Trans – Page 9 – Feministe

TDOR Link Round-Up

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It’s a day to remember those transgender individuals who were murdered in hate crimes during this past year and the ones preceding it. In the past 365 days, 30 names were added to the list of the dead. A round-up of posts is below:

How to Mourn by Queen Emily

Quick and Dead by Little Light

The Value of a Life by Dented Blue Mercedes

HRC: Keep Your Money-Grubbing Mitts off Our TDOR by Monica Roberts

Today is the Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance by Autumn Sandeen

Remembrance and Action by our own Jack

Transgender Day of Remembrance by Fannie

Remembering the Dead by Mór Rígan

Remember by Zan

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2008 by me

The full list of names is here.

You can find events in your area here.

Great posts that I missed (or were put up after this post)? Please, link them in the comments. Feel free to link to your own posts on the TDOR as well.

Remembrance and Action

I continue to be moved and thankful for the well-purposed outrage and generosity that so many people showed last week in donating to Duanna Johnson’s funeral fund. With the help of everyone who organized the fundraising efforts and spread the word, including Dan Savage on the well read SLOG blog, the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition was able to raise all that Duanna’s family needed and more. From the TTPC website:

In only four hours, nearly two hundred people responded by opening their hearts and their wallets. You donated over $5300 to the fund. We are still counting the final figures, but not only will this cover the costs of the funeral, but all of the remaining money is being given directly to the family to use as they see fit.

We realize your donations will not ease the pain of Duanna’s tragic loss to her family, but you have sent a message to the world that the lives of transgender people matter, and that we appreciate Duanna’s fight for respect.

Words cannot begin to express the heartfelt gratitude of all the members of TTPC who are touched by your incredble generosity.

I think that all of us who care about justice for trans people and for Duanna Johnson specifically owe a great deal of gratitude to TTPC. Thank you for your struggle and for supporting Duanna’s family.

*******

Since writing about Duanna on Friday, I’ve learned about the killings of two more trans women of color in recent months. Ebony Whitaker was murdered in July, also in Memphis. In August, Nakhia Williams was killed in Louisville, Kentucky. GLAAD and the Kentucky Fairness Alliance report that not only was there minimal news coverage of Williams’ murder, but the coverage that did happen was transphobic and disrespectful. And just this past Friday, Teish Cannon, a young Black trans woman living in Syracuse, NY, had her life cut short at the age of 22 because she was trans. Again, the media coverage has been both sparse and disrespectful, identifying Cannon as a man who was killed for being gay, not a woman who was killed for being trans.

(It took me maybe ten minutes to type that last paragraph. It made me feel nauseous. I’m not sure how I’m managing not to cry at this point.)

Teish Cannon, Nakhia Williams, Ebony Whitaker, Duanna Johnson, and too many other trans people who have been murdered because of their gender, will be remembered at ceremonies across the country this Thursday, November 20, the annual Trans Day of Remembrance. Gender Education and Advocacy describes the TDOR:

The Transgender Day of Remembrance serves several purposes. It raises public awareness of hate crimes against transgendered people, an action that current media doesn’t perform. Day of Remembrance publicly mourns and honors the lives of our brothers and sisters who might otherwise be forgotten. Through the vigil, we express love and respect for our people in the face of national indifference and hatred. Day of Remembrance reminds non-transgendered people that we are their sons, daughters, parents, friends and lovers. Day of Remembrance gives our allies a chance to step forward with us and stand in vigil, memorializing those of us who’ve died by anti-transgender violence.

There will be many vigils and other events across the country on Thursday; there is likely to be one near you if you live near a city or university. In NYC, some of these events include a vigil at Housing Works in East New York, Brooklyn and an event organized by the Gender Identity Project at the Center (thanks to the SRLP website for this info). There will also be a TDOR service this Wednesday at 12pm at the Union Theological Seminary, organized by their Queer Caucus (James Chapel, 121st and Broadway – thanks for the info, Lissa.)

