Trans Lives Matter

The other day, MTV news ran a story, written by Katie Speller entitled, 6 Transgender Women Have Been Murdered in 2015 And No One Is Talking About It".

The title says it all.  I wrote about two of them--Penny Proud and Taja DeJesus--in this blog. They were the two I heard about.  If I do say so myself, I follow the news of crimes against transgender people a bit more closely than the average person.  So, even though I'd only heard of two out of the six victims, that's still two more than 99.9 percent of other people knew about.

I will follow the lead of MTV news and post the photos of each of the victims.  Remember:  They are all someone's sister, daughter, granddaughter, niece, friend and possibly girlfriend.

Here is Ty Underwood, who was shot to death in North Tyler, Texas on 26 January:


 

Five days later, on the 31st, Yazmin Vash Payne was fatally stabbed in Los Angeles:


 

The following day, the month of February began with Taja DeJesus being stabbed to death in a San Francisco stairwell:


 
 

On the 10th of this month, Penny Proud was shot to death in New Orleans:

 
 

Five days later--the day after Valentine's Day--Kristina Gomez Reinwald was found dead in her Miami home.  Originally her death was ruled a suicide, but it is now being investigated as a homicide:

 

Then, on the 17th, Lamia Beard was shot to death in Norfolk, VA.  As happens too often, the local media misidentified her gender.

 

Lamia's death made me think of the slogan "Black Lives Matter".  It's so good and righteous that we should appropriate it:  Trans Lives Matter.

Safer, But Not For Trans People

Mayor Mike Bloomberg, in seemingly every speech he makes, reminds his listeners that New York is "the safest big city in America."

I have lived in The Big Apple for a long time.  I don't doubt that it is much safer than it was, say, 25 years ago--at least, if you're in the right neighborhoods.  And, I might add, if you're the right race and socioeconomic class--and gender.  Or, more precisely, if you express your gender identity in approved ways.

While overall crime rates may indeed be dropping, the amount of violence against transgender people is on the rise--in New York and everywhere else.

While New York City recorded fewer murders in 2012 than it did in any of the past 50 years, and the murder rate may be decreasing in other cities and countries, the number of murdered transgendered people has increased:  from 162 in 2009 to 179 in 2010 and 221 in 2011. That's an increase of 10 percent from 2009 to 2010, and of nearly 25 percent for the following year.

Now, some could argue that more such crimes are being reported, just as there is evidence that some of the reported decrease in overall crime can be explained through re-classification (or, in some cases, non-reporting) of some offenses.  However, whenever I talk to trans people--trans women, especially--and people whose work involves helping us, I hear more stories about violence and more fear of it.  

While many people are learning more about us and realizing that we're not child molesters or drag queens in overdrive, and accepting us, there's another segment of the population that makes us the butt of jokes or the scourge of society.  An unattractive woman is compared to a "tranny"; an angry, frustrated cis woman tried to cloak her transphobia in a defense of women.

As long some continue to accept such bigotry, the world will not become a safer place for trans people.