A Trans Man Is Attacked: It's All About Misogyny

I realize that in this blog, I have recounted many--too many--stories about harrassment, assaults and even killings perpetrated by haters against trans women.

While we are certainly more likely to be the victims of hate crimes than other people, I don't want to give the impression that all transphobic violence is committed by cisgender men against trans women (or males who violate societal gender norms).  Indeed, too many trans men also are abused, beaten or worse by those who simply cannot abide our existence.

Yesterday, Paul Wettengel was charged with hate crimes for his alleged assault in a Boulder, Colorado bus stop last month.  His victim was a trans man.

According to a published account of the incident, a man asked Wettengel for a lighter.  Wettengel shoved him.  A third man--who would become the victim of the crimes for which Wettengel is now charged--tried to intervene by getting in between them.

Wettengel punched him in the face and, apparently realizing the victim is trans, grabbed his breasts and stomach while calling him derogatory names related to homosexuality as well as transgenderism.

The incident, if it was anything like it's been reported, shows that at the root of all transphobia (and homophobia) is misogyny.  Wettengel attacked the trans man whom he perceived as "a girl pretending to be a guy"; too many trans women are victimized because we are perceived as men who don't have the balls to live as men and who choose, instead, to be female.  Gay men are also perceived that way and similarly victimized, just as lesbians are attacked for being women who think they are men or who think they're too good for men.  

How can anyone hate women so much, knowing that we're all born from them?

Younger And More Brutally Attacked

Today is International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.  Normally, I don't care much for days dedicated to one thing or another:  I believe that we always need to be conscious of those things to which those days are dedicated.  Nonetheless, I think IDAHOT is at least a good start to help raise awareness about violence against us.

The thing is, it's not just straight and cisgender people who need their consciousness raised.  Too often, murders==let alone other kinds of violence--are ignored or given the short shrift by the LGB media and their audience unless the crimes are particularly horrific or happen in bars, clubs, other public places  or neighborhoods that are supposed to be our sanctuaries. And violence against youth is also ignored or simply missed.

To address this problem, the Trans Violence Tracking Portal was launched just last month.  Anyone can use it to report incidents of any sort of violence--from beatings to murder--against anyone who lives under the trans umbrella.  So far, it has received 102 reports of such violence since the beginning of this year. Although that is the total number received from around the world, it's far out of proportion to our percentage of the population, even when one considers that only a small percentage of such crimes are reported.  

The TVTP reports reveal something I've discussed in other posts:  the sheer brutality of attacks against trans people. It's truly disturbing to see how often trans people are shot or stabbed multiple times--often after being beaten to death, or within an inch of their lives.  A disproportionate number of us are also set afire, whether after being killed or while still alive.

Perhaps the most frightening part of the TVTP report is how often young people are attacked. Such crimes include the following:

• 8 year old boy beaten to death by father for being trans
• 14 year old strangled to death and stuffed under a bed
• Two 16 year olds were shot to death
• Three 18 year olds stabbed to death, dismembered, or shot
• Two 18 year olds murdered with no details being reported
• An 18 year old suffered two violent attacks by a mob and survived.

Reading of these atttacks, I couldn't help but to wonder whether or not I'd be alive today if I had been an "out" trans child or teenager.  I'm sure many other trans people--including some of you--are asking the same question.

Why Do We Need A Parade For Our Journeys?

Is Brazil one of the world's most progressive countries when it comes to attitudes about gender and gay rights?  Or is it a conservative Catholic country that's just another fuel shortage away from returning to the military dictatorship it endured for two decades?

According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, it's both.

As Taylor Barnes points out, drag shows were popular in Rio de Janiero during the 1950's and 1960's.  However, as we have seen, people's willingness to go to shows in which drug-addled men don garish clothes and layer crude makeup on their faces has little, if anything, to do with how much those same people would accept their children if they "came out" as gay, lesbian or transgender.  In fact, sometimes the same people who go to drag shows commit violence--whether or not it's physical--against people who don't fit their culture's gender norms.

Then, of course, there is Carnival, which may well  be the greatest concentration of men in drag as well as flamboyant gay men in the world.  (Interestingly, in celebrations like Carnival or the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, one rarely, if ever, sees women dressed as men or butch lesbians.)  And, as Barnes points out, the careers of transgender models are prospering in Brazil, perhaps more than in anywhere else in the world.

Same-sex marriage is legal in about half of Brazil's states, and laws about gender identity, while not quite as advanced as those in nearby Argentina or Uruguay, are still more in line with current knowledge about gender identity and expression than the laws in most US states.  However, those states that allow same-sex marriage are--not surprisingly--the ones that include the country's largest metropoli.  On the other hand, more rural areas still hold to their conservative beliefs (often based on the local priest's or politician's interpretation of faith) about sexuality and gender.

Now, I've never been to Brazil, so I can't tell you whether it's "better" for trans people than other places.  However, at every Transgender Day of Remembrance commemoration in which I've participated, a fair number of the victims' names we read were Brazilian.  To be fair, plenty are Americans, too.  But I can't help but to think that transgenders face as precarious a situation in Brazil as we do anywhere.

And I don't know how much things will improve if people continue to associate us with the gross misinterpretations--or perhaps unintentional parodies--of womanhood exhibited by the drag "queens" of Carnival or Mardi Gras--or, for that matter, the Pride March.  As long as we're seen that way, we are in the same situation of African Americans in the days of Sambo.

Egging The Haters On

Normally, I prefer not to write about stories, topics or concerns other transgender bloggers cover unless I have another perspective or idea to offer.

However, I am going to make an exception today. Kelli Busey's Planetransgender--one of my favorite blogs on any topic--posted about something so disturbing (but not surprising) that I simply had to mention it here.

It's one thing to overhear transphobic comments in a private conversation.  It's something else when the comments are public and directed at someone.  But it's even worse when the co-host of a Sirius XM program voices his approval of a violent hate crime committed against a transgender person:


   

Can you imagine some teenaged boy--especially one who feels under pressure to prove that he's a man--hearing that exchange?

 "There's a teen that shot a tranny after finding out that it was a man after they had a little sexual encounter." 

"I don't blame him. I would have shot his ass, too. 

 First of all, the trans woman was referred to as a "tranny" and "it". And then, of course, the co-host, essentially endorsed the violence. 

Aside from the impression it could make on young, insecure men, that conversation is also an echo of what is going through haters' minds, especially during Pride Month.  It seems that every year,  the number and viciousness of attacks against LGBT people increase as the time draws nearer to the Pride March.  

Perhaps I'm being paranoid, but I can't help but to perceive that trans people are being singled out even more than usual this year. 

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. 

Violence Against Transgenders On The Rise. Why?

Lately, I've been reading reports and editorials that indicate or imply increasing violence against transgender people.  Some people might say that these crimes are simply reported more than they have been in the past; the same claim has been made about the increasing numbers of sexual assaults and incidents of domestic violence in some areas.  However, there are some areas--particularly in the Middle East and Latin America--where even the authorities say that all forms of violence, from verbal assaults to murder, are on the rise.  In fact, seven out of every ten reported murders of transgender people occur between the Rio Grande and the Tierra del Fuego.


The easy explanations include "machismo" and Islamic fundamentalism, as if those things were definitions of Latin American and Middle Eastern society. Somehow I think there's more to the increasing incidence and brutality of crimes against transgender people.