Anti-Transgender Violence
Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:09 pm
While not specific to eunuchs, I thought this article from todays San Francisco Chronicle to be appropriate here. Transgender is defined as anyone who engages in activity other than that considered appropriate by the larger society for the gender assigned at birth. That would, then, include even such behaviors as a boy taking ballet lessons or a girl playing football!
ANTI-TRANSGENDER VIOLENCE:
Remembering the slain
Antioch woman has created Web site to honor the victims
Rona Marech, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
It started with the killing of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was stabbed to death in 1998 in Boston.
Gwen Smith thought Hester's killing seemed tragically similar to the recent slayings of two other transgender women -- Debra Forte and Chanelle Pickett. The earlier deaths had received a small amount of news coverage, but when she mentioned the parallels to friends online, Smith was stunned by the response. No one had heard of Forte or Pickett.
"From that night on, I begin to look for all the people we have forgotten, bearing in mind the George Santayana quote: 'Those who cannot remember the past are (condemned) to repeat it,' " Smith later wrote. "I want to make sure we remember." Soon after, Smith created Remembering Our Dead, a Web site that records the lives and deaths of victims of anti-transgender killings, and called for a Transgender Day of Remembrance to honor the people on the grim list she kept.
At the first remembrance event, in 1999, 25 people held candles in the rain outside San Francisco's Castro Theater. This year, on Saturday, the day of remembrance will be recognized in at least 166 cities and seven countries.
"It's a lot better than being a voice crying out in the wilderness," Smith said.
Smith, 37, is a self-described computer geek with a passion for Rambler cars and Disney cartoons. She lives in a nondescript cream-colored house in a nondescript Antioch development with her wife of 12 years, Bonnie Smith.
Six months before they were supposed to marry, Smith told her then- fiancee, whom she had met in a college graphic design class, that she had struggled with her gender identity all her life. She made the disclosure at a restaurant near a bus route "so she could run screaming to the bus if she needed to," Smith said.
But Bonnie didn't run. The pair married as planned at the Renaissance Faire -- in full-on Renaissance garb. A couple of years later, Smith began taking hormones and transitioning from man to woman.
In her bedroom -- and only in her bedroom -- Smith keeps a picture of their wedding day. She was a he and had dark hair and a full beard and was dressed like a Shakespearean prince. That was the old Gwen. (She does not reveal her old name.)
The new Gwen has long, dirty blond hair and chipped pink polish on her nails. She likes thick make-up and lots of dark eyeliner. She's a Web designer who writes a column about transgender issues that is published in a number of gay papers. And she has something of an obsession for her project -- her death tally -- as depressing as it can be.
Smith devotes hours upon hours to research: perusing newspaper clips, searching archives and data bases, interviewing police officers and reporters and talking to family members. One by one, the names -- and sometimes a story and a photo -- get added to her site in a plain white-on-black font.
Pickett: strangled in Massachusetts in 1995. Christian Paige: beaten, strangled, stabbed and burned in Chicago in 1996. Vianna Faye Williams: died of multiple stab wounds to back, neck and chest in New Jersey in 1997. Harvey Aberles. Jae Stevens. Cameron "Tina" Tanner. Maria "La Conchita" Palencia.
The Web site now lists 322 names, all people Smith believes were killed because of their nonconformist gender expression -- whether or not they actually identified as transgender. Three times, Smith has had to type in the name of someone she had met. By her estimate, 19 people were slain in the last year in cases of anti-transgender violence; nine of those victims were in the United States, including three in California.
She includes fatalities that have the tell-tall signs of "overkill," even if authorities don't officially label them hate crimes.
"A lot of murders are not simple gunshot wounds," Smith said. "Instead, you'll see a case like Gwen (Araujo) where she was strangled and beaten over time. ... It gets to a point where it's not just about killing a person, it's about obliterating them, erasing them if you could."
Araujo is the transgender teenager from Newark who was slain in 2002. The trial of three men accused of killing her ended in a mistrial in June.
"I think it's very hard for non-transgender people to understand the level of potential day-to-day violence most transgender people face," said Shawna Virago, director of domestic violence services at Community United Against Violence. "We owe it to our community not to forget those of us who have been slain."
This Saturday, November 20, Transgender Day of Remembrance will be recognized in cities from Lincoln, Neb., to Cheyenne, Wyo., and Auburn, Ala. Numerous high schools and colleges -- including UCSF, City College of San Francisco and George Washington High School -- will organize their own events, leading vigils, holding panel discussions and writing names of victims on posters, T- shirts or symbolic grave stones.
"It's caught on basically because people have had enough," said Ethan St. Pierre, whose transgender aunt, Debra Forte, was stabbed to death in Massachusetts in 1995. St. Pierre is also transgender, but his aunt died before he was able to speak to her about his identity. "I think more and more people are recognizing our right to exist as human beings," he said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remembrance events
Transgender Day of Remembrance events will be held all week in the Bay Area. For more information, go to www.rememberingourdead.org/day/
There are links from the page to many more sites relevant to transgendered as well, including an excellent curriculum unit for schools.
