Black civil rights organization urges Instagram to suspend Azealia Banks over “transphobic tirade”
National Black Justice Coalition accuses rapper of using her public platform to "spread hate and transphobia"
Rapper Azealia Banks is once again bashing the LGBTQ community after being criticized for comments she made claiming to be Jewish.
Banks, who is bisexual, recently took to her Instagram account to announce her engagement to Ryder Ripps, sharing a picture of Ripps proposing and a picture of her new engagement ring, which features a menorah.
“I said yes!!!” Banks wrote on the photo, adding in the caption: “I just got engaged kunts. I’m crying 😭…. I’m Jewish now. MAZEL TOV BITCHES! WE IN HERE…. YERRRRRRR.”
But Banks’ Jewish fans took issue with the post, telling the rapper she needed to convert to Judaism to be a Jew, not just get engaged to a Jewish man.
Seeking to defend herself, Banks then unleashed a series of replies employing transphobic remarks and stereotypes, telling the fan that gender confirmation surgery for trans women was akin to “getting castrated” and that since society does “mental gymnastics” to accept trans women, she should be accepted as Jewish for marrying and having sex with Ripps.
“I try to tell the transgirls that getting castrated doesn’t automatically make them a female but if society can do the mental gymnastics to lie and tell them an eggless person who still produces semen is a woman and let them rock, you are all going to bend the rules to accept this newly black Jewish coochie. I’m Jewish now…you can’t stop me,” Banks wrote.
She also wrote: “[W]hy can you chop ur cock and say ur a girl but I can’t catch the Jewish nut and say I’m Jewish? Stop trying to exclude black people from everything.”
In another post, she called trans women “just hot gay boys with beat faces and plastic surgery.”
“I live for the trans girls but the trans shit is a non issue,” she added. “Just gay boys on hormones using male aggression to force their ways into women’s spaces.”
See also: Azealia Banks accuses RuPaul of appropriating her music in “Call Me Mother”
The National Black Justice Coalition, a civil rights group dedicated to empowering Black LGBTQ+ and same-gender-loving people, called out Banks for her transphobic comments, accusing her of using her public persona and Instagram account to attack trans people.
The organization also called on Instagram to suspend Banks’ account for her hateful remarks.
“Azealia Banks’ latest transphobic tirade is yet another example of why she should be suspended from Instagram. Her attacks on trans people, while sadly predictable, contribute to the disproportionate violence that trans people face in the United States and around the world,” David Johns, the executive director of NBJC, said in a statement.
“With at least seven of our trans siblings having already been murdered in the U.S. this year alone, we are on track for 2021 to be the most deadly year for transgender people on record. Violence against trans people is a national crisis — and Azealia Banks’ vitriolic remarks only make this growing crisis worse,” Johns added. “Instagram needs to step up and stop Banks from using her platform to spread hate and transphobia.”
See also: Instagram bans content promoting conversion therapy
This isn’t the first time Banks has made anti-LGBTQ remarks on social media. In December, in response to what she perceived as criticism of her religious beliefs — she claims to worship the goddess Yemayá, the patron spirit of motherhood and rivers in the Yoruba religion — Banks accused the gay community of “appropriating horse culture,” claiming gay men wear leather harnesses, engage in recreational use of ketamine — which is used as a horse anesthetic — and have to use lube to engage in sex.
In 2015, Banks was filmed calling a flight attendant a “fucking faggot,” and, in 2016, was banned from Twitter for making racist and homophobic comments about One Direction singer Zayn Malik. In 2019, she went on a rant about pre-exposure prophylaxis, calling it a “death trap” and implying that people on PrEP are engaging in indiscriminate sexual liaisons with random people and have a “sex addiction.” She later apologized for those remarks, but then bid her gay fans “adieu” in an Instagram post, claiming gay people “are into a lot of shit” and are “people I just don’t find value in.”
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