Day of Remembrance Speech

I did this speech at the Day of Remembrance last year.  I had the speech recorded and planned to put it up on youtube.  But it’s proving to be quite difficult to get it off the tape and onto a computer when the only camera you’ve got acccess to are the ones on campus but you’re not a student anymore.

Anyway, I haven’t given up on that, but I thought I’d post the text of my speech.

From the University of Oregon Transgender Day of Remembrance, November 19th, 2007:

When I sat down to prepare my speech for this event, I found myself conflicted.  In asking what I wanted to accomplish I found myself wondering at the exact purpose of this day.  Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day that virtually everyone can support.  Only the most transphobic people out there are unwilling to say that, at the very least, killing us is going too far.  This day is set aside for a moment of mourning and introspection.  Yet there are so few opportunities when trans people are given attention by the general public.  It can be tempting to capitalize on the gruesome manner in which our killers so often prefer to end the lives of trans people.  When our voices are so often lost in the deafening noise of those who simply do not care, how utterly unnecessary and hateful this violence is can shock people into sitting down and listening. 

But in that process we need to remember that our unknown victim in Jamaica was more than an unidentified male clad in female attire with gunshot wounds to the chest and lower back.  Ruby Rodriguez is more than a strangled body found naked in between Cesar Chavez and Marin streets in San Francisco.  There’s more to Thalia Mosqueda’s story than that she was shot to death.  It is difficult, however, to memorialize people who you do not know, and in some cases, can find out little about.

Yet it is important to learn what we can about each of these individuals.  And where we cannot, we must learn about that circumstances that often leads to the dangerous situations in which they died.  Ruby was well known in the San Francisco trans community.  She was involved in support groups and language classes.  Thalia’s killer initially said that he killed her after she hit on him, but a friend of hers, another trans woman, tells us that Thalia died defending her from the killer’s harassment.

Victoria Arellano was an immigrant detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and denied needed medication and medical care.  Erica Keel was involved in sex work and witnesses say that she got into a car with a man who one block later ejected her from the car and backed over her four times.  Ruby was also an immigrant and a sex worker, in fact, a disproportionate number of the people on this list are immigrants or sex workers, and almost the entire list is trans women of color.  It is this intersection of identity that leaves many so vulnerable.  There is so much societal anger abound that after Ruby’s death an anonymous caller attacked the San Francisco Chronical’s coverage because of Ruby’s trans and immigration statuses.  National radio host Michael Savage called her a “freak” and a “psychopath,” saying that “The freak[s] ought to be glad that they’re allowed to walk around.”

There doesn’t seem to be as much anger directed at transpeople who are white, male-identified, not engaged in sex work, have citizenship and/or steady, well-paying jobs.  Too many times identity politics take a “trickle-down” approach to social justice.  With this approach, only one identity is dealt with at a time, and the agenda is set by those who are privileged in every other category.  By empowering rich white gay men as well as rich straight men of color, the benefits supposedly trickle down to everyone else as well.  It’s not hard to see how social justice, like economics, doesn’t work this way.

An alternative is a “flood up” approach to social justice.  Where we focus on those who are at the intersections of the most forms of oppression and have the least privilege.  Working to improve the lives of gender variant and trans people of color whose source of income or immigration status may be in question will leave resounding echoes in the institutions of racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, classism, and xenophobia and impact a wider range of people.  Looking at this list year after year it is clear that any other approach will not even touch the surface of how these people lived and died.

To address this, I want to talk about four topics that are very interconnected and shape the lives of many trans people: employment discrimination, health care, sex work, and law enforcement.

Getting a job can be difficult for anyone these days.  But when you are visibly trans, a significant number of opportunities become completely closed to you.  Accurate identification often carries surgery requirements and sometimes just can’t be obtained.  That leaves trans people without accurate identification the choice to be outed in their job application or to work as undocumented workers.  Being turned down from one job based on discrimination is one thing, but many trans people find themselves unemployable, when job after job after job refuses to consider them for employment.  A 2006 study by the Transgender Law Center found that 35%, roughly a third, of transpeople were unemployed.  Additionally, 57% had experienced employment discrimination in some form.  This is the kind of thing that can radically change people’s lives

I remember when I went to school on this campus and I was just beginning to come out.  I made a friend who was also just coming out and beginning her transition.  She worked in the Clark Honor’s College departmental office at the time.  She decided to come out to her boss and the next day she was fired.  Being in mid-transition is the worst time to find yourself without a job.  Especially for transwomen, it means an extra level of visibility and many employers would rather just not deal with the impact that has on customers. 

