Some Respect For India Clarke

Some people suffer violent deaths.  Worse yet, they suffer other kinds of violence after their deaths.  Such is the case for too many trans people, like India Clarke.  

Yesterday morning, a park employee found her battered body just outside of the University Area community center in Tampa Bay, Florida.  While her death has been ruled a murder, officials are not calling it a hate crime.  

Given the way, and by whom, most transgender murder victims are killed, it's hard not to think Ms. Clarke's death was motivated by bigotry. Still, I can understand why officials won't come to such a conclusion just yet:  More than likely, they can't, until they at least have a suspect.

But I can't understand why, in this day and age, some journalists and public officials don't identify victims like India Clarke by the names they used and the genders by which they idenitified.  In fact, some make it a point of misgendering victims or identifying them by the names assigned at birth. 

The Tampa Bay Times--which proudly announces that it has won ten Pulitzer Prizes on its front page--identified India as Samuel Elijah Clarke and said "the victim was dressed in female clothing".  And Hillsborough County spokesman says officials will not be identifying her as "transgender." 

What most people don't realize is that referring to trans people by the names or gender assigned to them at birth doesn't only hurt the feelings of other transgender people.  It can also impede an investigation.

I hope never to meet a fate like India Clarke's.  But let's say someone was to find me lying on the ground somewhere, beaten up or otherwise hurt.  If an investigation were to begin by identifying me as male and by my old name, some of my records wouldn't turn up, as all of my records now identify me as a female with my current name.  Mis-identifying me could keep someone from accessing my medical and insurance records, which could result in my not getting care--or, if I were identified as male, in getting inappropriate treatments.

Misidentification could have even more dire consequences for those who are in the early stages of transition:  Such people might be living in their true gender and chosen name, but their records might still be in the gender and name assigned to them at birth.  I know:  I was in that situation for about two years.  But even then, some people knew me only by as a female named Justine; they did not know my former name or, in a few cases, even that I had lived as a man.  Asking such people about me under my old name and gender would have drawn blanks--as they would from most people who know me now.

So, identifying us by the names and genders in which we live isn't just a matter of respect or dignity:  It can also be a matter of our lives. 

India Clarke, I hope that, wherever you are, you're getting the respect and dignity--and have the peace and security--you didn't experience in your death.

What Happened To Nizah Morris?

Back in the days of the Civil Rights movement, it was not uncommon--especially in places like Alabama and Georgia--for police officers to offer "courtesy" rides to African-Americans who "appeared" to be "inebriated" or who "seemed" to be in "distress."

That would sound benevolent had some of said African-Americans not mysteriously died while in custody, or simply disappeared.  

Apparently, similar things still happen, and not only to African-Americans, and not only in the Deep South.

Three days before Christmas in 2002, transgender woman Nizah Morris died in a Philadelphia hospital from a subdural hematoma, the result of traumatic blows to her head.

Morris had been out drinking when a concerned bar patron called an ambulance for her.  She turned down the opportunity to go to the emergency room and instead accepted a courtesy ride from Philadelphia police officer Elizabeth Skala.     

Morris never made it home.  Skala claims that Morris asked her to drop her off at a corner two minutes away from the bar where she'd been drinking--but 45 minutes from her apartment.  A minute after Skala left her at the corner of Chancellor and South Juniper Streets, a motorist (according to his testimony) found Morris, naked from the waist up and bleeding from her head, lying on the street. 

Now, here's where things get interesting. 

 Another witness reports having seen her body on the street fifteen minutes later and a police officer pulling a jacket over her face as her body was loaded into the ambulance.  The ambulance attendants said they loaded her body at the same time--3:30 a.m.--the first witness (the motorist) claims to have found it.  The officer on the scene says the ambulance didn't depart until 3:45.

If these accounts are even remotely accurate, why was there such a delay in embarking for the hospital?  And why did the officer pull the jacket over Morris's face as if she were already dead?  Finally, why wasn't the police report released until 2011--nearly a decade after Ms. Morris' death?  And why did it take a freedom-of-information request from Philadelphia Gay News to make that document see the light of day?

Are you surprised to learn that her family thinks the police murdered her?  

I agree with them.  Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like.  But I've found that people who so label other people have not--or don't want to admit that they have--been subjected to abuses of power.  I know:  I was once such a person.  

Whether I'm proved right or wrong, I hope that the true story of Nizah Morris's death is disclosed, and that her family finds the peace she didn't have in those last moments of her life.

(Thanks, again, to Kelli Busey of Planetransgender.)

 

Dora Ozer Murdered In Her Home

Seven years ago, I spent almost a month in Turkey.  I hope to return one day:  There is so much art and architectural achievement, history and natural beauty there.  The food is also great, and the people are the most hospitable and friendly I've met in my travels.

Because of what I've just said about the people, it breaks my heart to read about hate violence in Turkey even more than it pains me to read of such things in other places.  But it seems that transgender people incur violence, and are killed, with alarming frequency in Turkey.

I hasten to add that at no time did I feel that I was in any danger when I was there.  Then again, having spent so much of my life in New York (parts of it in tough neighborhoods), I am alert to my surroundings and the things unscrupulous people try.  Also, I am not boasting when I say that some people--men in particular--were simply intrigued by me.  Although I was there early in my transition, some men--and I have been assured of this by some Turkish men I've met in this country--were inerested in me because I am fair-skinned, more-or-less blonde and taller than about 95 percent of the women there.  Two men engaged in unsavory behavior, but the others were gentlemanly.  

So I can't help but to think that I was lucky or something when I read about the violence against transgender women in that country.  

What makes the killing of Dora Ozer even worse is that it happened right in her home, and her body was found by her housemate.  

In spite of her killing, and others of trans people, the Turkish government says it has no plans to prosecute, let alone pass legislation against, crimes committed on the basis of sexual idenity or gender orientation.  I'd like to hold out some kind of hope but, from what I've been hearing and reading, the government is slipping into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists.  Given that Turkey has long been, arguably, the most secular Muslim-majority country, I can only fear for LGBT people in the Middle East in its neighboring countries.