Disposable People

Last night I gave this speech at Day of Remembrance, addressing the way trans identity, race, gender, immigration, sex work, and police brutality have all become major factors in anti-trans killings.

Every year we take this time to review the losses our community has faced.  And each year it feels like a slam in the gut.  In an attempt to make sense out of it all, we try to put the pieces together.  It seems so senseless, but part of why it is so prevalent is that to many people, trans people are the most sensible victims to choose. We are looking at the result of a society that treats certain people as disposable.

Don’t fool yourself, it’s not just trans people that we are talking about.  We’re talking about undocumented immigrants, the homeless, sex workers, people of color, women.  And this year as with every year, the trans people on this list are many if not most or all of the above.

The fact is, if you’re going to kill someone and want to get away with it, a trans woman of color doing sex work is your best bet.  I can only imagine that’s what Terron Oates was thinking two years ago the night he brought an illegally owned gun along with him to a strip club and cruised the streets known as an area to pick up trans sex workers. 

He later claimed that he didn’t know that Alexis King was trans, that she grabbed his hand and placed it on her genitals, and that in a panic, he shot her.  Despite the facts in disagreement – she was shot from behind, not the front, and paramedics testified that her genitals were firmly tucked away – this year he was convicted only of voluntary manslaughter.

It’s a common enough story.  When Angie Zapata was killed this year, her killer Allen Ray Andrade claimed that she never told him that she was trans when they met on a date.  According to his story, when he became suspicious of her body, he grabbed her crotch – an action generally considered sexual assault when the woman isn’t trans – then went into a rage.  He later told his girlfriend that “gay things had to die,” and that he “killed it.”  However, we later found out from Angie’s sisters that she was very careful to always disclose her trans status to dates.  It seems Andrade’s story is a lie.

All of us need to learn – and truly internalize – that the reason we hear so many cases like this is not because trans women are such bad judges of character, nor is it that calm and reasonable people generally respond to someone’s disclosure of trans status with murderous rage.  We hear these stories so often for one simple reason, because these killers are very aware that telling stories like these are likely to significantly reduce their sentences.

Whenever people don’t understand a crime, there is a tendency to simply call it horrid and set it aside.  It’s unthinkable, so don’t think about it.  But we’d be doing a disservice to the dead if we simply cast aside the monsters and ignored the circumstances that allowed them to act.

Earlier this summer, Duanna Johnson was beaten by the police while in custody.  One officer James Swain held her down while officer Bridges McRae maced her then beat her with handcuffs wrapped around his fist.  Other jail employees witnessed the event but did nothing to intervene.  It sent a clear message.  She’s black, trans, probably arrested for suspicion of sex work, and all that put together meant that she was obviously disposable.

When she complained, at first the police force refused to do anything about it.  It was only when video footage of the beating was leaked to the internet that they took action and fired the two officers.  And it was only yesterday, months after the fact, that charges were filed. 

Duanna filed a lawsuit against the city, and with the surveillance video footage, she had a good case.  That is, until she was killed, execution style, by three unknown people.  Just 11 days ago.  She was the third black trans woman killed in Memphis in as many years.

The police have claimed that they have no suspects and no motive, but I think the reality is that they have no interest in solving the case.  They didn’t respond to the assault until the video was made public.  They didn’t arrest McRae until after she was killed.  What reason should we have that they will act now?  Considering that Duanna Johnson’s death just saved the Memphis Police Department $1.3 million dollars, it’s not too hard to see how they might have a conflict of interests.

It’s no wonder that the police aren’t exactly trusted by the trans community.  We shouldn’t forget Aimee Wilcoxson who isn’t on this list but died last Thursday.  Her friends, including the person who found her, have reason to believe it was murder.  However, the police are insisting that it was a suicide with a flimsy story that contradicts evidence her friends have collected.

