Chicago, IL – The Great Lakes Regional Editor of EDGE reports that the slaughter of transgender persons in the United States has already gone 12 per cent higher than last year at this time, and the grim statistics are growing. Joseph Erbentraut, in his important essay, “Violence Against the Transgendered Only Getting Worse,” published on edgeonthenet.com, notes that the silence and invisibility common to LGBT hate crime murders is intensified for transgender Americans. As in the case of Paulina Ibarra, the lives of transgender victims are often ignored until a more culturally sensational aspect of the crime surfaces, as it did in the August stabbing death of the East Los Angeles Latina transwoman when a known parole jumper surfaced as a “person of interest” in the investigation. Until then, Ibarra’s brutal murder was largely neglected, even by the LGBT press, and her life has been reduced to a string of seamy innuendoes and a few glam photos. Other notorious instances this year have been the broad-daylight attack on Ty’lia “Nana Boo-Boo” Mack in D.C. last month, Lateisha Green, shot to death in Syracuse, NY last November, Angie Zapata, bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher in Greeley, CO last July, and Duanna Johnson and Ebony Whitaker who died on the streets of Memphis, TN last November and July, respectively. According to Erbentraut, the media are largely to blame for this stunning neglect of one of the most important human rights stories of 2009: “Underreporting from official statistics leaves the issue in the hands of media outlets, which have historically been known for problems identifying victims’ genders through using incorrect names and pronouns,” he writes. “The past year has also seen a number of examples of media programs condoning violence against the community,” Erbentraut continues, “including a radio news program on KRXQ Sacramento which referred to gender dysphoric children as ‘idiots’ and ‘freaks.’ Co-host Arnie States said he ‘[looked] forward to when [transgender children] go out into society and society beats them down…’” While 32 states have some form of hate crime legislation that increases the penalty for violence against LGB people, only 11 have statutes covering their transgender population. Only Brazil, with 80 transgender murders this year, has a larger number of transgender killings than the United States. Until gays, lesbians, and bisexual people and their allies begin to take violence against transgender people, especially transgender people of color, as seriously as they do crimes against themselves, this deplorable trend will surely continue.
1 comment:
What really bothers me about this is that a lot of neocon leaders and conservative Christian fundamentalist leaders seem to be feeding the fires of hatred against us. Examples, the diatribes of Michael Savage ("The freaks be should be locked up in some back room , on some serious medication, screaming their lives out.") and opinions of Sean Hannity against us. ("Transsexuals should be illegal.") Another sick example of this sort of mentality are the statements of James Dobson from Focus On The Family, who has stated about the inclusive ENDA that "...it is the "Pedophile Protection Act." While it is true that he did not specifically call transsexuals pedophiles, his manner of statement did not qualify the use of the term and has had the effect of inducing the undereducated and fanatical as considering the trans population as such.
Right now we are in taxing times, politically speaking, and neither of the political parties has clean feet when it comes to dirtying up the political arena. For this reason, it becomes necessary to give the populace targets of hatred to vent on. I would state that the people I named, and others like them, are essentially fanning the flames of hatred against us for their own personal gain.
It is not us who are to blame for the mess, nor is the LBGTQI responsible for things being the way they are. Frankly, it is our politicians and "politics as usual" that are to blame. If anything, the current situation victimizes a lot more than any other segment of our society. We basically are the most minimized minority out there, have virtually no legal protections, are routinely discriminated against in every aspect of life, and have been specifically written out of things like the Americans With Disabilities Act, which also rules us out for any kind of coverage under Medicare as well.
So now we are being subliminally targeted as scapegoats by many politicians to do a bit of CYA for themselves and their terrible records, politically speaking. Yes, we really do need the Transgender Day of Remembrance. But we also need the LBG community to stand up for us as well. If we go down, that will allow more hatred to be directed toward them. I feel we must all hang together in times like this, or we will certainly all hang separately.
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