Casey died alone in the dirt in the dark
December 16, 2015 12:33 PM Subscribe
"...what is really needed is an anti-racist, anti-transphobic movement that draws from women of color feminism and its trenchant critique of racism and police power." - Broadly, with the help of Judith Butler, digs into the lives and deaths of the 23 trans women murdered in 2015.
Broadly has separately posted the interview with Judith Butler that contributed to their story.
Broadly has separately posted the interview with Judith Butler that contributed to their story.
Following Butler's logic, violence against trans women may be traceable to that moment when men are confronted with the fact that there are people in this world who have beat the system by liberating themselves from the supposedly inescapable confines of sex. "
Reminds me a lot of Harvey Milk's words. "‘If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet shatter every closet door."
All of these women die in vain unless we tell their stories and demand an end to the violence.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:29 PM on December 16, 2015 [6 favorites]
Reminds me a lot of Harvey Milk's words. "‘If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet shatter every closet door."
All of these women die in vain unless we tell their stories and demand an end to the violence.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:29 PM on December 16, 2015 [6 favorites]
Following Butler's logic, violence against trans women may be traceable to that moment when men are confronted with the fact that there are people in this world who have beat the system by liberating themselves from the supposedly inescapable confines of sex."
That would require these violent men to have a much greater subconscious understanding+acceptance of gender theory than I think is plausible. More likely, their stated motivation is their real one—"He [sic] tricked me by pretending to be a woman, that's gross, I'll get revenge."
posted by Rangi at 1:32 PM on December 16, 2015
That would require these violent men to have a much greater subconscious understanding+acceptance of gender theory than I think is plausible. More likely, their stated motivation is their real one—"He [sic] tricked me by pretending to be a woman, that's gross, I'll get revenge."
posted by Rangi at 1:32 PM on December 16, 2015
i hate when i have to like Broadly.
posted by listen, lady at 1:39 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by listen, lady at 1:39 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
That would require these violent men to have a much greater subconscious understanding+acceptance of gender theory than I think is plausible. More likely, their stated motivation is their real one—"He [sic] tricked me by pretending to be a woman, that's gross, I'll get revenge."
The kind of theorizing Butler is doing isn't meant to suggest that the men consciously think about gender, society, and their own relationship to masculinity. What goes through their head is probably something more like you are thinking, as when straight men feel victimized if a gay man flirts with them or, in some cases, enters a place that is coded for masculinity, like a locker room. This kind of reaction to trans women is similar, I think: straight cisgendered men take it as an attack on their own masculinity and maleness.
I was interested in the case where a woman's boyfriend apparently killed her because she showed up when he was with friends, another threat to his masculinity and heterosexuality.
I'm glad—to the extent that gladness can come into play—to see attention being paid to the particular vulnerability of trans women who are women of color and/or sex workers. We need as many voices as possible to say, "She didn't deserve this, she didn't bring it on herself, her life mattered, and her death matters."
At the same time, when something is "a natural consequence of structural inequality," as the article says, I despair of finding solutions. As with the police murders of black men, which have astonished me by continuing even after national media attention had been drawn to the situation, I don't know how to interrupt a pattern that is so embedded in our cultural and social dysfunction.
posted by not that girl at 1:49 PM on December 16, 2015 [4 favorites]
The kind of theorizing Butler is doing isn't meant to suggest that the men consciously think about gender, society, and their own relationship to masculinity. What goes through their head is probably something more like you are thinking, as when straight men feel victimized if a gay man flirts with them or, in some cases, enters a place that is coded for masculinity, like a locker room. This kind of reaction to trans women is similar, I think: straight cisgendered men take it as an attack on their own masculinity and maleness.
I was interested in the case where a woman's boyfriend apparently killed her because she showed up when he was with friends, another threat to his masculinity and heterosexuality.
I'm glad—to the extent that gladness can come into play—to see attention being paid to the particular vulnerability of trans women who are women of color and/or sex workers. We need as many voices as possible to say, "She didn't deserve this, she didn't bring it on herself, her life mattered, and her death matters."
At the same time, when something is "a natural consequence of structural inequality," as the article says, I despair of finding solutions. As with the police murders of black men, which have astonished me by continuing even after national media attention had been drawn to the situation, I don't know how to interrupt a pattern that is so embedded in our cultural and social dysfunction.
posted by not that girl at 1:49 PM on December 16, 2015 [4 favorites]
I think the "trans panic" aka the "trap" defense is rarely more than an after-the-fact rationalization of a macho fuck trying to recover his fragile masculinity and save face.
Assuming the motivation wasn't anti-trans or anti-gay violence all along.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:01 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Assuming the motivation wasn't anti-trans or anti-gay violence all along.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:01 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
The drawing on the top is heartbreaking - so many wonderful women and they were taken from us violently.
