Sanesha Stewart, a 25-year old transwoman of colour from the Bronx, was murdered on Saturday. The story is one that we’ve heard so many fucking times before: man digs woman, man discovers woman has penis, man freaks out and kills woman.
Belledame puts it well:
Because there’s nothing worse than finding out you are sexually attracted to, hell, even had fond feelings about, is there? a person whose gender and/or sex is not the gender and/or sex you are SUPPOSED to be attracted to, according to God or your parents or the lads or the Sisterhood or the feverish little rabbit running your brain. Who doesn’t understand -that-? the raw revulsion, the terror, the PANIC leading even unto VIOLENCE that such momentary existential cage-rattlings provides. It’s only human.
This bullshit myth of the deceiver claims another life. Thus, we can see that if one is a transwoman - and especially if one is a transwoman of colour, and poor to boot - simply living one’s life, and - god forbid - daring to attract the attention of a man - is enough to get you killed. And yet another case of the life of a sex worker being seen as merely disposable.
The press coverage of this is - unsurprisingly for the States - absolutely terrible. She is generally referred to by her birth name, with her actual name treated as some sort of alias, with the wrong pronouns widely used as well. It is also notable for the widespread reporting that she was a sex worker in spite of neighbours denying that this was the case - after all, if one is poor, trans, and of colour - one must be a sex worker, right?
There’s a decent thread on this over at Megan Julca’s, and Belledame’s full post is well worth reading. I’m too appalled to write anything more on this tonight.
It’s horrible. The violence in the last few weeks has really gotten to me. I was upset by all this already and then on top of it all the Lawrance King assasination occurs too. All these meaningless deaths, all this pointless violence. All the blaming the victim responses.
How to change the public perception of these crimes? How to change the focus of discussion from ‘they shouldn’t be like that, they are inviting trouble’ to ‘they should be left alone, it’s their right to dress how they want and be safe, it’s wrong to blame the victim’?
That is the problem that I’m pondering. I have to try and do something, I can’t let things like this just keep happening.