Questioning Transphobia

The TGEU’s Trans Murder Monitoring project has issued a press release confirming that 116 reported murders of trans people have been registered since the start of this year.

The September 2011 update reveals a total of 681 cases of reported killings of trans people from January 1st 2008 to September 25th 2011. A high number of killings since the IDAHOT TMM update in May 2011 and additional cases discovered for the period of the last three years confirms earlier reports on the continuously elevated level of deadly violence against trans people on a global scale. The most recent registered murder occurred on September 25th in Turkey, in the Istanbul district of Başakşehir.

Our newly updated interactive map visualises a great portion of the 681 reported murders of trans people. For each case, details regarding name, age, location, cause of death, circumstances of the killing and a follow-up are shown where available. You can find this map here:

http://www.transrespect-transphobia.org/en_US/tvt-project/tmm-results/all-tmm-reports-since-2008.htm

[...]

In the first nine months of 2011, 116 reported murders of trans people have been registered. Sadly, from 1 January to 29 September 2011, the TMM already registered 116 murders in 23 countries, with the majority in Brazil (29), Mexico (22); Columbia (10), Venezuela (11) the USA (7) as well as Argentina, Honduras, Guatemala, Philippines, and Turkey (4). Further murders have been reported in Bolivia, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Panama, Poland, Puerto Rico, and Russia. These are only preliminary results, and the numbers are likely to grow even larger during the course of the year.

In total, the preliminary results show 681 reports of murdered trans people in 50 countries since January 2008. Cases have been reported from all six major World Regions (Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Europe, North America, and Oceania), evoking an ever more gruesome picture, especially given the very partial knowledge we are able to gain in many places.

Most reported cases are from Central and South America, which amount to 533 cases and account for 80 per cent of the globally reported homicides of trans people since January 2008. Killings of trans people have been reported from 21 Central and South American countries. 53 homicides of trans people were furthermore reported in 12 Asian countries, 46 homicides in North America, 43 homicides in 10 European countries, 4 in Oceania and 2 in Africa.

[...]

Yet, we know, even these high numbers are only a fraction of the real figures; the truth is much worse. These are mainly the reported cases, which could be found through Internet research. In most countries, data on murdered trans people are not systematically produced and it is impossible to estimate the numbers of unreported cases.

As has become the custom, the TMM will issue a further, more detailed update before 20 November (the International Transgender Remembrance Day [TDOR]).

The full press release may be downloaded as a 2-page PDF here

Vek Lewis let me know about this film screening at Sydney University on Tuesday September 13th at 5:30pm.  There’s a poster here.

Presented by Prof Raewyn Connell, sociologist and gender studies scholar in
conjunction with SURCLA and Colectivo Mujer

Translatina
Luis Felipe Degregori, 2010,90 mins, [Spanish, English Subtitles]

Synopsis
Translatina paints an alarming and enlightening portrait of the realities
faced by transgender persons in Latin America, a group very affected by the
HIV epidemic. This 90-minute documentary is the result of three years of
production, more than 100 hours of filming, and interviews with people from
15 nationalities and provides a realistic look at the challenges faced by
transgender persons in accessing education, work, justice, health care, and
other basic services.

When: Tuesday 13 September, 5.30pm

Where: Carslaw Lecture Theatre 273, University of Sydney

SURCLA http://sydney.edu.au/arts/spanish_latin_american/surcla/index.shtml
Colectivo Mujer

http://en-gb.facebook.com/people/Colectivo-Mujer/100002167126617

And incites violence against them. This definitely happens in the comments

As it’s become clear that the “WBW” policy is no longer a policy, trans women have begun attending MichFest openly. In response, that repository of anti-trans hate speech – GenderTrender (not going to link) – has posted pictures and real names of four trans women for the purposes of harassing them and possibly inciting violence.

labelle77 on Livejournal wrote a post that covers this fairly thoroughly, as well as WordPress’ unwillingness to enforce their own TOS:

This is a letter I’m going to send off, and link to, and hopefully broadcast in an attempt to get WordPress to take action to enforce their own Terms of Service.  Please feel free to link, repost, forward, mail and any other spreading of the word you can do.  ♥

While the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (MWMF) is an event you may or may not usually concern yourself with, I wanted to bring to your attention an appalling violation of transwomen’s privacy and safety that is happening in conjunction with the festival right now, and the refusal of blog website WordPress to take any action to enforce their terms of service and protect a vulnerable population from harassment or worse.