Both the TDOR and the amazing fundraising effort for Duanna Johnson’s family are about remembering those trans people who have died because of hatred, prejudice, and institutionalized, systemic discrimination. Remembrance is important and necessary, but we cannot stop at remembrance. If we want this violence against trans people to stop, we must move beyond mourning our dead and take up the fight for the rights of our living.

Here are some ways to do that.

Read this post from the FTM Livejournal community for specific action points around Duanna Johnson’s murder.
Find out how to support the families and communities of Teish Cannon and Nakhia Williams, and spread the word. (If anyone has more information on this, please post in the comments here or send it my way so that I can repost it.)
Support organizations in your area that are fighting for the rights of trans and gender non-conforming people. Continue to support TTPC by donating to them directly. In NYC, as usual, I recommend SRLP, TransJustice at ALP, and FIERCE!, as well as the Ali Forney Center, which provides housing for homeless LGBT youth and is really struggling right now due to budget cuts. But there are many more in NYC and in cities and towns across the country. Find the ones near you and find out what kind of support they need. Donations are always good, but you can also volunteer, attend their events, spread the word about them, participate in protests and campaigns that they’re organizing – take your cues from them.
Take LGB(t) organizations and the mainstream LGB community to task around trans issues. Most of them can be doing so much more for trans people than they’re doing. Question the distribution of resources and attention so that these organizations and the larger community make the “T” in the LGBT more than just a meaningless display.
Hold the media accountable for their crappy and minimal coverage of trans issues. Write letters to the editor or even start letter-writing campaigns. If you work in the press, learn how to be respectful of trans people and encourage your colleagues to do the same. If you’re a blogger or involved in alternative media, work to fill the void left by the mainstream media with respectful, attentive coverage of trans issues. And don’t just wait until someone is murdered to cover trans issues – trans people are alive, they’re fighting, they’re having victories and successes and those need to be covered, too.
Come summer 2009, participate in the annual Trans Day of Action organized by TransJustice. I think it’s a good, action-focused complement to the Trans Day of Remembrance. Right now, most TDOA activities happen in NYC, but TransJustice encourages people across the country to “endorse this call to action and to build contingents to march in solidarity together.”

This is by no means an exhaustive list; these are just some ideas that I came up with. I invite people to add more ways to join the struggle and fight for the rights of trans folks in the comments. But please, do something.

Cross-posted at AngryBrownButch

CFS: The Body as a Site of Discrimination

I saw this call for submissions, and it looks like a pretty interesting project. I thought some of our readers might be interestd in submitting, since I know you all are an insightful and talented bunch:

Call for submissions: The Body as a Site of Discrimination – A Multidisciplinary, Multimedia Online Journal

The Body as a Site of Discrimination will be an interactive,educational, multi-disciplinary, high quality, critical, and cuttingedge online journal. This creative project will fulfill the degreerequirements for two Master’s of Social Work students at SFSU. This is a call for submissions to explore the following themes, but other interpretations are also encouraged.

– Disability and Ableism
– Fatphobia or Size Discrimination
– Ageism
– Racism
– Gender Discrimination
– Transphobia, non-conforming gender identities, sexual assault, sexism, and reproductive rights

Cultural and academic communities are invited to contribute for a well-rounded exploration of the theme. The significance of this project is to examine the intersectionality between varying forms of body-based oppressions. Crossing disciplines is necessary to understand this matrix of discrimination and will lead to inventive strategies of change and resistance. The outcome of this journal will contribute to the body of knowledge and serve as a resource for subsequent generations of social workers and other helping professionals.

Entries can explore activism and resistance around these issues, focus on social justice, and implications for social work practice and policy. Representative voices from the identified communities are encouraged to submit. Submissions can include personal narratives, research articles, performance and visual art, fiction, poetry, music, etc. Electronic copies of submissions will be considered for publication.

All submissions must be received by January 15, 2009 to bodydiscrimination@gmail.com

Please pass on this call to any interested parties and contact us if you have any questions.