For six months she tried to get a job and failed.  After volunteering for the local feminist bookstore for a while she applied for an opening.  Now Mother Kali’s has been a good resource for many transpeople, but it wasn’t always that way.  Word got back to her that the reason she wasn’t given that job was because she had “male energy.”  And during this whole time she was dealing with the aftermath of an abusive relationship that left her isolated.  Her lease was expiring and without an income she couldn’t renew it.  So she had to move back to her home town where there were more friends she could couch surf with.  She was a promising Political Science student but had no other choice but drop out because she couldn’t survive in Eugene.  For a while she lost access to phone or internet and we lost touch.  Unfortunately, I haven’t heard from her in almost three years and I don’t have any idea how she is doing.

Not only are trans people more often un- or under-employed, but we often have higher living expenses as well.  Transition costs money.  There often are expenses for a new wardrobe, breast forms, binders, laser hair removal or electrolysis, hormones, doctor’s visits, blood work, and surgeries.  Quite often you just don’t have the money to do everything on schedule.  Not even thinking about surgery for a moment, I’ve seen many friends skip a needed laser session or even stop their hormones in order to meet their rent.  Unfortunately, doing so can send someone right back into the space of being a highly visible trans person which can lead to more harassment on the job and a more difficult time finding work – not to mention the impacts it can have on self esteem to feel like you’re going backwards.

This brings us to the topic of health care.  This year there are two people on this list who died from being denied medical care.  There are certainly plenty of bigoted doctors who simply refuse to provide medical care for freaks like us.  However, there are plenty of well meaning doctors who are simply hesitant to provide care for someone whose biology they weren’t taught about it medical school.  In most cases, treating trans people is just like treating non-trans people.  Cancer is cancer, AIDS is AIDS.  Nonetheless, it can sometimes become very difficult to find doctors willing to treat trans people.

Additionally, trans people often need to seek medical assistance for our transitions.  This trans-specific medical care is something that many capable doctors may flat out refuse to do or might do only after you have satisfied their own personal set of requirements to prove that, yes, you are really trans.  There are some trans people who opt to go with black or gray market hormones and self-medicate as opposed to working with doctors who require they act and behave in restrictive views of the proper manner for someone of their gender.  This can be dangerous too, as you never know what you’re getting when you obtain unregulated medications, and without proper dosing and bloodwork there are a myriad of risks you are put at.

When I was seeking a doctor to help me through this process, I found only two that regularly do it in Eugene.  And while I applaud them both for being willing to help a community in need, they both needed a lot more education.  The doctor I went to had less medical knowledge on the subject than most of my friends.  She proscribed a full dose of a new medication – something you’re not supposed to do – and then confusing it with a different type of medication she told me to do the exact opposite of what was needed for my diet, and had I followed her advice it would have caused a state of hyperkalemia which induces heart attacks and comas.  It was only idle chat with a self-medicating friend who took the time to educate herself about hormone replacement therapy that saved me from a potentially fatal mistake.

Even when trans people do have access to adequate medical care, both private insurance and state health coverage like OHP have trans exclusion clauses.  These make certain that all transition and related care is paid for out of pocket, but overzealous claims administrators have used them to deny trans people virtually every kind of medical care.  In one extreme instance a trans woman who broke her arm while playing in a lesbian softball league could not get her treatment covered because her insurance claimed that she wouldn’t have been playing in the league in the first place if she hadn’t transitioned.

All of these costs come together and many people just can’t foot the bill.  In this circumstance, it can be easy to get into sex work, and sometimes that’s the only option.  When everyone else might as well be hanging signs that say “Trans people need not apply” the sex industry is posting wanted ads for trans women.  Because it’s mostly under the table, it’s an accessible job for immigrants without documentation.  Even when it’s not the only option, it can be tempting.  At minimum wage, it can take upwards of 3,000 hours to earn enough for surgery – and that’s between the hours you work for your living expenses.  Working as a prostitute you can raise that same amount in just over 100 hours.  At least one friend of mine has seen this as her only real option for financing surgery.  When I got into the sex industry I was working a quarter-time tutoring job that I found quite fulfilling.  But an offer to make more than a month’s wages in an hour and a half photoshoot was compelling.