Butler's point about how you can't separate out class, race, and age is important, too - and how those different aspects intersect for each woman.
Say their names: Keisha Jenkins, Casey (K. C.) Haggard, Yazmin Vash Payne, Shade Schuler, Mercedes Williamson, Tamara Dominguez, Mya Hall, Amber Monroe, Papi Edwards, Zella Ziona, Keyshia Blige, Kandis Capris. Other people not mentioned in the article who died this year: Lamia Beard, Ty Underwood, Taja Dejesus, Penny Proud, Bri Golec, Kristina Gomez Reinwald, Sumaya Dalmar, Vanessa Santillan, London Chanel, Jasmine Collins, Ashton O'Hara, India Clarke, Elisha Walker , Fernanda 'Coty' Olmos, Marcela Estefania Chocobar, Amancay Diana Sacayán, Yoshi Tsuchida, Vicky Thompson.
posted by Deoridhe at 2:34 PM on December 16, 2015 [7 favorites]
Butler's point about how you can't separate out class, race, and age is important, too - and how those different aspects intersect for each woman.
Say their names: Keisha Jenkins, Casey (K. C.) Haggard, Yazmin Vash Payne, Shade Schuler, Mercedes Williamson, Tamara Dominguez, Mya Hall, Amber Monroe, Papi Edwards, Zella Ziona, Keyshia Blige, Kandis Capris. Other people not mentioned in the article who died this year: Lamia Beard, Ty Underwood, Taja Dejesus, Penny Proud, Bri Golec, Kristina Gomez Reinwald, Sumaya Dalmar, Vanessa Santillan, London Chanel, Jasmine Collins, Ashton O'Hara, India Clarke, Elisha Walker , Fernanda 'Coty' Olmos, Marcela Estefania Chocobar, Amancay Diana Sacayán, Yoshi Tsuchida, Vicky Thompson.
posted by Deoridhe at 2:34 PM on December 16, 2015 [7 favorites]
I think it's a bit sad that somehow my reaction was "what, only 23 transwomen were murdered in 2015?". Somehow I think this number must be much higher, and that my initial reaction was that is somehow... I don't even know how to feel about that, really.
*reads the article* The murders of 22 trans women were reported in 2015. An additional trans woman, Mya Hall, was killed by police in March. We've never really known how bad the crisis truly is, and we still don't. As Harper Jean Tobin of the National Center for Transgender Equality testified on Capitol Hill, at the Congressional forum on transgender violence that was held on November 17th, "We know the numbers are far higher than that. Even the FBI will admit the data are collected and reported so inconsistently as to render them almost meaningless."
The reported numbers are so low because law enforcement still doesn't know how to deal with transpeople, and therefore [my extrapolation] there are many many more murdered transpeople who simply aren't reported as such. I can speculate about the reasons, but none of them are good.
posted by hippybear at 3:19 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
*reads the article* The murders of 22 trans women were reported in 2015. An additional trans woman, Mya Hall, was killed by police in March. We've never really known how bad the crisis truly is, and we still don't. As Harper Jean Tobin of the National Center for Transgender Equality testified on Capitol Hill, at the Congressional forum on transgender violence that was held on November 17th, "We know the numbers are far higher than that. Even the FBI will admit the data are collected and reported so inconsistently as to render them almost meaningless."
The reported numbers are so low because law enforcement still doesn't know how to deal with transpeople, and therefore [my extrapolation] there are many many more murdered transpeople who simply aren't reported as such. I can speculate about the reasons, but none of them are good.
posted by hippybear at 3:19 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
The numbers are difficult to count in the US, even more so globally. I realize now I should have specified these numbers are for the US only. Though there are a handful of confirmed deaths outside the US this year.
I really wish the death counts of trans women included suicide and accidental deaths. The picture "on the ground" is heartbreaking. I think of Sophie, who took her life in England. Two or three other people on Mefi knew her. Her death was heartbreaking and tragic for reasons that I don't want to discuss here, and her suicide was reported initially as a male death, but I don't know if that was corrected. In my opinion her suicide was manufactured by the same societal dynamics that drive men to murder trans women, only in Sophie's case, her story is erased and remains untold outside a handful of people. If memory serves right, there was a proper memorial for Sophie, maybe others here on Mefi that were closer to the situation can confirm.
In many cases of trans women committing suicide only a handful of other people (most likely trans themselves) may even know that person was trans. In those cases the grieving process is felt in secrecy. Adding to that, there are few trans women suicides that are considered notable enough to warrant mention in the local press, which could help with getting a better count if reported more accurately. Most are reported locally as "man/boy kills self", because the stigma of being trans drives them underground until the stigma of suicide erases them forever, because we don't want to look at that. So we only count the murders. It is my opinion that trans women who commit suicide are in many cases killing themselves to spare someone else the trouble of having to murder them. So in my opinion deaths by suicide are important for telling the story of how trans women carry the burden of their stigma.. Like in the case of homeless trans woman Jennifer Gale here in Austin who died in 2008 outside a Salvation Army shelter on a freezing winter night. The policies of the shelter wouldn't allow her a place inside because her genitalia didn't match her presentation. She died of heart disease caused by sleeping on the freezing streets for too many years. She was denied shelter for being trans, and died as a result. Yet her death is not counted in the 2008 deaths by murder of trans women.