I could go on and on.  There are dozens of stories here –  where police have excused these murderers, where police have refused to investigate these crimes, and where the trans community suspects the police were involved in committing the murders themselves.  In fact, law enforcement agents themselves make up one of the largest sources of anti-trans harassment and violence. Consider the case of Elly Susanna who, while doing outreach to promote the Day of Remembrance last year, was arrested by Indonesian police who then gang-raped her and drowned her.  Or Ali and two others, who earlier this year were arrested, humiliated, and executed by US-backed Iraqi police just for being trans.  And if you think that’s just something that happens elsewhere, Amnesty International put together a report about all the human rights abuses of trans people by U.S. law enforcement agents.

Unfortunately, the attention the issue of violence against trans people gets is minimal.  Even in LGBT organizations, trans issues are consistently overshadowed by “more important” issues. 

When our organizations do address anti-trans violence, the only action offered is the passage of hate crimes legislation.  However, hate crimes sentencing enhancements only gives more power to a system we already know has anti-trans and racist leanings.

Sentencing enhancements won’t get police to investigate crimes they don’t take seriously to begin with.  They won’t stop police from harassing trans women on the street because they assume all trans women are sex workers.  They won’t have any effect against police officers who believe they won’t be held accountable.  They won’t sway the minds of jurors who think “I killed her because she was trans” is an adequate excuse. 

Sentencing enhancements will allow them to dole out harsher punishments against the people who they think are more deserving.  And we already know that the legal system sees people of color, women, sex workers, immigrants, and the homeless as more deserving of punishment.  Because, of course, they are the disposable people.

There are other options out there that could be a lot more effective, like San Francisco’s Proposition K.  Prop K would have decriminalized prostitution, prohibiting local authorities from investigating, arresting, or prosecuting anyone solely for selling sex. For a population that traditionally has been unable to go to police for help, passage would make it easier to report violence without fear of arrest and increase safety for sex workers.  Not to mention that it would put an end to police profiling and harassment of trans women as possible sex workers.

Despite his status as a hero among gays and lesbians due to his stance on marriage, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom spent the last week before the election holding a press conference not to campaign against the marriage ban, but to campaign against this proposition for sex workers safety.  We shouldn’t forget that he also opposed a homeless shelter for queer and trans youth on the basis that it might reduce property values.  Apparently he’s supportive of queer rights as long as we’re talking about queer people who are white, cisgender, middleclass.  Remember, it’s only after the disposable people have been disposed of and the city is “cleaned up” that property values rise.

Tonight is about remembering the pain of those we’ve lost, but it’s also about taking action.  Call the DA, Police Director, and Sheriff in Memphis and demand justice for Duanna Johnson.  Support organizations like the Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP).  Refuse to support the Human Rights Campaign until they stop advocating for a trans exclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act.  Demand that your LGBT organizations begin prioritizing issues that matter to the trans community.  Together we can make a difference.  But change won’t begin until we stop fighting for our own rights and start fighting for everyone’s.  We must be clear that no one is expendable and we will not leave behind or forget the members of our community who would otherwise be considered disposable.

For information about how to advocate for Duanna Johnson’s case, follow this link.

If you appreciated this analysis and want to see a more in depth version, my DOR speech from 2007 was about three times longer and was able to do a better job flushing out the connections between these different identity issues.

Is ‘Tranny’ Offensive?

In several different LGBTQ blogs I’ve noticed arguments over whether or not the use of the term ‘tranny’ is offensive.  Usually this occurs when a cisgender person using the term gets called out for it.  In each case, they seem to have trans friends who are cool with them using the term and don’t understand why others don’t like it.

It might appear to be a benign act of adding a “y” on the end to make the term more informal and cutesy (notice a similar transformation when changing “cute” to “cutesy”). From this perspective, why would it matter?  No one will tell you “fag” or “faggot” are okay but “faggy” and “fagotry” aren’t.  However, there is a whole historical context to the term that isn’t all that well known, but is a huge part about what makes the term less appealing.