E-mail Rona Marech at rmarech@sfchronicle.com.
San Francisco Chronicle
Page B - 1
ANTI-TRANSGENDER VIOLENCE:
Remembering the slain
Antioch woman has created Web site to honor the victims
Rona Marech, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
It started with the killing of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was stabbed to death in 1998 in Boston.
Gwen Smith thought Hester's killing seemed tragically similar to the recent slayings of two other transgender women -- Debra Forte and Chanelle Pickett. The earlier deaths had received a small amount of news coverage, but when she mentioned the parallels to friends online, Smith was stunned by the response. No one had heard of Forte or Pickett.
"From that night on, I begin to look for all the people we have forgotten, bearing in mind the George Santayana quote: 'Those who cannot remember the past are (condemned) to repeat it,' " Smith later wrote. "I want to make sure we remember." Soon after, Smith created Remembering Our Dead, a Web site that records the lives and deaths of victims of anti-transgender killings, and called for a Transgender Day of Remembrance to honor the people on the grim list she kept.
At the first remembrance event, in 1999, 25 people held candles in the rain outside San Francisco's Castro Theater. This year, on Saturday, the day of remembrance will be recognized in at least 166 cities and seven countries.
"It's a lot better than being a voice crying out in the wilderness," Smith said.
Smith, 37, is a self-described computer geek with a passion for Rambler cars and Disney cartoons. She lives in a nondescript cream-colored house in a nondescript Antioch development with her wife of 12 years, Bonnie Smith.
Six months before they were supposed to marry, Smith told her then- fiancee, whom she had met in a college graphic design class, that she had struggled with her gender identity all her life. She made the disclosure at a restaurant near a bus route "so she could run screaming to the bus if she needed to," Smith said.
But Bonnie didn't run. The pair married as planned at the Renaissance Faire -- in full-on Renaissance garb. A couple of years later, Smith began taking hormones and transitioning from man to woman.
In her bedroom -- and only in her bedroom -- Smith keeps a picture of their wedding day. She was a he and had dark hair and a full beard and was dressed like a Shakespearean prince. That was the old Gwen. (She does not reveal her old name.)
The new Gwen has long, dirty blond hair and chipped pink polish on her nails. She likes thick make-up and lots of dark eyeliner. She's a Web designer who writes a column about transgender issues that is published in a number of gay papers. And she has something of an obsession for her project -- her death tally -- as depressing as it can be.
Smith devotes hours upon hours to research: perusing newspaper clips, searching archives and data bases, interviewing police officers and reporters and talking to family members. One by one, the names -- and sometimes a story and a photo -- get added to her site in a plain white-on-black font.
Pickett: strangled in Massachusetts in 1995. Christian Paige: beaten, strangled, stabbed and burned in Chicago in 1996. Vianna Faye Williams: died of multiple stab wounds to back, neck and chest in New Jersey in 1997. Harvey Aberles. Jae Stevens. Cameron "Tina" Tanner. Maria "La Conchita" Palencia.
The Web site now lists 322 names, all people Smith believes were killed because of their nonconformist gender expression -- whether or not they actually identified as transgender. Three times, Smith has had to type in the name of someone she had met. By her estimate, 19 people were slain in the last year in cases of anti-transgender violence; nine of those victims were in the United States, including three in California.
She includes fatalities that have the tell-tall signs of "overkill," even if authorities don't officially label them hate crimes.
"A lot of murders are not simple gunshot wounds," Smith said. "Instead, you'll see a case like Gwen (Araujo) where she was strangled and beaten over time. ... It gets to a point where it's not just about killing a person, it's about obliterating them, erasing them if you could."
Araujo is the transgender teenager from Newark who was slain in 2002. The trial of three men accused of killing her ended in a mistrial in June.
"I think it's very hard for non-transgender people to understand the level of potential day-to-day violence most transgender people face," said Shawna Virago, director of domestic violence services at Community United Against Violence. "We owe it to our community not to forget those of us who have been slain."
This Saturday, November 20, Transgender Day of Remembrance will be recognized in cities from Lincoln, Neb., to Cheyenne, Wyo., and Auburn, Ala. Numerous high schools and colleges -- including UCSF, City College of San Francisco and George Washington High School -- will organize their own events, leading vigils, holding panel discussions and writing names of victims on posters, T- shirts or symbolic grave stones.
"It's caught on basically because people have had enough," said Ethan St. Pierre, whose transgender aunt, Debra Forte, was stabbed to death in Massachusetts in 1995. St. Pierre is also transgender, but his aunt died before he was able to speak to her about his identity. "I think more and more people are recognizing our right to exist as human beings," he said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remembrance events
Transgender Day of Remembrance events will be held all week in the Bay Area. For more information, go to www.rememberingourdead.org/day/
There are links from the page to many more sites relevant to transgendered as well, including an excellent curriculum unit for schools.
E-mail Rona Marech at rmarech@sfchronicle.com.
San Francisco Chronicle
Page B - 1
