Questioning Transphobia

Man Beats Toddler to Death on Shinnecock Reservation

A 20-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter yesterday in connection to the fatal beating of a 17-month-old boy. Pedro Jones was babysitting his girlfriend’s child at the Shinnecock Indian Reservation on Sunday, and killed him “by striking him several times throughout his body with his closed fists and grabbing him by the neck,” according to court documents. When asked why, Jones said, “I was trying to make him act like a boy instead of a little girl.”

I want to say up front, we can’t possibly know whether the infant would have grown up to be trans, so I don’t think speculation or discussion along those lines will be productive. What is important is that Pedro Jones saw the possibility of a toddler who was assigned male at birth possibly growing up to be a cis gay man or a trans woman as sufficient reason to beat him violently enough to kill him. That he perceived a 17-month old child as violating expected gender role behavior and that this perceived behavior needed to be punished and eradicated.

Via Kelli Anne Busey at Planet Transgender, it appears that Luna isn’t even trying to hide his contempt for trans women and trans female people anymore and releasing Ticked Off Tr*****s With Knives on this year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Ticked Off Tra##ies to be released to coincide with theTransgender Day of Remembrance. Luna’s latest sacrilegious impiety intended to injure the living and further desecrate the memory of our transgender dead.

Film director Israel Luna apparently throwing his hands up in disgust after being protested at and turned down by one film festival after another, has opted for a early release, casting his latest failure into the cold November wind, hoping for a place in infamy but in reality simply allowing for it’s sad demise along with the other forgettable halloween spook spoofs.

It completely doesn’t surprise me that Luna would be behind or involved with yet another attempt to trample all over our dead. The first, of course, was his use of actual murdered trans women in the advertising for TOTWK.

I hope the response to this film has shown that trans women and trans female people do not exist for cis gay men’s catharsis and are not cis gay men’s cultural property.

So a story that’s going around the news this week is about Nikki Araguz, widow of firefighter Thomas Araguz. She’s also a Texan and a trans woman.

Thanks to the Christie Lee Littleton case, there’s precedent that says trans women are not and cannot be legally female or women in the state of Texas, which can be used to deny trans women spouse benefits, although this primarily seems to come up when the spouse’s family wants a legal hook to deprive a trans woman of such benefits. This isn’t the first or the last time this will happen, and as much as it makes me sick to my stomach to see yet another trans woman’s life dragged through the mud because American (and specifically Texas in this case) law is regressive and oppressive.

But I think this story touches on somewhat larger, more encompassing issues that trans people have to deal with. Thomas’ mother, for example, insists that her son didn’t know that Nikki was trans and separated from her shortly before his death, and that Nikki herself married Thomas for the money – that she’s a gold digger. Nikki, on the other hand, says that Thomas knew all along and was fine with it.

I believe Nikki’s telling the truth. I believe Thomas’ mother, Simona Longoria, is appealing to the narrative that will ultimately purchase cis sympathy for her plight. Simona’s claim makes Nikki out to be an opportunistic predator, a stealthy deceiver, a liar who wormed her way into Thomas’ life in order to not only feast on his assets while alive, but to cackle merrily on the way to the bank after his death. It is dependent upon (in addition to the Littleton precedent), painting Nikki as someone who deceived Thomas in order to not only get into his bed, but also into his life.

This is how many cis people love to paint trans women. This is how Focus On The Family and its affiliated activist groups around the country talk about trans women – they claim we’re pedophiles and rapists just waiting to catch cis women and children alone in a restroom, or that cis men will pose as trans women to do the same. This is how murderers get light sentences after they murder trans women of color – by claiming they found out she was trans and killed her in an uncontrollable rage. Even when she’s been strangled after having slept with him for months, or when she’s been shot in the back. And then they walk free to kill again.

This is how cis columnists talk about how trans people are discreditable and dishonest if we don’t admit up front that we’re trans, or at least say so within the first few dates. This is how cis people describe that having sex with a trans person who doesn’t disclose is akin to rape or exposure to STDs. Cis people, on the contrary, are never expected to disclose their transphobia and unwillingness to date a trans person on any date. Cis people never feel the urge to say, “Oh, by the way? If you’re trans, I will bash your head in with a fire extinguisher.” And yet who takes the blame?

And as much as we talk about these things, these conversations fail to convey any amount of depth about the variety of trans people’s lives. It presumes that trans people are gendered properly a significant amount of the time. It presumes that trans people who are not gendered properly are perhaps not worth talking about quite as much. It presumes that trans people who are gendered incorrectly and recognized as trans are not often almost immediately subjected to hate speech and harassment, let alone threatened or even outright assault and violence. One of my friends on livejournal routinely talks about her encounters with cis people hurling hate speech and threats at her. To these cis people, apparently her very existence is too offensive for them to bear.