Additionally, in a twisted way trans women are valued in the sex industry.  Despite the objectification and exotification, it can feel good to finally be desired for who you are instead of hated for it – even if it’s under non-ideal circumstances.  I’m not the only one who noticed that while my coworkers, classmates, and queer allies struggled to get my pronouns right, those I encountered in the sex industry never got them wrong for a second.

One of the things about the sex industry, though, is that the working conditions change drastically depending on your individual resources and need.  I have another job so I don’t have a problem just doing the occasional photoshoot, but if sex work is your primary income, it’s almost impossible to get enough work to support yourself that way.  And working as a prostitute, if you have enough money than you can hire security, if you don’t then you’re on your own.  If you’ve got a computer, internet and money for a pre-paid cell phone then you can pick up clients virtually, otherwise you might have to work the street.  If you’ve got a house and rent money already, then you can trust your instincts and turn down a client that creeps you out.  If you’re homeless or need that rent money by the end of the week, you might be willing to compromise your safety to get a place to stay for the night.

Because of the economic factors, a lot of trans women do become involved in sex work.  Yet media representations of trans women put even more of an emphasis on the connection.  It gets to the point where some people seemingly forget that trans women ever do anything else.  There are countless stories of trans women just minding their everyday business get propositioned by random strangers who read them as trans and assumed that they’re a prostitute.  Unfortunately, the police often buy into this same assumption and profile trans women as sex workers.  That means that trans women are often harassed by police about sex work, and that is worse if they are homeless, a person of color, or don’t speak English well and are already being harassed for that.  And trans women who are involved in sex work are disproportionately likely to be caught because of this targeting by law enforcement.

Being caught by police can mean a wide variety of things.  Sometimes we’re talking about legal consequences.  And even a small conviction can be devastating because it makes it that much harder to get a job outside of the sex industry and also many insurance companies will refuse to cover people with prostitution convictions.  And then we’re talking about employment and health care again. 

But not all consequences are legal.  There are many times where law enforcement officers see sex workers as easy sources of sex.  They might justify their actions in terms of sexual favors in exchange for leniency, but sex by coercion is rape.  Police hold real power over sex workers and “have sex with me or I’ll ruin your life” is little better than “have sex with me or I’ll kill you.”  Whether by coercion or physical force, police rape sex workers pretty regularly.  A 2002 Chicago-based study of women in the sex trade found that 30% of exotic dancers and 24% of street based sex workers who had been raped identified a police officer as the rapist.

Consequences like these can instill a community fear of law enforcement.  I have not been raped or assaulted by police, but I know people who have been.  And I’ll admit that I’ll hesitate to call police even when I’m the victim of a crime.

Christina Sforza is a perfect example of why so many of us are afraid to call the police.  She was at a McDonalds in New York where the men’s room was out of order.  Because she was just beginning to transition she asked the staff if it would be okay if she used the women’s room and they said everyone was using the women’s room that day.  But when she went in, the manager came after her with a led pipe, knocked out several teeth and beat her while the McDonalds customers crowded around chanting “Kill the faggot, kill the faggot.”  Her friend called the police.  When they arrived they refused to talk to her, only talking to the manager.  Then they arrested her without telling her why and forced her to leave her insulin behind.  They put handcuffs on her so tight that they had to take her to the hospital to have them removed.  After her arrest she went back to the police station to file a complaint against the officers who arrested her.  She was told that if she filed it they would arrest her for filing a false complaint.

Part of being trans means that if you ever find yourself being attacked, you need to calculate whether calling the police will help or hurt you.  That hesitation can mean the difference between life and death.  And so can having the wrong officer respond to your call.  In many of the unsolved murders of trans people, the community and friends of the victim suspect that a police officer was involved in the killing.

This suspicion is furthered when law enforcement frequently dismisses cases of violence against trans people.  When Erica Keel was killed, both witnesses and the responding officer’s handwritten log indicate that it was a hit and run.  However, police officials insist that there was no criminal intent and refuse to press charges or even conduct an investigation.  When friends of Erica, who are also trans, questioned police officials about the classification of Erica’s death as an “accident,” they were asked to disclose their birth names and were told they were “trying to make something out of nothing.”

