Ending anti-transgender violence | Amanda Beam
Their names were written on smooth rocks, more than 80 in all. Each one symbolized a life that had ended violently over the past 12 months.
J.W. da Silva was stoned to death on Oct. 27, 2016 in Paudalho, Brazil.
Hande Kader had been burned beyond recognition after her August 2016 murder in Istanbul, Turkey.
Erykah Tijerina was stabbed 24 times and killed on August 8th, 2016 in El Paso, Texas.
At the Nov. 20 Transgender Day of Remembrance ceremony in Louisville, organizer Julie Lampe decided against reading their causes of death. It might trigger PTSD from those in the audience, many who understood the hatred and bigotry that led to these murders all too well.
“It’s never ‘hit by a car’. It’s almost always ‘shot multiple times and thrown in a river’ or ‘found hanging in a tree’. It’s bad, bad stuff,” said Lampe, Chief Outreach and Relationship Officer of Transwomen National, a local organization dedicated to supporting transgender females. “It gets everybody really emotional to hear all this.”
And so instead, Louisville Youth Group members recited the names in collections of 20.
Afterwards, stone by stone, they handed the pieces to attendees who wanted a physical reminder of those lost to anti-transgender violence and the work needed to stop it.
If recent data is any indication, ending this horror will be no easy feat.
According to a Federal Bureau of Investigation’s hate crime statistics, 114 criminal incidents involving gender identity bias were reported in 2015. In 2013, the first year the FBI began collecting this particular type of data, that number was 33.
In addition, transgender homicides continue to climb at an alarming rate. So far in 2016, at least 21 transgender people have been murdered in America, up from 14 in 2013. Most of the victims were transgender women of color. A Matter of Life and Death, a recent Human Rights Campaign report, stated this group, in particular, has a four-times greater chance of being murdered than the general population of women.
Myriad factors play into this increased risk of violence against the transgender community. Transphobia runs rampant at its root and makes it difficult for basic needs to be met. Correct identification that matches their true gender can also be hard for gender non-conformists to obtain, which makes the population easily recognized and subject to bias.
“For transgender people, right off the bat, they have a huge disadvantage when looking for a job oftentimes because their gender markers on their ID don’t match how they live their daily lives so that instantly outs them,” said Chris Hartman, director of Fairness Campaign. “There’s already trans prejudice out there in the world.”
Workplace discrimination and harassment feed off all of this, contributing to a gender non-conformist unemployment rate of more than double the national average. For a transgender person of color, it’s four times that.
Lack of a steady income leads to poverty. Team that with the difficulties transgender people have finding housing, and higher rates of homeless occur.
Unable to find legal pathways to earn money, some turn to sex. This, again, greatly increases the risk of violence and death.
“That’s where a lot of violent things happen. Period,” Lampe said. “Whether you’re cis or trans or whoever, but especially transwomen of color, it’s not a good demographic to be.”
Exclusion of medical providers and mental health services for gender nonconformists also adds to the marginalization, according to the Human Rights Campaign report. So does the lack of attention to intimate partner violence and sexual assault among the population. Traditional sources of assistance for victims might not always be available.
And then there’s the problem of reporting the crime to proper authorities. Due to societal stigma, concerns of being revealed and fear of police, some of those who experience violence decide not to tell the authorities about it.
“A high percentage of violence is unreported. This is for LGBT people in general because it means outing yourself or it might mean outing someone else,” said Brian Buford, the University of Louisville’s Assistant Provost for Diversity and Director of its LGBT Center. The facility provides numerous resources and programs for LGBTQ students on campus.
“As more people are out and are willing to report as a trans person it gives us a better picture of what the situation is and what we can do about it.”
Likewise, law enforcement agencies might not always classify the crimes as anti-transgender in nature or misidentify the victim as the gender assigned to them at birth. This skews the numbers even more.
“One of the reasons why there is an increase in the statistics around anti-trans violence and murder is not necessarily because the act is increasing in itself. I think it has always been as high as it is,” Hartman said. “But now, finally, many law enforcement agencies are now acknowledging the trans identity of victims and acknowledging the role that that plays and reporting it properly.”
FBI Special Agent Mike Brown has helped with this. Working civil rights cases as a part of the Louisville field office, the subject matter specialist continues to educate other branches of law enforcement on how to investigate anti-transgender violence. Part of that involves finding alternative ways of hearing about the crimes.
“The approach the FBI has taken has been a friend of a friend approach,” Brown said. “We will reach out to a non-government organization or even churches that have built an inroad into the community, so that if that third party hears of a crime against someone in the LGBT community, we can at least learn about it too, and then try to figure out how to best investigate the crime.”
Yet, to decrease violence against the transgender community, society must educate itself as well. With better acceptance and equanimity for our fellow humans, fewer stones could be included in next year’s remembrance ceremony and more lives saved.
“Awareness and education are key,” Hartman said.
“People learn that transgender people are just people and that they have basic needs like everyone else.”
Contributing columnist Amanda Beam’s social justice column appears every other Sunday in the Courier-Journal’s Forum Section. Feel free to let her know your thoughts and column ideas by emailing her at email@example.com.