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Showing posts with label
crimes against transgender people.
Show all posts
Showing posts with label
crimes against transgender people.
Show all posts
Depending on which sources you trust, a transgender person is anywhere from 10 to 116 times as likely to be murdered as a typical person in the US.
I don't know how likely the 116 figure is. But I would bet that 10 times is a low number, given that crimes against transgender people are disproportionately unreported.
As if those numbers aren't bad enough, a trans woman of color is (again, depending on who you believe) anywhere from twice to twelve times as likely to be murdered as any other trans person.
One reason for the risks trans women of color face is that, in addition to bearing the double stigma of falling outside accepted gender norms and being of the "wrong" race, they disproportionately live in high-crime areas such as impoverished urban neighborhoods and parts of the South where there is easy access to guns.
Parts of cities like St. Louis and New Orleans happen to fit into both categories. So it's unsurprising (though still tragic) that Penny Proud, a black transgender woman, was found shot to death early Tuesday morning in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans.
Thus, it's heartening to see that yesterday, Valentine's Day, a group of people gathered in the Central West End of St. Louis to honor transgender women of color and denounce the violence against them.
Even with greater public acceptance of transgender people, the violence against us continues and, for trans women of color, seems to be escalating. In 2014, thirteen transgenders were murdered in the US. In the first six weeks of 2015, five transgender women of color have already been killed in this country.
Some might argue that the numbers are higher because more crimes are being reported, or because more of the victims are identified as transgender and not solely by their assigned-at-birth gender, as has been the tradition. Even if that is the case, though, we are being disproportionately attacked and killed, and it's even worse for trans women of color.
If I were more jaded, I'd say it's the same old story.
But since a life was ended in a horrible, brutal way, I won't be so blase.
Still, we've heard it too many times: A trans woman found dead in her apartment. Boyfriend is prime suspect.
This time, instead of Ridgewood (about two neighborhoods away from mine), New York, the scene is on the other coast: in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles, California.
There, firefighters forced their way into an apartment. After quickly putting out a fire in a rear bedroom, they found the body of Michelle Vash Payne on the kitchen floor.
But, from the looks of things, her death had nothing to do with the fire: She had been stabbed and a murder weapon was recovered at the scene.
About an hour before the firefighters came, neighbors said they heard arguing in the apartment, into wich Payne and her boyfriend had recently moved. However, nobody called the police.
Perhaps I'm ignorant of police procedures, but I find it a little odd that the suspect's name or photo hasn't been released, although a physical description was given and he's said to be her boyfriend.
Good news: Joseph Scott Pemberton, the US Marine accused of killing trans woman Jennifer Laude Sueselbeck, has been turned over to local authorities in the Philippines, where he was stationed and committed the murder.
The Philippines has been rated one the most gay-friendly nations in Asia, if not the world. Even so, some lesbian couples report discrimination and I haven't read or heard much about what trans people face there.
Still, I am more confident that justice will be done in the Filipino civil system than it would be in the US Military, which has a history of covering up sexual assaults and hate crimes committed by its members.
I guess we should be thankful for small things...as in, news coverage of the attempted murder of a trans person.
Normally, it seems as if we're vampires: We're noticed only if we're dead or demons. In either case, the truth is not told about us.
So it seems almost like progress when a murder attempt is made against one of us and it's reported without the implication that we "had it coming" to us. That's what almost--almost--happened today.
An Associated Press story in the Naples (FL) News reported that 16-year-old Tavares Spencer was found guilty of attempted murder. According to Tampa police, he met up with--and shot--23-year-old Terrience Mc Donald in April.
So far, so good (at least from a journalistic point of view). However, the first paragraph AP story said that Spencer was found guilty of murdering a "transgender man". Then, later in the story, the AP described Mc Donald as a "man who dressed like a woman".
In other words, the AP contradicted itself, probably without realizing it. And, one might argue that there was an implication, however subtle, that Ms. Mc Donald brought her attack on herself.
Still, the report is better than most others we see.
Whenever the number of assualts and other crimes against LGBT people increases--as it did for several years in the first decade of this century-- some observers minimize it by attributing it to "greater willingness to report" such crimes to the police. However, when there is a decrease, as was reported from 2011 to 2012, the same reason is often given: Increased reporting, it is said, leads to greater awareness and prevention.