I'm rambling. I'll shut up now.
posted by Annika Cicada at 4:50 PM on December 16, 2015 [10 favorites]
I really wish the death counts of trans women included suicide and accidental deaths. The picture "on the ground" is heartbreaking. I think of Sophie, who took her life in England. Two or three other people on Mefi knew her. Her death was heartbreaking and tragic for reasons that I don't want to discuss here, and her suicide was reported initially as a male death, but I don't know if that was corrected. In my opinion her suicide was manufactured by the same societal dynamics that drive men to murder trans women, only in Sophie's case, her story is erased and remains untold outside a handful of people. If memory serves right, there was a proper memorial for Sophie, maybe others here on Mefi that were closer to the situation can confirm.
In many cases of trans women committing suicide only a handful of other people (most likely trans themselves) may even know that person was trans. In those cases the grieving process is felt in secrecy. Adding to that, there are few trans women suicides that are considered notable enough to warrant mention in the local press, which could help with getting a better count if reported more accurately. Most are reported locally as "man/boy kills self", because the stigma of being trans drives them underground until the stigma of suicide erases them forever, because we don't want to look at that. So we only count the murders. It is my opinion that trans women who commit suicide are in many cases killing themselves to spare someone else the trouble of having to murder them. So in my opinion deaths by suicide are important for telling the story of how trans women carry the burden of their stigma.. Like in the case of homeless trans woman Jennifer Gale here in Austin who died in 2008 outside a Salvation Army shelter on a freezing winter night. The policies of the shelter wouldn't allow her a place inside because her genitalia didn't match her presentation. She died of heart disease caused by sleeping on the freezing streets for too many years. She was denied shelter for being trans, and died as a result. Yet her death is not counted in the 2008 deaths by murder of trans women.
I'm rambling. I'll shut up now.
posted by Annika Cicada at 4:50 PM on December 16, 2015 [10 favorites]
Following Butler's logic, violence against trans women may be traceable to that moment when men are confronted with the fact that there are people in this world who have beat the system by liberating themselves from the supposedly inescapable confines of sex."
> That would require these violent men to have a much greater subconscious understanding+acceptance of gender theory than I think is plausible. More likely, their stated motivation is their real one—"He [sic] tricked me by pretending to be a woman, that's gross, I'll get revenge."
Far more interesting than stated motivation is a theory that describes where the stated motivation comes from, and to that theory, we don't have introspective access. A system can follow a theory without understanding it -- frogs don't know biology, electrons don't know physics, and violent men don't know gender theory.
posted by officer_fred at 6:00 PM on December 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
> That would require these violent men to have a much greater subconscious understanding+acceptance of gender theory than I think is plausible. More likely, their stated motivation is their real one—"He [sic] tricked me by pretending to be a woman, that's gross, I'll get revenge."
Far more interesting than stated motivation is a theory that describes where the stated motivation comes from, and to that theory, we don't have introspective access. A system can follow a theory without understanding it -- frogs don't know biology, electrons don't know physics, and violent men don't know gender theory.
posted by officer_fred at 6:00 PM on December 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
My personal theory probably owes more to Ida B. Wells's criticism of lynching than to Judith Butler.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:50 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:50 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Riffing on what not that girl said upthread, trans women are not model minorities. If a trans women has to measure up as a model minority when she is murdered before society on a large scale will draw the line and say "ENOUGH", then get comfortable with waiting for a while. At this point the definition of what is "a good trans woman" is in the hands of cis people, with radfems using that to the disadvantage of trans women by posting our criminal records online and painting all trans women as mentally ill abusers. This is a stunningly vicious and effective method of attack. It works. And thus the stigma continues. I don't know how to confront that. I don't know that I can.
Society stigmatizes trans women of color, marginalizes them, then blames them for their death when someone shoots them while doing sex work. It's a vicious cycle and until we accept that a lot of trans women make life choices that are considered unsavory by the majority, I fear little change will happen.
posted by Annika Cicada at 8:26 PM on December 16, 2015 [3 favorites]
Society stigmatizes trans women of color, marginalizes them, then blames them for their death when someone shoots them while doing sex work. It's a vicious cycle and until we accept that a lot of trans women make life choices that are considered unsavory by the majority, I fear little change will happen.
posted by Annika Cicada at 8:26 PM on December 16, 2015 [3 favorites]
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