Alexandria police announced on Jan. 12 that a Maryland woman has been arrested for allegedly assaulting a man while shouting anti-gay slurs at him at a Giant supermarket in Alexandria on Christmas Day.

The arrest came after a video of the assault that the victim captured with his phone and on which the woman can be heard shouting anti-gay slurs went viral on social media.

Police identified the woman as Shibritney Colbert, 34, of Landover, Md. Alexandria Police Chief Tarrick McGuire stated at a news conference that police responded to a 911 call placed by the victim and attempted to apprehend the woman, but she drove off in her car before police could apprehend her.

He said following an investigation, Colbert was apprehended and arrested in Prince Goerge’s County, Md., on Jan. 8. He said arrangements were being made for her to be brought to Alexandria where she was expected to face charges of assault and battery, destruction of property, felony eluding, and driving an unregistered vehicle.

The video of the incident shows Colbert pushing a shopping cart she was using in an aisle at the Giant store, located at 3131 Duke St., into the victim and another woman who was trying to help the victim. She can be seen throwing groceries at the victim while shouting anti-gay names. “Boy, get out of here with your gay ass,” was among the words she yelled at him that could be heard on the video.

The victim, who police identified only as a 24-year-old man, could be heard on the video saying he does not know the woman and urging her to “please back up.”

“Based on the victim’s statement, comments exchanged prior to the assault, and the totality of the circumstances, investigators believe the victim was targeted because of his sexual orientation,” police said in a statement.

Tarrick said Colbert’s arrest came at a time when Alexandria police were completing a strengthened hate crime policy calling for detectives to investigate crimes based on hate and for the department to prepare reports on hate crimes twice a year.

“Hate crimes are not just crimes against individuals, they are offenses that threaten the entire community and undermine the fundamental principles of dignity, equality, and safety,” Tarrick said.

Alexandria police didn’t immediately respond to a request from the Washington Blade for a copy of the official police report on the incident.

A link to the video posted on the social media site Reddit in which an unidentified man provides some details of the attack, can be accessed here:

Four kids pedaled furiously, their bicycles wobbling over cracked pavement and uneven curbs. Laughter and shouted arguments about which mystical creature could beat which echoed down the quiet street. They carried backpacks stuffed with well-worn paperbacks — comic books and fantasy novels — each child lost in a private world of monsters, magic, and secret codes. The air hummed with the kind of adventure that exists only at the edge of imagination, shaped by an imaginary world created in another part of the planet.

This is not a description of “Stranger Things,” nor of an American suburb in the 1980s. This is a small Russian village in the early 2000s — a place without paved roads, where most houses had no running water or central heating — where I spent every summer of my childhood. Those kids were my friends, and the world we were obsessed with was “The Vampire Chronicles” by Anne Rice.

We didn’t yet know that one of us would soon come out as openly bi, or that another — me — would become an LGBTQ activist. We were reading our first queer story in Anne Rice’s books. My first queer story. It felt wrong. And it felt extremely right. I haven’t accepted that I’m queer yet, but the easiness queerness was discussed in books helped.

Now, with AMC’s “Interview with the Vampire,” starring Jacob Anderson as Louis de Pointe du Lac — a visibly human, openly queer, aching vampire — and Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt, something old has stirred back to life. Louis remains haunted by what he is and what he has done. Lestat, meanwhile, is neither hero nor villain. He desires without apology, and survives without shame.

I remember my bi friend — who was struggling with a difficult family — identifying with Lestat. Long before she came out, I already saw her queerness reflected there. “The Vampire Chronicles” allowed both of us to come out, at least to each other, with surprising ease despite the queerphobic environment.

While watching — and rewatching — the series over this winter holiday, I kept thinking about what this story has meant, and still means, for queer youth and queer people worldwide. Once again, this is not just about “the West.” I read comments from queer Ukrainian teenagers living under bombardment, finding joy in the show. I saw Russian fans furious at the absurdly censored translation by Amediateca, which rendered “boyfriend” as “friend” or even “pal,” turning the central relationship between two queer vampires into near-comic nonsense. Mentions of Putin were also erased from the modern adaptation — part of a broader Russian effort to eliminate queer visibility and political critique altogether.

And yet, fans persist to know the real story. Even those outside the LGBTQ community search for uncensored translations or watch with subtitles. A new generation of Eastern European queers is finding itself through this series.

It made me reflect on the role of mass culture — especially American mass culture — globally. I use Ukraine and Russia as examples because I’m from Ukraine, spent much of my childhood and adolescence in Russia, and speak both languages. But the impact is clearly broader. The evolution of mass culture changes the world, and in the context of queer history, “Interview with the Vampire” is one of the brightest examples — precisely because of its international reach and because it was never marketed as “gay literature,” but as gothic horror for a general audience.

With AMC now producing a third season, “The Vampire Lestat,” I’ve seen renewed speculation about Lestat’s queerness and debates about how explicitly the show portrays same-sex relationships. In the books, vampires cannot have sex in a “traditional” way, but that never stopped Anne Rice from depicting deeply homoromantic relationships, charged with unmistakable homoerotic tension. This is, after all, a story about two men who “adopt” a child and form a de facto queer family. And this is just the first book — in later novels we see a lot of openly queer couples and relationships.

The first novel, “Interview with the Vampire” was published in 1976, so the absence of explicit gay sex scenes is unsurprising. Later, Anne Rice — who identified as queer —  described herself as lacking a sense of gender, seeing herself as a gay man and viewing the world in a “bisexual way.” She openly confirmed that all her vampires are bisexual: a benefit of the Dark Gift, where gender becomes irrelevant. 

