider. The community is nervous
and on edge, as violence around us continues to increase. We have met
with the Police, the United States Attorney's Office, community
organizations, and members of the City Council (the City Council even
had a Hearing on Hate Crimes last Friday), but we have not heard from
our Mayor. This is not acceptable. We need to meet with you to present
our concerns personally, to hear that you understand the issues, to
learn what your plans are to address them, and to see how we can all -
city agencies, the police, the prosecutors, community
organizations, and business leaders – can work together to end the
hate-filled violence that is plaguing our community.

We would like to ask again that you convene an urgent meeting to
address these issues, and that you include the Chief of Police,
someone from the US Attorney's Office, representatives of the City
Council, and other city and community leaders who are focused on this
issue. We need your leadership at this time, and we need to know that
you are listening.

Sincerely,

Chris Farris
Todd Metrokin
Co-Chairs, GLOV

So are anti-gay crimes on the rise? Or are they just being tracked and recorded better?

The incident is being investigated as a hate crime by MPD. Hunter's assault is one of several recent incidents that have heightened attention on hate crime investigation in the District. I'll update with more as the investigation continues.

Update: Feministing has a piece on the perceived spike of LGBT-related hate crimes in the District. Miriam notes that "Nationally, around 16% of hate crimes are LGBT related. In DC, it's 60%." Miriam also points readers to the resurgence of D.C.'s GLBT Anti-Violence Group, or "GLOV." GLOV was active in the 1990's, but stopped meeting in recent years. On Monday, Sept. 22, the group will begin meeting again. Interested parties can join GLOV at the law offices of Dewey and LeBoeuf, 1101 New York Avenue NW, at 7:30 p.m.