Thank You

Editors-in-Chief
The Body as a Site of Discrimination

Since the theme is open to interepretation, off the top of my head I’d say that while I’m not qualified to write on it, something specifically about sex workers’ rights (and its intersections with the oppressions listed above) would be a good addition.

h/t F.R.I.D.A.

Can the LGBT community spare some outrage for Duanna Johnson?

UPDATE: The Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition has set up a fund for Duanna Johnson’s funeral expenses that you can donate to via PayPal. This seems to be the most legitimate and secure way of donating. Any funds collected above the cost of the funeral will go to Johnson’s family. Please donate if and what you can, and do it soon. A special request to everyone (like me) who donated to the No On Prop 8 campaign: try to match that donation, or even just half of it if you can’t manage the whole thing right now. We can get this raised fast if we all commit to that.

UPDATE 2 (11/14/08 7:46 EST): TTPC reports that they have received $4745 in donations for Duanna’s family. “The response has been tremendous. We have received around 165 donations from as far away as Japan. Duanna’s family will be thrilled. Thank you world!” I echo their thanks to everyone who donated and helped spread the word today. I wish we hadn’t had to raise this money in the first place, but I’m glad that we did. While no amount of money can undo the tragedy of their loss, at least we can help ease their financial burden and give them one less worry as they grieve. (end update)

Duanna Johnson

On February 12, 2008, Duanna Johnson was brutally beaten by a Memphis police officer after she refused to respond when the officer called her “he-she” and “faggot.” That night, Johnson became yet another of the countless trans women of color to be targeted and brutalized by police in this country. Two officers were fired after the attack; neither was prosecuted.

Just to be trans, just to be a woman, just to be a person of color in this country is enough to drastically increase one’s exposure to hatred and violence; when oppressions overlap, violence tends to multiply.

This past Sunday, Duanna Johnson was found murdered on the streets of Memphis. I didn’t hear about this until today, when I read a post on my friend Dean’s blog. When I read the awful news, I felt heartsick in a way that has become all too familiar and all too frequent.

After reading Dean’s post today, I was surprised to find out that Johnson was murdered nearly three days ago already and that I hadn’t heard about this until today. I know that I haven’t been very good at keeping up with the news or the blogosphere these past few days. But I can’t help but notice that despite this relative disconnection, I’ve read and heard no shortage of commentary, protest, and outrage about Proposition 8.

A Google News search for “Duanna Johnson” yields 50 results, many syndicated and therefore redundant. Much of the coverage is tainted by the transphobia and victim-blaming that tends to inflect media coverage of violence against trans women of color (like this Associated Press article). A search for “Proposition 8”? 18,085 results – 354.6 times more than for Duanna Johnson.

The skew in the blogosphere is less severe but still pronounced. A Google BlogSearch for Duanna Johnson: 2,300 results. For Prop 8? 240,839, or 100 times more.

Don’t think I’m being deliberately unrealistic or dismissive here. I don’t deny that the passage of Proposition 8 is harmful to the LGBT community and bears much anger, attention, and agitation. I understand the difference in magnitude of the number lives directly affected by the passage of Proposition 8 versus the number of lives directly affected by Duanna Johnson’s murder. I get that.

Yet still, the disparity in attention is damn stark. And that skew isn’t limited to this particular incident; it is a skew that is present in the collective coverage of and attention paid to all violence against trans women of color. And it is a skew that reflects what the GLb(t) mainstream chosen to prioritize with time, energy, and resources, and what it has chosen to address primarily with lip service and leftovers. An apt example of this: the Prop 8 op-ed written by Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese communicates more anger, more commitment to an enduring fight for justice, more of a sense of giving a damn than his brief, comparatively tepid statement in HRC press release on Duanna Johnson’s death.

There is a call out for people to donate money to help Johnson’s mother pay her funeral expenses, which are right now expected to total $1195. Unfortunately, there is some confusion about how to make donations and concern about whether the funeral home is doing right by Mrs. Skinner. I advise folks who wish to donate to use caution; I hope that a clearer, more secure way of donating is established soon. UPDATE: It’s been established.

