If A Trans Woman Is Beaten And Nobody Hears About It...

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.

For Carl Walker-Hoover and Evelyn Hernandez

For the past two days, I was busy with the end of the course I've been teaching.  The nice thing about summer classes, especially the ones in the evening, are the students that take them.  The bad thing is that they're so rushed, especially at the end.


OK, so now I've given you an excuse about why I haven't posted during the last couple of days.  But there's another reason why I haven't posted:  I simply haven't thought much about the sorts of things I write in my posts, at least for this blog.


Today, though, I noticed some news coverage about a girl who'd been bullied and committed suicide.  You've probably heard about Phoebe Prince by now.  Of course, the suicide of any young person, or anyone is tragic and devastating to the people they leave behind. (Trust me, I know:  Two friends and three friendly acquaintances of mine ended their own lives.) But, I have to ask this question:  Why has her death garnered so much attention while comparatively few people have heard about Carl Walker-Hoover?


He lived not far from Phoebe Prince, and he was only eleven years old.  But, for starters, Phoebe looked like the sort of girl that anyone in "flyover country" would want as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece or pupil.  Not only was she pretty, she was--according to whom you believe--bullied for "taking" the boyfriends of other girls in her school.  And, on top of being straight, she was--although an immigrant--white.


On the other hand, Carl was taunted by other kids who perceived him as gay.  What many people forget is one doesn't have to be gay, lesbian or transgendered in order to suffer from bigotry and violence; rather, one only has to be perceived as non-heterosexual or non- cisgendred.   On top of his perceived identity, he had the cross of actually being part of another stigmatized group:  He was black.


The disparity between the amount of attention paid to the suicides of Phoebe Prince and Carl Walker-Hoover reminds me of a similar disparity between the coverage of the murders of Laci Peterson and Evelyn Hernandez, which occured only a few miles and months apart.  Both women were killed while pregnant; their bodies later washed up on the shores of San Francisco Bay.  But, while Ms. Peterson was a pretty white (actually, mixed-race, but her facial features were Caucasian) woman who, as a teenager, had been a cheerleader in an upscale San Francisco suburb, Ms. Hernandez was a Salvadorean immigrant who lived and worked in the Outer Mission.


When I think of Carl Walker-Hoover and Evelyn Hernandez, I can't help but to think of just about any non-cisgendered person who was murdered or who, like one friend and one friendly acquaintance of mine, committed suicide over their gender identities.  One almost never hears about them outside of Transgender Day of Remembrance events.  And, too often, when LGBT people--or immigrants from Third-World countries or African-Americans-- are killed, many people believe they "had it coming to them" simply for being who they are--or being perceived as what they're not.  They do not get the sort of sympathy or generate the kind of outrage that Phoebe Prince and Laci Peterson did with their tragic deaths.  


Evelyn Peterson was just as much someone's wife and mother as Laci Peterson was.  Just as Phoebe Prince was someone's beloved child, so was Carl Walker-Hoover.  And so am I and so, I hope, are you.