The term itself was first widely used within the porn industry.  And while I’ll be the last one to denigrate sexuality and pornography, the fact is that “tranny porn” is about as representative of trans people’s sexuality as “girl-on-girl porn” is representative of lesbian sexuality.  The usual context that it has been used in porn is to highlight how trans women are not really women, while also painting us as more exotic and sexually available.

So when the industry popularized the term “tranny”, it became a useful way to get a sense of someone’s background with the community.  If a cisgender person used the term “tranny” it probably meant that they got most of their knowledge of (or at least intro to) the trans community from the porn and sex industries, and perhaps didn’t have your best interests at heart.  This is also probably related to the creation of the term “tranny-chaser” as a way for the trans community to identify people who might take advantage of a trans person’s relative vulnerability or see trans people only as a sexual commodity.

This use of language has stuck.  For example, 6 out of the top 10 google results for the term “tranny” are porn sites.  And five years ago it was probably 9 or 10.  Compare that to a google search for “transgender” which gives you 10 out of 10 resource and support sites.  Also, searching for terms like “tranny activist” and “tranny politics” results in only a few hits — 194 and 157 respectively.  Yet searching for the term “tranny sex” provides 1,470,000 hits — that’s a 10,000 fold increase.  Even now, after many people are reclaiming the term, the vast majority of it’s use is about sexualizing and objectifying trans people.  It’s true the term is being reclaimed, but instead of comparing it to how terms like “queer,” “dyke,” and “fag” are used today, I think it’s more appropriate to compare it to the use of the term “faggot” about a decade ago, or “queer” almost two decades ago.

The issue of reclaiming the term is further complicated, though.  You see, while I have been discussing the impact the term has had on trans people, the reality is that it is trans women who have most directly targeted by it.  Trans men have been comparably invisible in the sex and porn industries, and the trans men porn that exists today is almost exclusively produced by trans men.  Yet a significant portion, arguably a majority, of the effort to reclaim the term has been made by trans men.  Usually by trans men who are not familiar with the negative history of the term, let alone having been subjected to it’s sting themselves.

It is difficult to know what to think about that gender breakdown.  When I run into a group of trans men who frequently use the term, I am not sure whether to thank them for creating community use of a new and positive meaning behind the term, or to criticize them for their insensitivity and lack of awareness of how the term might hold a lot of trauma for those of us who have been the direct targets of its use.

Regardless, it is true that I also try to reclaim the term myself.  But as with all reclaimed terms, context is the key.  I recently had to educate a colleague of mine as to how his saying “I met a really hot tranny last weekend” was not a very appropriate place to use the term, even if it was a positive attribute he was commenting on (for the record, I would have been a lot more comfortable with “I met a trans woman last weekend, she was really hot”).

Personally, I’m not comfortable using the term to refer to anyone but myself or friends who have similarly used it.  And if I wasn’t trans, I wouldn’t want to use it at all.  I might use it to draw upon it’s history, such as if I were to call myself “Another tranny rebelling against patriarchy,” or to underscore someone else’s transphobia as in “You just don’t care what the dirty tranny thinks, do you?”  And I suppose I might use it to refer to trans people in general, such as “Trannies unite!” or “I wish there were more trannies here.”  I generally appreciate use of the term that links it to trans women’s sexual autonomy and trans-positivity — the exact opposite of it’s derogatory use.

I’m not going to lay down any rules for how you might use it though, especially if you’ve been the target of it’s derogatory use yourself.  All I ask is that you think about how you use it.  And be able to explain yourself if someone wants to question you about it.

Big News if You Want to Get Married or Get Sex Reassignment Surgery

This morning I awoke to two major pieces of news, receiving multiple email announcements about each. The California Supreme Court ruled that the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. And the Ontario Heath Minister announced that Ontario’s provincial health care will resume covering Sex Reassignment Surgery. I guess that means if you want to get married you can go to California, and if you want SRS you can marry a Canadian.

Both of these are tremendous and huge stories that indicate a major shift in our rights, but I couldn’t help noticing a difference in who was talking about which one.