But when it is possible to make donations safely, I hope that many people donate whatever they can. $1195 is a relatively small amount to raise. Given that the No On Prop 8 campaign was able to raise $37.6 million – or 31,464 times the cost of Duanna Johnson’s funeral – raising this far smaller amount should be no problem for our community. Right?

Cross-posted at AngryBrownButch and Racialicious

Defining Transphobia

Lisa Harney, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers, has written an excellent post explaining what transphobia is. For those who are unsure of what is/is not transphobic, and what is meant by “cissexual privilege,” this is a must-read. For those who feel they’ve got a pretty good grasp of it, I recommend heading over anyway because it’s an excellent piece of writing.

Blast from the Recent Past

Since the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival just passed and many people have been writing online about that many-years-running debacle/struggle, I thought I’d link to an oldie-but-goodie, Emi Koyama’s “Whose Feminism Is It, Anyway? The Unspoken Racism of the Trans Inclusion Debate,” which substantially expanded my understanding of the situation when I read it in 2002. At the time, I was working with a couple dozen people to organize Ladyfest Los Angeles, and we engaged in several charged and really thoughtful big-group conversations about whether or not we’d invite artists who’d performed at MWMF regardless of its transphobic policy to perform at Ladyfest LA. Koyama’s article, along with the passionate, justice-minded arguments of many of my co-organizers, helped me a lot in understanding the MWMF conversation in the broader context of movements for trans and gender justice, a history of racist/privilege-based feminisms, and so much more.

(Ladyfest LA never did make a group decision on whether or not we’d invite MWMF performers to our festival, for lack of a collective decision-making structure — which is a whole other post I may write if I have time… We did have a proactive trans-inclusion* policy, and many of us organizers wore armbands throughout the festival in protest of other festivals’ transphobic policies.

*Six years later, I cringe a little at the paternalistic and cisgendered-“woman”-centric notion of “trans inclusion,” but, alas, that’s what we called it … )

Some thoughts on gender and Judaism

Following up on my most recent post about some different Jewish theoretical approaches to the issue of homosexuality, I would like to offer one or two thoughts on how Judaism approaches gender. Can we devise a modern Jewish theoretical framework for understanding and resolving issues posed to traditional Jewish thought and law by people who bend or break the gender boundaries?

Killing a Woman Because She’s Trans “Not a Classic Hate Crime”

Angie Zapata was murdered in July. (See Sam’s post.) Allen Ray Andrade, who has admitted to beating Zapata to death, supposedly became uncontrollably “enraged” upon learning that she was transgender after a sexual encounter. This is, of course, a common defense in such murders (known as “trans panic”), and one that apparently plays into bigoted public sensibilities that transgender individuals are unethically “fooling” people and of course no one would ever knowingly have consensual sex with them. It’s also worth noting that Andrade claims to have only learned Zapata was transgender by sexually assaulting her, grabbing her genitals without her consent. He then saw it as an excuse to kill her. (trigger warning)

Later on July 16, Andrade said he asked Zapata outright whether she was a man or woman. “I am all woman,” Zapata allegedly told him, according to the affidavit. He asked for proof and when she refused, Andrade told investigators, he “grabbed Zapata’s genital area and felt a penis.”

“Andrade indicated he became angered by his discovery and struck victim Zapata with his fists,” according to the affidavit. He then grabbed a fire extinguisher, he said, and struck her twice.

He told investigators he thought he “killed it,” referring to Zapata. As he prepared to flee, Andrade said, he heard Zapata “gurgling” and saw her start to sit up, then he hit her in the head again with the fire extinguisher, according to the affidavit.

The suspect admitted to taking Zapata’s PT Cruiser, which was missing from the murder scene. On July 28, a credit card in Zapata’s name was used at multiple gas stations in the greater Denver area, according to police. Andrade also admitted to taking Zapata’s purse and cell phone, which have not been recovered.

Yes, he did call the woman he murdered “it.”