Many of the systems built into law enforcement harm trans people.  In trying to place trans people into gender segregated facilities officials rely on the notion that external perspectives hold more legitimacy than trans people’s own self-determiniation.  This approach ensures that law enforcement learns to think of trans people as deceptive and not worth listening to.  In Portland a trans woman was arrested while participating in protests of the beginning of the Iraq war.  She was separated from other protesters because of her trans status and strip searched to “verify” her gender.  She had undergone the same treatment in previous arrests and pleaded with officers to check the records instead of stripping her naked again.   They chose to proceed anyway.

The placement of trans prisoners is often based on ID and documentation of their gender.  However, the people most likely to come in contact with the law enforcement are less likely to have the privileges and resources to obtain accurate ID.  Governor Kulongoski signed an executive order last Friday which denies undocumented immigrants the opportunity to get a driver’s license.  Policies that rely on documentation won’t be applicable in those cases. 

For any women, being placed in a male prison is extremely dangerous and there’s no exception for trans women.  It’s not just prisoners that perpetrate violence against trans women, but guards often participate or purposefully allow violence to happen.  The horrors of this treatment was recently brought to the public eye last August when a non-trans woman in Washington D.C. was thought to be trans and put in a men’s facility.  They had strip searched her, but based on her androgynous appearance they assumed that she was a trans woman who had had genital surgery, and just like with trans people, her pleas for mercy were ignored.  The police later apologized profusely for the mistake but both the police and the media focused on how horrible it was to treat a non-trans woman like a trans women.  Such treatment was seen as nothing but cruel and unusual for a non-trans woman, but police saw nothing wrong with perpetuating the same violence against trans women regularly.

In addition to other violence, trans prisoners are regularly denied access to hormones and medication.  Despite a consensus among the medical community that such treatments are medically necessary, the prevailing attitude among prison officials is that they ought to be denied.  This creates an attitude where the medical needs of trans people are not considered important.  This is part of why the police left Christina’s insulin behind when they arrester her, and it is very much this attitude that was enacted when Victoria Arellano was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  She was in the middle of taking anti-biotics for pneumonia.   The San Pedro detention facility denied her medication even though it’s widely known the result of stopping anti-biotics before they have finished results in developing a drug resistant strain.  Her pleas for treatment went ignored.  She was eventually given AIDS medication, but nothing was done for her pneumonia and meningitis.  She died shackled to her bed.

She had effectively been sentenced to death for the crime of existing in places that others didn’t want her to be in.  Yet when it comes to both national and gender borders, we didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed us.  Her placement in a men’s facility named San Pedro underscores that.

Sometimes all of this can be too much.  At this time of year I read story after story of violence, hatred, and people who were for a variety of reasons, considered disposable.  Sometimes it’s important to take a break and just feel.  Feel pain.  Feel anger.  Feel frustration.  And when I’m ready to immerge from the world of despair, I can always find a glimmer of hope.  Inside each story alongside the violence I also find community, support, and love.  Thalia died trying to defend her friend from anti-trans violence.  Erica’s friends are not giving up and are fighting the police to open an investigation.  And when Victoria was housed in a male detention center, the other detainees cared for her when the officials turned their back on her.  They stayed by her side, administering cold compresses to help bring down her fever.  When she was too weak to move herself they took turns helping her to the bathroom.  And despite the uncertainty of their own future, 70 of them signed a petition asking for her to receive medical care.  After her death, dozens of organizations, queer organizations, immigration organizations, race organizations, AIDS organizations, health care organizations, and human rights organizations, all came together to protest.  And in an open letter to those in charge of the facility and up the chain of command they listed several demands to ensure that abuses like this do not continue.

Tonight we focus on the stories that don’t end well.  I like to remind myself that there are many more stories that are close calls, where someone stood up, where law enforcement protected us instead of preyed on us, stories that might be dark but end well.  And there are stories that are victories.  This past year Oregon passed a gender identity non-discrimination policy.  Despite opposition from the Human Rights Campaign, 360 queer organizations stood up and demanded a similar policy federally.  Activists are pushing for decriminalization of sex work that reduces the penalties placed on this survival crime.  Coalitions are forming to push back on anti-immigrant policies like Kulongoski’s recent executive order and the Shuler-Tancredo bill.  And throughout everything, the stories that don’t end well and those that do, there is community.  People coming together, supporting each other, speaking up, and making change.  Through everything the message is clear, we may die, but we will never be silent, and we will never stop helping each other.