My inbox was full of emails discussing the marriage case from PFLAG, the Family Equality Council, COLAGE, Lambda Legal, the Stonewall Democrats, Basic Rights Oregon, and two from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

And I had a few emails notifying me of Canada’s shift in policy from a friend, another activist, another friend.

Why weren’t any of the organizations commenting on Canada’s news? I went to my favorite queer blog, The Bilerico Project, and saw half a dozen posts on California’s Supreme Court ruling, but none on the SRS coverage in Canada. As a regular reader, I shot the editor off a email in case they hadn’t heard, and while promising to cover it tomorrow, I was told that no one’s going to talk about anything but California’s marriage ruling today.

That made explicit that which all these organizational press releases only implied, SRS is not as big as marriage.

With all the talk about trans people being “less acceptable” and “behind” the gay and lesbian movement, you’d think that this would be bigger news. I mean, the GOVERNMENT IS PAYING FOR SEX REASSIGNMENT SURGERY! Doesn’t that completely blow out of the water the assumption that trans people are too freaky to be included in a non-discrimination bill? That’s gotta be at least as big as one more population being granted marriage rights in one more state.

Granted, it is Canada, so I’d expect the news to cover it less in the United States, but still, do you remember how big a deal it was (for US folks) when Canada legalized marriage? The reality is that all our LGBT organizations, even the ones making big strides in trans-inclusiveness, even the ones I wholeheartedly support, are just not tapped into trans news, don’t make trans news a priority, or perhaps just don’t think trans news is as big as gay and lesbian news. It’s a result of having the T added on at the end of the acronym. The organizations may support trans rights, but for the most part they weren’t founded on that idea.

It’s the legacy of being an institutional afterthought.

LGBT is not just a fancy new term for ‘the gays.’

I’ve been noticing a pattern these days.  It seems like a lot of folks have gotten the memo that the politically correct thing to do these days is to include lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people when talking about gay rights.  However, in many cases this seems to be a tokenistic attempt at best.

My local state representative came to talk to one of my organizations and he gave a speech ending in a call for rights for “everyone regardless of whether they are gay, lesbian, or bisexual.” 
A member of the audience called our “or transgender.”
But he couldn’t hear all the way across the room and said, “or… what?”
“transgender”
“what?”
“transgender.”
“Oh, yes, or if your heterosexual too.”
“No, transgender.”
“Oh, transgender.”

After that embarrassing exchange, the next time I heard him speak he didn’t forget to include the T in LGBT.  But I seriously doubt how much his agenda has expanded to include trans people.  While he’s gotten rather good at saying LGBT, I’ve never heard him talk about trans issues or trans people specifically.

I might expect something like this from a random straight cisgender democrat.  However, I most certainly did not expect it from the opening plenary of Creating Change, the largest annual conference of LGBTQ activists.  I must say that the other plenary sessions discussed trans issues in detail (including Matt Foreman’s State of the Movement Address, which went to great lengths to show the need for gender identity in ENDA), however, the opening plenary fell into the same trap as my local representative. 

The word transgender was mentioned maybe four or five times the entire evening, and only as the end of the string “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.”  From the content of the speeches, I wondered if the speakers knew that trans people are anything other than one of those confusing new sexual orientations the kids keep coming up with like pansexual, omnisexual, or heteroflexible.

Now I wouldn’t be complaining so much about a simple use of language if it didn’t make so much of a difference.  A few times the speakers discussed “gay and lesbian” rights and I found myself wondering, “Didn’t we go through this in the 90’s, bisexuals are a part of the movement too.”  Yet forgetting about bisexuals and forgetting about trans people have entirely different policy implications.

If someone forgets (or maybe purposefully leaves out) bisexuals, it’s pretty unlikely that any resulting policy regarding sexual orientation would leave bi people out.  I doubt we’ll be seeing a bisexual-exclusive ENDA anytime soon.  But we’ve seen from experience that some folks are all too happy to leave gender identity behind when the opportunity comes up.

