Aguas con tu ligue!
June 10th, 2010 at 11:31 pm ET
A visibility and safety initiative, from Mexico, on behalf of gay, transgendered, and other vulnerable people: Aguas Con Tu Ligue, which roughly translated means “watch out for your hookup,” i.e., beware of the man you just picked up. Be careful about whom you let into your house. Or, in extremis, “Tu ligue de hoy puede ser tu asesino,” i.e., “the guy you pick up today might turn out to be your murderer.” Blunt stuff, but routine assaults on gay people — sometimes physical crime, sometimes extortion, sometimes just disruption and harassment — are a bigger social issue in Mexico than here in New York. (Not that we don’t have them here too.) The case examples on the site are blunt.
I admire the courage and forthrightness behind the initiative; the philosophy behind it is that visibility helps increase safety in the short term and lead to social change in the long term, which you can hardly argue with.
As a side note, I just learned the word “aguas,” which (in Mexico only) means “look out.” Literally, it apparently originally meant “look out, I am about to throw toilet water [or, probably more literally, urine] out the window onto your head,” but nowadays it is conventional to follow it with a description of what the hearer is supposed to look out for, e.g., “¡Aguas! ¡Viene un carro!” The things you learn…
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Rich Mintz blogs on online fundraising and social media, American history and culture, bicycling and urbanism, food, technology, and other topics. Professionally, he's an expert in fundraising, constituency development, and social media for nonprofits, cultural organizations, cause-related marketers, and corporations. He is based in New York, where he serves as Vice President, Strategy, for 