This is why her work resonates so powerfully with queer readers worldwide, and why so many recognize themselves in her vampires. For many young people I know from Eastern Europe, “Interview with the Vampire” was the first book in which they ever encountered a same-sex relationship.

But the true power of this universe lies in the fact that it was not created only for queer audiences. I know conservative Muslims with deeply traditional views who loved “The Vampire Chronicles” as teenagers. I know straight Western couples who did too. Even people who initially found same-sex relationships unsettling often became more tolerant after reading the books, watching the movie or the show. It is harder to hate someone who reminds you of a beloved character.

That is the strength of the story: it was never framed as explicitly queer or purely romantic, gothic and geeky audiences love it. “The Vampire Chronicles” are not a cure for queerphobia, but they are a powerful tool for making queerness more accessible. Popular culture offers a window into queer lives — and the broader that window, the more powerful it becomes.

Other examples include Will from “Stranger Things,” Ellie and Dina from “The Last of Us” (both the game and the series), or even the less mainstream but influential sci-fi show “Severance.” These stories allow audiences around the world to see queer people beyond stereotypes. That is the power of representation — not just for queer people themselves, but for society as a whole. It makes queer people look like real people, even when they are controversial blood-drinkers with fangs, or two girls surviving a fungal apocalypse.

Mass culture is a universal language, spoken worldwide. And that is precisely why censorship so often tries — and fails — to silence it.

One of the hottest issues in America right now is that of gender affirming care for trans youth. Even people close to me — as close as parents and siblings and dear friends — voice their disapproval of letting trans or nonbinary adolescents (and those who are younger) receive appropriate healthcare in the form of puberty blockers and other medicines to prevent their original gender from onset, and instead establish a new gender that they feel comfortable in. This is a topic that I believe is highly contested among Democrats themselves, so I have taken extra time, patience, and detail to write this article. Out of all of the op-eds I have penned for the Blade, this is the one I have most prepared for. 

Trans youth should be able to access quality gender affirming care. Denying these children and teenagers puberty blockers is a human rights offense. 

Many older trans people in the current day report feeling “off” about their gender from a young age. The majority of us, myself included, didn’t have a vocabulary to describe our feelings, so we instead lived teenage years under this strange angst — this strange anxiety about our bodies that we couldn’t put a name to. Maybe a lucky few of us grew up in Manhattan, or some other elite coastal city, and were, for instance, raised by lesbian moms or gay fathers or were put into some scenario in which we had access to vocabulary such as “gender dysphoria,” “cisgender,” and “transgender.” I’ve only known one person who had this vocabulary handed to them, but they were intersex, so questions about their genitalia were asked from a young age. Other than that, the point is this: Many transgender people feel like something was wrong during childhood. And here is the other point to be made: Many youth in the current day feel that something is wrong. The difference now is that modern day youth have access to more puberty blockers, more hormones, and more grown ups who want the best for them, in addition to more evil and cruel grown ups who don’t. 

Youth who are genuinely transgender — who will likely live the rest of their life as a new gender — are in so much pain that they often want to kill themselves. These kids, be they seven, eight, 11, or 13 years old, engage in extremely unhealthy thoughts about their bodies and lives. Doctors will see signs of suicidality from the get go: the kid might exhibit parasuicidal behavior, such as scratching their arm with a razor, they might think of jumping off of a building, and they generally will not want to wake up the next day to confront the bullies who will tease them about their hair, clothes, and identity. Opponents of gender affirming care for youth often don’t understand the wrath that gender dysphoria places on its beholder: they don’t understand how depressed, anxious, and overall terrorized these kids feel. They perhaps just think that these kids can live a normal adolescence, maybe cross dress on occasion, and wait to fix their bodies until they are of “sane” and “healthy” mind. But I want to ask parents out there if they really feel as if children and teenagers who are suicidal is healthy: Do you think that a boy who wants to be a girl but can’t is going to bed feeling happy? The answer is no. 

It is totally unhealthy for trans youth not to be able to delay their puberty. It is unhealthy for them to have to sit and stew in this wretched, cruel, and twisted universe that scorns their label of a new gender. It is unhealthy for them to turn on CNN and watch as Marjorie Taylor Greene or the president of the United States calls them monsters, or says that they are somehow sick. 

Don’t get me wrong — it is appropriate and necessary for these gender nonconforming youth to be screened by doctors. They should be vetted by psychiatrists, psychologists, primary care physicians, endocrinologists, and licensed social workers. A rigorous and intelligent process for evaluating their dysphoria and alleviating their symptoms should be in place. What they are experiencing, after all, is not healthy. 

What is healthy is giving these youth access to a new channel of freedom — healthcare that makes their bodies more aligned with their minds and healthcare that will cause them to be less suicidal, and more in touch with their surroundings and school environment. These youth deserve a chance at life–a shot at success. They deserve to learn in schools where their teachers don’t get punished for asking for preferred pronouns. Boys deserve to wear dresses and girls deserve to cut their hair short. The world needs to relax about gender. We are the ones suffering, not you. We are the ones bearing the brunt of cruelty. Let us have healthcare when healthcare is appropriate. 

Isaac Amend is a writer based in the D.C. area. He is a transgender man and was featured in National Geographic’s ‘Gender Revolution’ documentary. He serves on the board of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia. Contact him on Instagram at @isaacamend