If people aren’t talking about gender identity and trans people, and I mean more than mentioning those words without displaying any understanding of what they mean, then we’re in trouble.  Including the ‘T’ must be more than remembering that we’re a part of the coalition, it must be remembered that we have distinct needs and issues that must be addressed.

Forgetting to discuss those distinct needs and issues not only corrupts our attempts at policy reform, but also degrades the accessibility and usefulness of our community resources.  Four or five years ago was the first time I was trying to help a trans friend getting out of an abusive relationship.  While searching for any information on the topic I had to wade through a sea of resources for “LGBT” people in abusive relationships.  Webpage after webpage, pamphlet after pamphlet, there was never ANY information usefully to trans people.  They just took their same-sex abuse pamphlet and stamped the word transgender on top of it.

There are some resources specifically on abuse for trans people, but it’s buried in the thousands of so-called LGBT resources which are in reality only addressing same-sex abuse.  That makes it incredibly difficult to find that needed information.  And giving one of those “LGBT” pamphlets to a trans person experiencing abuse is going to be about as useful as giving a pamphlet designed for straight women to a gay man.

We need to shift this thinking.  The same way activists demanded that the ‘B’ and the ‘T’ become a part of our organizations names and language, we must demand that both are more than just letters.  Representing trans people in word means nothing if we are not represented in action.

Top LGB issues versus Top Trans Issues

People are always discussing the priorities of the LGBTQ movement. A few years ago it was all about whether or not marriage was an effective use of our resources – as it was clearly taking away resources from other endeavors. But more recently the question has been turned to where trans people fit into these priorities.

After the betrayal of ENDA, many people were left wondering if trans folk should even be involved in LGBTQ organizations or if we should just focus on trans-specific organizations. Many non-trans activists claimed that there hasn’t been enough trans education. It’s not hard to see that trans people have been incredibly involved in activism, but there is some truth that as volunteers for LGBTQ organizations, we’ve been putting much of our energy into projects focused more on sexual orientation than on gender identity.

This leads me to question my own activities. Should I view the energy I put into supporting domestic partnership rights in Oregon just as energy that I could have been putting into trans education? Should I think of the fundraisers I helped out with (and my own donations) just as money that could have been going to support trans rights? I don’t think so.

I’m proud to work with LGBTQ organizations, and I see them putting time, energy, and resources into trans issues. Yet I can’t help but notice that even in the organizations I support, the issues that are most important to me and the other trans people I know barely get acknowledged.

It seems that trans issues aren’t really a part of setting the agenda. It is set based on what the gay, lesbian, and sometimes bisexual communities need, and only after the issues are laid out are trans people fit into it. Some of the big issues being fought for these days are relationship recognition, non-discrimination, don’t ask don’t tell, and adoption. When applicable, trans people are brought into this agenda, but only as an afterthought and in some cases the issue – or the solution being sought – just doesn’t really impact the trans community. I could talk about how well our organizations are incorporating trans perspectives into these issues, but for now, let me focus on what some of the big issues I see impacting the trans community are.

Non-Discrimination. Discrimination in the areas of employment, housing, and public accommodations has a tremendous impact on the trans community. And leave many people with few economic resources.

Health Care. In many cases, trans folk have a hard time getting employment that provides healthcare. But even when insurance is available, transgender exclusion clauses deny coverage to important and necessary trans healthcare needs. In some cases, those clauses are used to deny almost anything, such as my allergy test when I also talked with my doc about my medical history and medications, or the trans woman who was refused coverage for an arm she broke while playing in a lesbian softball league under the logic that she wouldn’t have been in the league if she hadn’t transitioned. Many LGBTQ organizations find themselves unable to even provide trans-inclusive health insurance to their own employees.