And that’s what it comes down to. It’s not about honesty, it’s not about disclosure, it’s about existence. Often, cis people see trans people as unbearable and intolerable just because of who we are, where we dare to go, who we dare to talk to, who we dare to find attractive, where we dare to work, what clothes we dare to wear, which street we dare to walk down. That we dare to breathe and speak, and be present.

So the problem is never “she lied to him” or any of that nonsense. The problem is that she’s trans and tried to live like a cis person, and that’s just not acceptable.

So, if we’re going to ever have a useful conversation about disclosure? It has to start there. It can’t be a debate about when or if trans people should tell cis people that they’re trans. It can’t focus on the needs and problems of trans people with reliable passing privilege (or who are assumed to have that passing privilege). It can’t even be about disclosure because disclosure is not the problem. It has to be about the fact that transphobia is a systematic, institutionalized force, and its primary purpose is to deny us the right to exist.

Edit: Apparently, all of Nikki’s assets have been completely frozen and she’s living off charity. If you want to donate to help with her legal fees (because this case could, if appealed far enough, change precedent in Texas), you can find the information here. Thanks to Drakyn for the link, and Charlie Butler for this link that also has more explanation.

Coming the day after many trans people around the world have celebrated LGBT Pride, it’s sobering to remember that even the small gains in civil rights and social justice for which many have fought are still brutally denied to others of our community. Via email from the Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide monitoring and research project comes this disturbing news from Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia about the situation for our sisters there:

Transgender Europe’s “Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide” research project receives a lot of information on the situation of trans people worldwide. At the moment we are particularly concerned about the situation in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.

LGBT people in general have to live under extreme conditions and at the moment especially the transwomen of Ulaanbaatar are subject to physical violence, gang rapes, abductions, and death threats. They are being told that they will be killed if they continue to be who they are. The perpetrators belong to a well-organized ultranationalist group, which is protected by the police. We received all this information from the Mongolian LGBT Centre, the only group that cares for LGBT people and especially for the transwomen in Mongolia. They managed to get two transwomen out of the country after they received death threats. In February they produced a really shocking documentary.

Here is the documentary, called The Lies of Liberty, broken into three parts on YouTube, with English subtitles:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zBjKxycXWQ]

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zBjKxycXWQ

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3bhuMQutgU]

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3bhuMQutgU

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56CK_U3vjKs]

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56CK_U3vjKs

The transwoman appearing in the documentary has received a death threat after the documentary was shown. The Mongolian LGBT Centre managed to get her out of the country.

The Mongolian LGBT Centre has no funding and its activists are working voluntarily and under extreme conditions as they are threatened by the ultranationalist group, too. They already tried to abduct an activist.

I think it is absolutely important and urgent that we support them, exchange with them and include them in our networking and movement.

At present the Mongolian LGBT Centre is leading the development of non-discrimination legislation. This will be a long-term process, but it is a much-needed step forward in terms of the protection of human rights in Mongolia. Last weekend they started filming an awareness campaign for LGBT rights, using high-profile people from a range of different fields, which will be broadcasted over a series of months with accompanying informational and promotional material.

If you have any means to support them (financially, knowledge-wise, contacts etc), please do so and contact them at:

www.lgbtcentre.mn – info@lgbtcentre.mn

Thank you very much for your support!

—————

Curtsey to Carla at Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide for the heads-up

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a cis man’s violent street harassment of a woman who was waiting at a Seattle bus stop, minding her own business. Now, via KOMO News I see the case has reached the courts (minor edits for clarity):

A man charged with a hate crime for the bus stop beating of a transgender woman pleaded not guilty to the charge on Thursday.

Daniel Patrick Woodward is charged with malicious harassment in connection with the incident at the bus stop at NW Market St. and 15th Ave. NW on May 30.

According to charging documents, Woodward approached the victim, who was dressed as a woman and identifies as one, punched and kicked [her], called [her] a derogatory term for homosexual and said, “You ought to die and go to hell!”

A witness also heard disparaging comments related to the victim’s gender or sexual orientation and told police it was clear Woodward was attacking the victim because she was transgender, charging documents say.

Woodward appeared intoxicated at the time of arrest, according to police. He currently is being held on $250,000 bail at the King County Jail.

At the time of his arrest, Woodward had a no-bail felony warrant for escape. He has had numerous prior convictions, including for malicious harassment, assault, and reckless endangerment.

Breaking now; more to follow later: Neil McMillan has been found guilty of murdering Andrea Waddell and jailed for at least 22 years.

Via BBC News, Press Association and others:

A man has been found guilty of murdering a woman he visited for sex and setting fire to her Brighton flat.

