Monday, July 20, 2009

The Cry from a Facebook Victim


The Cry by Edvard Munch

Mature Content Ahead !
As a favor to a Photoblogger in another country I am
briefly
sharing his true and woeful Cry with the world,
with the simple warning :
Watch who you Add as Friend
on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, WordPress, Scribd,
Blogger, Twitter..........everywhere !

Firdaus Zakir (real name withheld) of Mumbai, India is a
talented Muslim lensman who found his niche taking pics of
Transgenders
and Muslim religious occurrences in his area.
Not an easy task to accomplish, since many of the subjects
belong to an arm of internationally reviled 'Trannies', forbidden
by society leanings to be in the mainstream workplace, who are
often forced to earn a living in the sex trade where they constantly
face threats, violence and harassment from Johns and local
authorities. Protection is available from those authorities, but
at a price in the form of weekly bribes and yes, sexual favors.
Crooked cops and perverted politicians have their cake and
eat it, too. That's nothing new.

Apalled by the state of affairs in the 'hood Firdaus Zakir the
humanitarian decided to do something meaningful with his
50-odd years' existence, and began publishing his collection of
religious Muslim rituals, Eunuchs and LGBT pics online via
any website or Blog he naively assumed to be free of scandal.
Many sleepless days and nights spent in scanning, uploading
and posting his work yielded results with unbelievably high online
posting stats. He became a Hit counter even as his websites'
Hit Counters
generated torrents of comments and views.

But as is usually the case with ignorant and jealous folks online,
all the comments posted weren't of the kindly variety. Increasingly
his Blogs and websites received harassing mail and responses
and elicited repeated hacker visits. The worldwide hatred for
Muslims post-9/11 didn't help his case either, and try as he
might, he will not shake off that stigma, short of turning Atheist.
The final insult came a few days ago when he was threatened by
a Facebook 'friend' who roused his ire and forced him into an
online shouting match complete with CAPS LOCK attitude.
This 'friend' added Firdaus at the suggestion of the Facebook
sidebar on the Home page, then experienced religious rage
leading to vicious and nasty exchanges.
The result was that the local police took down a formal complaint
from Firdaus of Cyber death threats and violence, and Firdaus
(once again, as he often did in the past) swore he would stop
Adding friends, allowing Comments or posting his poems of
pain. He is now a victim, he claims of Racial Harassment not
only at Facebook, Flickr, Scribd and Word Press but also at
Now Public
and many other free sites. Facebook was kind
enough to auto-reply with the standard link to the 'Help' section.

So what are the chances we've seen the last of Firdaus and
his self-flagellating persona online ? Will this poetic poster boy
of Pain inflict more grief on his soul ? Stay tuned....he gets verse.

See worldwide pics of Self-Flagellation on Flickr
See worldwide pics of Muslim Rituals on Flickr

Helpful Flickr comments :

view profile

PetWerewolf says:Erm... What's a tranny?

Posted 32 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

redxdress Pro User says:

It usually means a transsexual, although it could theoretically
mean a transgendered person or a transvestite.*


In this case, I honestly couldn't tell you for sure which category
this person might fit into, but s/he was clearly born as a
man, and dressed as a woman.


Anyway, this title is a bit of a joke for people here in the US
(and maybe also other English-speaking groups) because a
lot of commercials used phrases like "Peanut butter and
chocolate- together at last!" and it's become sort of a
sarcastic expression.


*Transvestite means someone who just likes to wear the
clothing of the opposite gender, while transgender means the
person actually lives like someone of the opposite gender
every day...and transsexual is someone who has gone a
step further to have surgery, hormone treatment, etc. to
modify the body.
Posted 32 months ago. ( permalink )


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