While either, or even both, of these explanations may be plasible, the National Association of Anti-Violence Projects points out that LGBT people are disproportionately targeted for discrimination and violence. The risk of experiencing everything from slurs to slaying increases exponentially if you are transgendered (especially MTF) or of color.
Whether the rate is increasing or not, and whatever factors may be in play, it's still difficult not to think that crimes against LGBT people--especially trans women and those of color--are grossly underreported. Some are mis-categorized--as, most famously, the death of Marsha P. Johnson was ruled a suicide while evidence indicates that she may have met her fate at the hands of one or more haters on the old Christoper Street pier, where someone saw her body floating in the Hudson River.
Recently, I have volunteered as an outreach worker for the Anti-Violence Project here in New York. My own impetus to do so came from my own experience. I did not experience physical violence in a relationship in which I was involved; however, my now-ex beau used my identity as a trans person to spread false rumors and outright lies about me. He threatened more of the same if I didn't let him back into my life. In doing so, he also exposed me to the threat of physical violence from others: Too many people are willing to believe that trans people are committing all manner of sexual crimes, and more than a few are willing to kill us over such notions.
I mention my experience not only to show that violence and abuse need not be physical in order to cause harm, or even death, to a trans person. Yet the very notions too many people--including the ex--have are one reason why many of us are reluctant to report the abuse and other crimes we experience. Too many people--including many police officers, including all except one I encountered in my local precinct--believe that we "had it coming" to us for being who we are. And some of us even experience harassment from police officers, as I did the first time I went to the local precinct.
I had to go to that precinct three times before anyone would even take a report from me--and they did that only after I went to the court and a counselor advised me on what to do. (That counselor was also very sympathetic and supportive. She is black; I wonder whether she also experienced threats and other abuse.) And, to give more credit where it's due, the court clerks and officers were very helpful to me. Still, I can't help but to wonder, though, how many other trans women--and other LGBT people--had experiences like mine, and whether any gave up after experiencing such official hostility only once. Even more to the point, I wonder how many people simply didn't report abuse, assaults or worse because they'd heard horror stories like mine about dealing with the police.
Whatever the year-to-year statistical fluctations are in anti-LGBT discrimination and violence, I believe that such violations will be under-reported for many years to come. Only after changes in training law enforcement officials and societal attitudes have influenced a generation or two of people will more of us feel confident that we can report the offenses against us without having to worry about experiencing more prejudice and even violence from those to whom we report those crimes.
If you've ever been a journalist, as I've been, or simply follow the news, you start to realize the prejudices that shape what we see in the media.
The media outlets in which a crime is mentioned--or, indeed, whether or not it is covered at all--has much to do with its victim. If something happens to a celebrity, of course, it's on the front page and in all of the TV programs that cover entertainment. The whiter and richer the victim is, the more likely he or she is to get sympathetic reporting--or any reporting at all. One example of what I'm talking about is Lacy Peterson who, as I've mentioned in an earlier post, made international headlines when she disappeared from her home in an upscale San Francisco suburb and her husband, Scott, was convicted of murder. A few months earlier a poor Salvadorean immigrant named Evelyn Hernandez was the victim of a remarkably similar crime on the other side of San Francisco Bay. My blog is one of the few places in which she has ever been mentioned.
So, should I be surprised that when a transgender woman is beaten by at least three young men in a midtown hotel, none of New York's daily newspapers or television network affiliates mentioned it? The closest thing I've seen to local coverage was in Newsday, which is published in Long Island.
(About twenty years ago, Newsday had a New York City edition, which covered many stories the Times, Daily News and Post neglected. They also published the columns of Sydney Schanberg, whom the Times fired after his editorials criticized some real estate developers who just happened to be major advertisers in the newspaper.)
In addition to Newsday, I'll give credit to DNA Info and several weekly community newspapers for publishing stories about the crime. While some details are still in dispute, it seems that the basic story goes something like this: A 27-year-old trans woman advertised online. One young man responded. They met in the Holiday Inn near Columbus Circle. He was unhappy with the price. They argued; she kicked him out. He returned with his buddies and they beat her while one of them brandished a gun and threatened to kill her if she didn't stop screaming.
It seems that the woman wasn't seriously hurt. Still, she's relatively lucky: Too many of us are beaten much worse, or even killed, even when neither sex nor money is involved. At least there are surveillance photos of at least two of the men and the woman provided some detailed descriptions.
Newsday and DNA Info published those photos, and accounts of the crime. That's more than any of New York City's three daily newspapers did.
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