Neil McMillan, 42, applied “unremitting pressure” to Andrea Waddell’s neck at her flat in Upper Lewes Road on 15 October last year.

[...]

Addressing McMillan, of Bennett Road, Brighton, after the verdict, Judge Michael Lawson QC said : “What you did that night brought to an end a life which in many views was one of relentless difficulty faced with extreme courage.”

“The person you killed was a person who always sought to overcome difficulties.”

“On the other hand, faced with a difficulty in that flat, whatever that was, you chose to take it out on her.

“You strangled her, with relentless pressure for over 20 seconds. There was the distinction between you and her.”

And he added: “Once you lost control, for whatever reason and which cannot be regarded as justified, you formed the intention to destroy her, to kill her.”

“It wasn’t an accident and you continued to hold her round her neck, crushing the neck structures until she was dead.”

“Having done that you then dragged her back into the bedroom and set fire to her and set fire to the bed on which together you had laid.”

“The reason was that you were frightened that there would be some trace of your presence in that flat to prove that in fact you were the last person to have seen her.”

[...]

Via Seattle PI and King5:

A man was charged Thursday with malicious harassment — the state’s hate crime statute — after police said he yelled a derogatory slur at a transgender woman and assaulted her.

[...]

Court documents allege the suspect, 51-year-old Daniel Patrick Woodward, told the victim she “ought to die and go to hell” after yelling the slur. [Via Seattle PI]

“The victim was waiting minding her own business when the suspect approached her and without provocation began assaulting her,” said Renee Witt, Seattle Police spokesperson. “Apparently he punched her in the face a number of times, threw her to the ground and kicked her.” [Via King5]

The Ballard victim told police she was fearful for her life and wanted to have medical attention for face and neck pain. She was taken to Ballard Swedish Hospital.

[...]

A witness who reported seeing Woodward yelling at the victim after the assault followed the suspect as he walked into a nearby store. He later pointed out the suspect to officers.

Police say Woodward was found near Northwest 54th Street and 14th Avenue Northwest and arrested for investigation of assault.

“The suspect appeared intoxicated and had a strong odor of intoxicants,” Officer Trung Nguyen wrote in an incident report. “He would not respond to my questions of whether he understood his rights.”

The victim was ashamed that someone would assault her based on gender, according to police. Nguyen photographed the victim’s injuries as evidence, and a witness said she did not fight back. [Via Seattle PI]

There’s also coverage in The Seattle Times but the misgendering by the writer, staff reporter Susan Kelleher, is pretty close to hate speech of itself, in my opinion. I realise that the police report also misgenders the victim, but I’m not convinced that is reason enough to use the kind of language that Ms Kelleher does – especially when “a police spokeswoman clarified that the victim identifies herself as a woman” [Via].

—————

Curtsey to Stefani for the heads-up

Via Primera Hora, El Nuevo Dia and EDGE Boston:

According to police reports, the body of [...] Angie González Oquendo [...] was found completely naked, gagged, hands [tied] and strangled with an electrical cord in the living room of her home [...] [Via Primera Hora and Google Translate]

[...] Angie was last seen alive [...] last Thursday [20 May] and it is suspected that [this was the] day she was murdered because “the state of decomposition of the body is compatible with that of a person carrying three to four days dead”, said Lt. Charles H. Cruz Burgos, director of Criminal Investigations Cuertpo (CIC) of Caguas. [Via El Nuevo Dia and Google Translate]

The director of the CIC of Caguas, Carlos Cruz, [said that] at the moment there are no suspects for the murder because the investigation is in preliminary stage.

The prosecutor promised to investigate the crime as a possible hate crime case of sexual orientation.

[...]

“At the slightest suspicion that a crime may have been committed by prejudice against sexual orientation or gender identity of the victim, the authorities have an obligation in law to investigate this angle of hatred”, said Pedro Julio Serrano, a spokesman for [the human rights organisation] Tod@s. [Via Primera Hora and Google Translate]

“I urge the Latino community to be united as one voice and with our personal actions reject any type of homophobia, transphobia and discrimination,” said Guillermo Chacon, president of the Latino Commission on AIDS, in a statement released shortly after news of González’s death broke. “We are one family; we must pursue the well-being of all our members. We must address homophobia and transphobia by putting a stop to the jokes, slurs, discrimination and hatred faced by our LGBT brothers and sisters, not just in Puerto Rico but across the entire country. Hatred and violence is never the answer.” [Via EDGE Boston]

Sparkindarkness has a post listing some of the horrors that have happened recently.

Depressing line up of violence and pain

These lists and links are always depressing – the more so because I know they’re only the tip of the iceberg – not a fraction of what is reported and in turn that only a fraction of the violence that happened – and continues to happen – every day.