I’ve never attended or really even cared about MWMF myself, but was aware from friends who have gone that there has been an ongoing controversy regarding the attendance of transwomen. There are many transwomen who love to go and bond with other women. There’s also a faction of MWMF attendees that feel the festival should be free of all persons born with penises and open to “womyn born womyn” only.

I don’t really want to get into the body-parts-based admission policies of the MWMF, however. What really disgusts me is a blog post related to this topic on the blog GenderTrender. (I’m not publicly linking to it in order to refrain from compromising the privacy of these women further). I find the post hateful in so many ways, the least of which is actually the blogger’s only “womyn-born-womyn” stance on the controversy. No, what is really disgusting is what she feels her opinion entitles her to do.

This blog post outs several transwomen with both pseudonyms AND legal names, their photos, where they can be found at the festival, and in some cases their profession and employment. Being on this “hitlist” of transwomen was not consented to by any of them, and it associates them with accusations of volatile behavior that the author has absolutely no proof any of them participated in. The blogger refuses to use female pronouns and asserts that these women, who live in one of the most marginalized segments of our society, are “chest pounding” and trying to assert male privilege in invading a womens’ space – as if people who’ve survived gender dysphoria and live outside of our binary ideas of gender have any male privilege to speak of. I can’t even fathom the kind of vulnerability and violation these women must feel. They’re now at risk for ongoing harassment from MWMF-goers, both online and in person at any future fests, and at risk of harassment and potentially violence from any other hateful person that happens to stumble on that post.

The blogger is also putting these people in possible professional peril – at least one woman is listed by both her legal name, profession, and business name AND by the stage name she uses as an actress in (feminist-award-winning, actually) adult films. Suddenly, anyone who googles her in a professional capacity becomes immediately aware of her other work, without any consent from her.

I know there are several people, myself included, that reported to WordPress this gross violation of privacy AND the WordPress Terms of Service, which states “By making Content available, you represent and warrant that…the Content does not contain threats or incite violence towards individuals or entities, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party.” (http://en.wordpress.com/tos/)

Everyone who has made a report to WordPress received a single paragraph canned reply that states:

“WordPress.com is in no position to arbitrate disputes or make judgment on such claims. As per http://en.support.wordpress.com/disputes/, please provide us with a Court Order including a court’s decision regarding this particular content; if any content is found to be defamatory or illegal by a court of law, it will be removed immediately from our service. Any court order, should you obtain one, must be sent to the following e-mail address:court-orders@wordpress.com”

Even more than I was outraged at the blogger herself, I’m outraged at WordPress. Absolutely they have the ability and the RESPONSIBILITY to enforce their terms of service. Absolutely they can tell a blogger she must remove photos used without permission. Absolutely they can insist that a blogger cannot out members of vulnerable minority without consent. They DO NOT have to wait for a court of law to enforce their own Terms of Service.

Because WordPress seems flatly uninterested in taking any action to protect these women, I thought I’d write to you. A good old-fashioned media shaming campaign might possibly make them take a hard look at their terrible policies of doing absolutely nothing to protect a vulnerable population and shirking their responsibility to ensure that their terms of service are followed..

Thank you for your time.

autumn59 comments:

…”Types Of Blogs” page that addresses this kind of behavior too:

“Personal attack blogs: Blogs with the primary purpose of attacking an individual or group of individuals are not welcome on WordPress.com. We have a particularly low tolerance for anonymous bloggers who make personal attacks without standing by their words with their real name.”

I’ve reported the blog in question to WordPress myself prior to reading your commentary — WordPress seems a little slow to address reports about their attack blogs.

Unfortunately, it seems that as these trans misogynist radical feminists become less relevant and their views are increasingly viewed as toxic, they become more vicious in their attacks.