Sex Work. Many trans people are not in sex work, but given the discrimination in employment and health care and the ability to do much of this work without documentation, many trans people are. Even those not in sex work may still have to deal with trans-profiling (both from police and johns) that labels all trans woman as sex workers. Lack of access to support systems or law enforcement create the dangerous working conditions responsible for much the of anti-trans murders each year. These are not characteristics inherent to sex work and reforms can and should be undergone to make sex work safer.

Police Brutality and Prisoner Rights. While many trans people are incarcerated for survival crimes, others might have to face harassment from law enforcement for being homeless, for participating in peace protests, or for a speeding ticket. No matter what the reason, trans people deserve fair treatment. Having inaccurate gender documentation can lead to anything from harassment, to assault, to rape, to denial of medical treatment, and death. Due to trans-profiling, trans women sex workers are often targeted for harsher treatment than their non-trans counterparts and being raped by police officers is not uncommon. In several of the unsolved murders of trans people, the victims’ friends and community suspect police involvement. Giving more power to law enforcement in the form of hate crimes legislation will do little to stop perpetrators who are law enforcement officials themselves.

Gender Documentation. The standards for when and how to change your gender documentation vary wildly from governmental agency to agency. And in many cases the standards are set so high that only a small fraction of the trans community will ever be able to meet them. The inability to obtain accurate identification and documentation is one of the aggravating factors that make each of the above issues more dangerous.

Access to Shelters. Trans people who are experiencing homelessness or domestic violence often find themselves turned away from support services that are unwilling to support trans people or willing to tolerate trans people only if they are able to endure misgendering and a hostile environment.  This can be devastating at a time when help is needed most.

Community Support. Many trans people come out with a feeling of isolation and loneliness. Combined with internalized transphobia and a society (and sometimes even an LGB community) that tells us we are freaks creates circumstances where depression and suicide happen all too frequently. A lot of individual time and energy is put into vital support activity. Yet most of the time this work is not organized and not acknowledged.

I don’t claim this is the comprehensive list of trans needs, but it’s what I could come up with for now.  Looking back over this list, how many issues are being dealt with by most LGBTQ organizations? One? Maybe two?

I’m beginning to see a shift. More and more LGBTQ organizations are putting “transgender issues” on their list of priorities, but there needs to be more. “Transgender issues” by itself says nothing, and ignores how some of the other things on the list (such as non-discrimination) are trans issues too. This is a nod toward inclusion, but to really have inclusion trans needs must be considered from the beginning of the planning process and the issues most important to trans people need to be represented.

Is Stephen Colbert Listening?

You may have noticed that I stopped posting about the Daily Show/Colbert Report. They didn’t stop saying transphobic things, but I got tired of documenting it all. But Tuesday night Stephen Colbert reported on a Florida non-discrimination bill and I could see a markable improvement. It makes me wonder if perhaps he’s hearing the criticism – or at least reading his wikipedia page, which now seems to link to my blog.

Here is the segment in it’s entirety:

A tip of the hat to palm beach county where according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel “transgender is quietly becoming a protected class.” Of course the transgender class, famous for it’s quietness. Now I’ve long had a problem with the tranny community and I’m not talking about post-operatives, at least they’ve picked a side. But, there are too many people drifting in the middle of the gender continum. Great Robert Ludlum book, by the way. But here’s the reason why I’m saluting palm beach county. To get this protection these fair-weather-females and fence-sitting-fellas will have to identify themselves. They will no longer shock and confuse young reporters on assignment in a new town who happen to appreciate ladies with big hands.

Here’s my rundown of what’s going on. First, the good stuff.

• He doesn’t use the term “Shemale.”
• He’s reporting on actual events, not just calling a person transgender as an insult.
• Is it my imagination, or is he alluding to discrimination on the basis of being genderqueer (or maybe just surgical status) as a distinct issue than trans discrimination?
• The butt of the joke is transphobia, not transpeople.

I think that last one is probably a sign of the most improvement. It parallels the way he jokes about LGB issues by demonstrating the ridiculous homophobia of both his character and the people he interviews. At the end of the segment, the audience is laughing at his motivation for transphobia – that he finds himself attracted to transpeople.