A man in Florida has a killed his lesbian daughter’s girlfriend. Friends of the daughter have said that he hated that he did it because he didn’t like lesbians. I cannot even begin to contemplate the pain of this or the hate that would drive ytou to do such a thing.

I should be beyond  being shocked by homophobiuc violence by now, but this chilled me. the mayor of Paris has claimed that the killing of 2 men – by burying them alive – was an example of a homophobic hate crime. Buried alive? My mind refuses to go there, absolutely not.

In Scotland, openly gay teenager Jack Frew has been stabbed to death A 16 year old…

In Ipswich, UK, Rodney Greenland explains to us that he stabbed Simon Amers to death because Simon Amers touched him. The gay panic defence, again aired in the court room.

Neil McMillan is now on trial for the murder of trans woman Andrea Waddell

These are just some of the instances listed there. Go look.

via Gina in Monday’s open thread

“the history of transsexuality is a criminal one” – Viviane Namaste

Patti Shaw, a trans woman in Washington DC is suing the city for 10 million dollars after having been arrested for making a false report, then was held in a men’s prison to be sexually assaulted and harassed. From Courthouse News:

(warning: link includes obligatory repeated mentions of her assigned name.  My interpolations are in square brackets)

In a rather complicated case, Shaw says she phoned in a report that her purse had been stolen from her home one night, then found the purse, but ended up actually being robbed that night while she took her dogs out.

Shaw says in her Superior Court complaint that when officers finally responded and she told her story, a detective asked rude questions. Several days later, she says, the detective said “that he did not believe her story and he said that he was going to issue a warrant for her arrest for making a false report to a police officer.”
Shaw says she was told to turn herself in to the 6th Precinct “within a couple days or she would be arrested.”
When she did turn herself in, at 4 a.m., she says, the officers on duty learned that she [is trans]. She says they ignored her legal identification stating that she had [had SRS], and threw her in a male holding facility.

Ok, so do we have this straight?  A black trans woman makes a report that she’d lost her purse, and finds it.  Then she claims to have been robbed that same night and makes a different report.  The detectives are rude to her.  Then a couple days later, a detective decides to arrest her for making a false report, and then things get predictably ugly at the police station.

So I think there’s two parts to this story.  The first is the sheer fact of her arrest.  When the detective says that he didn’t believe her story, how is “believability” being figured in relation to her race and transness?   To be robbed the same day after making a pointless report is certainly a bit unlikely, to be sure, but not out of the realm of possibility.  Would a white cis woman be likely to be arrested with the same chain of events?  Somehow I doubt it.

Then there is the punitive nature of mobilising the law for this – she’s arrested a couple days after the interview after the detectives think about it some.  Now, did they think about the sheer facts?  Or was what they were thinking about how to arrest that trans woman they’d seen?  This is, after all, Washington DC, a locale known to search trans women suspected of being sex workers (ie all trans women) and use condoms as evidence of prostitution.  In any case, it’s hard to see how arresting her is somehow less of a drain on resources than making two reports in the same day.

The second part is what happens to her in jail.  Even though they’re aware that she’s post-op (and thus should be placed with other women), she’s placed incorrectly in a men’s holding pen, harassed by the marshals and sexually assaulted by other prisoners.  Arguably this qualifies as the “deliberate indifference” of law enforcement that the Farmer Supreme Court ruling of 1976 defines as cruel and unusual punishment in the treatment of trans prisoners.  Arguably the officers must have been aware was a fair likelihood for a trans woman housed with men.  Where were the guards, exactly?  And indeed having a woman pee in front of a bunch of men seems not only designed to humiliate, but to stimulate sexual aggression.

Prisoner sexual assault  is as Justice David Souter put it in 1976, “not part of the penalty that prisoners pay for their offenses against society.” And fuck, we’re not even talking about a convicted prisoner here, just someone accused of a crime and a fairly minor one at that.

So, my obvious conclusions.  Police officers are not there to protect us as trans women, they are as likely to be a threat.  Anecdotally, I think most of us are aware (or should be), that making reports is as dangerous as being suspected for a crime, because being on the radar of the police is not a healthy thing for a trans woman.  And–this one’s for the HBS special snowflakes–SRS does not guarantee that you will be housed correctly if you’re unlucky enough to get caught up in the criminal justice system.  And if you are housed incorrectly, things are likely to go very, very badly.

This what happens to trans women in the “justice” system. Fingers crossed Ms Shaw takes them for everything she can, cos God knows she deserves it.

ETA:  It occurs to me that one thing we’re not told by that story was how the case against Ms Shaw proceeded.  Is it still pending?  Did it go to court?  Was she convicted?  Surely any story would mention that if it was the case.  Because if there was no followthrough, it seems to me that there’s a fair chance it was basically a fit-up from the start due to a personal grudge or prejudice.