Burning Words

And the bad news.

Kellie Telesford’s murderer has been acquitted, despite the most ludicrous transphobic defence I’ve ever heard - that, completely out of fucking left field, she had really died in some sort of kinky sex act. This was, of course, on the basis that trans people are weird and just dig that kind of thing, despite a complete lack of any actual evidence to suggest that theory.

Nothing about this defence made the most remote vestige of actual sense, and yet Kellie Telesford’s murderer has been able to walk free because she was trans. This is evil.

Later edit: Or what Em said.

Tags: hate crimes, trans, trans panic defences

I’ve been mentally putting together a post about a host of things - ‘trans panic’ defences, ‘deception’, victim blaming, and all the issues that’ve been swirling around my head in the wake of the Angie Zapata murder.

I’m not quite there yet, but there’s been a few excellent things written over the last couple of days, however, making some really excellent, and sometimes overlooked points when we’re talking about transphobic hate crimes. I put them here so I won’t forget as much as anything else, but they’re posts that really need to be read.

Brownfemipower:

So why is it just a given that “it”-that the dehumanization of Zapata-is not necessarily intertwined with and dependent upon her identity as a Latina? That is, would the panic defense be so easy to get away with if Angie wasn’t Latina? Would she be so easy to turn into “it” if we U.S. citizens weren’t already perfectly aware that Latin@s are people who could “trick” us if we aren’t careful? Even more to the point, would it have been so easy to kill Angie Zapata if she weren’t a Latina living in a country that actively criminalizes and dehumanizes people who look, sound, and have names similar to Angie’s?

Holly:

Seriously, don’t let anyone sell you the usual line that “oh, she tricked him and then he freaked out and killed her.” For one thing, even if that was the case, the appropriate reaction is not to kill someone. But more importantly, it’s often totally fabricated. But everyone just believes it because it’s so “plausible.” It’s the entire audience of listeners to these stories that need to wise up.

There’s also been quite a few people making the point that if you transfer the ‘deception’ bullshit so often used to blame trans murder victims for their own deaths into basically any other context, it just doesn’t make any sense at all.

Though I’m so unsurprised that even in these circumstances, some “feminist” folks can’t resist using our dead for a good old rhetorical debate: witness the turning of the Shakesville thread into a big ol’ debate about genderqueer pronouns. Ugh.

Tags: hate crimes, trans

Two weeks ago, Angie Zapata, a 20-year old trans woman from Colorado, was brutally murdered, murdered for merely existing. It’s a story we’ve heard all too many times in this community: a young life snuffed out because some utter scumbag freaked out and decided that she deserved to die for his insecurities.

Her killer, Allen Ray Andrade, was arrested by Weld County police on Tuesday. It’s chilling how low the bar is when trans women are murdered - that I’m actually surprised that an arrest has been made and first-degree murder charges (with hate crime enhancement) levelled at Andrade - instead of dismissing her life as disposable and refusing to investigate, as occurred with the likes of Erica Keel and so many others. Even then, the prejudice levelled at her was clear and apparent, with the local police chief (even while initiating a fair prosecution) making remarks to the media about Zapata’s “lifestyle” being responsible for her death. It’s a disgrace that it’s actually an improvement that about half the media actually made an effort to respect Zapata’s name, gender and pronouns, presumably because she couldn’t be painted as a sex worker and her family was very vocal in respecting her identity. Still, the wall of shame included such names as the Associated Press (in violation of their own printed guidelines) and ABC News, and some of the outlets that did ultimately use the right language had to be kicked into it by Monica Roberts.

We can now wait for the inevitable ‘trans panic’ defense at the trial of Andrade, the piece of shit who charmingly referred to Zapata as ‘it’ at every opportunity when interviewed by police. It makes me burn with anger that someone being offended at our existence can still be still routinely treated as a defense to murder, or at least as a path to lower charges. It’s comforting that the Weld County police seem to be holding the line so far, but I’m not optimistic about the odds of finding a non-transphobic jury.

How many years will it take, I wonder, to see legislation comprehensively banning that particular defense, just as we’re starting to see with the related “gay panic” defense in parts of the US? For until that day, and for as many years as that takes, our lives will always be less valued under the law, and there will never be justice for our dead. And when twenty or thirty people in our community are being murdered in hate crimes in the United States alone every year, it sends the chilling message that any of us might well be next.

Tags: hate crimes, media, police, trans

These are bad days.

Four trans and gender variant people - Sanesha Stewart, Lawrence King, Cameron McWilliams and Simmie Williams - are dead in less than fifteen days, two of them startlingly young. Four lives cut short so much before their time because they dared to exist. Four more names added to the already long rolls of the Days of Remembrance. I’m terrified to think of how many more will be there before November rolls around.

I’ve been struggling to find words for a while now. The everyday news, the small victories, the work when it can be done - this all pales in comparison something like this, the sharp reminder that there are people out there for whom our very humanity is so terrifying that we need to die. It’s another reminder to all of us that it could be me next time, that it could be my face in the tabloids with the wrong name, wrong pronouns and tawdry examination of my wardrobe, or to simply disappear, as it is now suggested may have happened to Gabrielle Pickett, sister of previously murdered transwoman Chanelle Pickett. It’s impossible to escape this hate. I have known too many people who have experienced terrible things for daring themselves. I think about the people I’ve known over the years that have simply disappeared. For this community, the bar of what makes one lucky is so much lower.

I’ve been absorbing myself in the day-to-day things of late, a new job and a new academic year. It’s just - there’s nothing that could be said that’ll make a difference on this one. No amount of law reform will bring these people back. little light made a post in her typically beautiful style a couple of weeks ago trying to find some semblance of hope in times like these:

In the end, it’s still better to light a candle than curse the darkness, even in the face of a darkness that viciously extinguishes candle after candle, light after light, because it has to be done. And we can do it together, we can stop this erasure, we can stop this sacrilege, we can stop losing more and more family, until maybe we can put down the nausea and see the dead waiting for us to pull it together and give them reason to rest.

I wish I had that belief, that sense that an end to this systemic murder and abuse was possible. One tries where it is possible, and perhaps makes a drop in that ocean, but after weeks like these, I fear that we’ll be seeing our sisters and brothers killed for many years to come yet.

Tags: hate crimes, trans

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.

Tags: hate crimes, racism, sex work, trans, violence