The bad

• He uses the term tranny, a much less derogatory word being reclaimed, but still frequently used derogatorily.
• Bashing folks based on surgical status or non-binary gender is ambiguously presented and may not be seen as a problem.
• He further exemplifies that being attracted to transwomen is scary.
• He’s factually incorrect (at least I hope so). There is no other reference I can find anyway about the Palm Beach non-discrimination policy requiring transpeople to identify themselves. Having to carry around documentation of your gender is a scary thing which my town narrowly avoided.

It’s just one segment, so I’m hoping he doesn’t just go back to jokingly calling political figures “shemales” tomorrow. And I’m not going to start trusting him on this issue any time soon. It’s still frustrating watching him bumble around it and not being able to separate feigned transphobia where the transphobia is the joke and feigned name-calling where transpeople are the joke.

Ciswoman Recieves Transphobic Prison Treatment

The MetroWeekly, a GLBT paper in the DC area, recently ran an article, titled Gender Confusion, about a cis woman who ended up in a men’s prison because the arresting officers thought she was a trans woman. She had been arrested on suspiscion of prostitution and was strip searched (presumably as an attempt to identify her gender, but the article doesn’t specify). The officers must have thought she was a trans woman who had had genital surgery and threw her into the men’s prison.

This story is interesting for a few reasons. Everything about it is presented as a horrible mistake. The police , the member of the GLLU (Gay and Lesbian Unit), and the author all discuss the incident as a horrible mistake. The repercussions are certainly horrible and although the article doesn’t get into her experience in a men’s prison, placing women in men’s prison it’s commonly thought of as being sentenced to rape. But the fact that the police regularly place women in situations where they expect to be raped is not the mistake, the mistake is that it happened to a woman who wasn’t trans.

The police don’t question the practice of regularly placing trans women in situations where they will be raped. They only lament that they accidentally subjected a non-trans woman to the violence that they regularly subject trans women to. I would assume that as this story gains traction the emphasis will be about how horrible that a woman who was not trans received such mistreatment. That much is clear already from the fact that there are so few stories on trans women receiving this mistreatment despite being its being a regular occurance.

At the end of the article the Trans Coalition is briefly quoted “…this is what happens to transgender people all the time.” Such treatment is pepetrated by the transphobic presumption that transwomen are men, but as Saelkie points out in the Transnews Livejournal community, they police never once thought that she was a man.

Maybe confusion is understandable in the sense that they apparently had no training on how to incarcerate transpeople at all, but they clearly thought of her as a woman the whole time anyway. They profiled her as a trans sex worker, based on the common stereotype that all transwomen are sex workers. So they thought she was a woman the whole freakin time. The reason they thought it was OK to put her in a men’s prison is because they also thought she was trans, which they thought meant they had the right to disrespect her gender identity and abuse her. Being pre-op or non-op does not make a transwoman a man, and no matter how much the cops pretend they can’t tell the difference, all the other guards and prisoners can [emphasis mine] – which is why putting transwomen in men’s prisons is not only disrespectful but hideously physically violent.

And finally, I must comment on the fact that the article includes both the name and picture of the victim in the story. Admittedly I don’t know the finer details of the journalistic practice of not naming victims of violence, but I would hope that such a practice would be applied even if law enforcement is the perpetrator of such violence. The picture seems to be a grainy photocopy of a mugshot and leads me to wonder why it was included. It might have been included to help us humanize her experience. But I can’t help but fear it will do the opposite. Her appearance was a significant part of the motivation for her mistreatment and the police try to excuse their behavior by the fact that she looked like a trans woman. Readers could easily be lead by their transphobia to analyze her appearance, as if her facial structure could somehow make the “confusion” around her mistreatment excusable. And then the focus would even more effectively be taken away from the regular practice of mistreating trans women in this way and focused onto the tragedy of this case as a random “fluke.”