Diminished happiness on Pride Weekend

It’s Pride Weekend here in Vancouver. Assuming it stops raining, there will be a parade, a festival, fireworks from the finale of the Celebration of Light, and general merrymaking as is wont to occur during a Pride Weekend. Yet this weekend, the celebrations will be diminished—not just by the terrible murder on the bus a couple of days ago, but also by the recent murder of a transwoman in Colorado. Angie Zapata went on a date with a man she had met over the Internet, and upon his discovery that she had personal bits that didn’t match up with what he thought should have been there, he brutally bludgeoned her to death.

On Passover, Jews recount the joyful story of the exodus from Egypt, the journey from slavery to freedom. Yet this freedom came at a price: in the story, God brought ten plagues on the Egyptians—even killing all the firstborn males in the kingdom—before Pharaoh would allow the people to leave the land. During the seder celebrations on the night of Passover, when the ten plagues are recounted, it is a custom among many Jews to spill a drop of wine from their cups, to symbolize the fact that we cannot celebrate with a full cup when that celebration is born of other people’s suffering.

This year, Pride will be celebrated with diminished happiness, with less than a full cup. And so must it be every year, until this kind of hatred is eliminated from the world. Homophobia, transphobia, gynophobia, racism, and all other kinds of intolerance must be swept away so that everyone may one day celebrate with a full cup.

Gender testing for female Olympians

Well, that didn’t take very long. China’s state media is reporting that female athletes suspected of “really” being males will be made to undergo gender screening at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, set to open in a few short weeks:

Suspected athletes will be evaluated from their external appearances by experts and undergo blood tests to examine their sex hormones, genes and chromosomes for sex determination, according to Prof. Tian Qinjie of Peking Union Medical College Hospital.

But these tests—which, as the New York Times rightly points out, reduce women to their sex chromosomes as the sole defining characteristic—don’t always work anyway. The Xinhua article says that “test results from about one in 500 to 600 athletes are abnormal”, and goes on to cite a whole set of cases that seem to indicate that these tests may not be all they’re cracked up to be:

Polish runner Ewar Kobukkowska, who won a gold medal in the women’s 4 X 100 meter relay and the bronze in the women’s 100 meter sprint at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, was the first athlete to be caught in a gender test after she failed the early form of a chromosome test in 1967.

She was found to have a rare genetic condition which gave her no advantage over other athletes, but was nonetheless banned from competing in the Olympics and professional sports.

At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, eight athletes failed the tests but were all cleared by subsequent examinations.

In another case, Indian middle distance runner Santhi Soundarajan who won the silver medal in the 800 meters track event at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, failed the sex determination test and was stripped of her medal.

Note how Soundarajan is not identified as a male. The article uses feminine pronouns, for goodness’ sake. Her only crime was being intersexed, having one of those genetic abnormalities that can cause the test to yield false results. In fact, it doesn’t appear that there are any cases of this kind of screening revealing men cheating by pretending to be women at this level of competition at all.

And if that wasn’t enough, the New York Times is reporting that a secondary physiological* test may be administered if an athlete fails the primary test:

The concept has drawn criticism over the years, largely because certain chromosomal abnormalities may cause a woman to fail a test, even though it gives her no competitive advantage. Also, if a female athlete fails a test she must have a physiological examination, which many consider invasive and a privacy violation.

(*I initially misread this to mean a psychological exam, not a physiological one. Still gross and icky and stupid, but I am not as flummoxed for lack of understanding as I had been. Thanks to those who pointed it out.)

The New York Times blog post ends with the following question:

What do you think? Is the possibility of male athletes posing as women in the Olympics great enough to warrant such testing? Or are these tests inappropriate?

The answer, as we have just seen, is that male athletes putting on dresses to outclass their female counterparts simply doesn’t happen at this level of sporting competition, and the tests are unreliable, invasive, and essentializing. Shame on the Olympics for even seriously considering something like this.

Unresolved—and more interesting—question: what about trans* athletes? Where can/should/could they compete in a system like this?