Transgender Day of Remembrance announced.
MEDIA RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Gwen Smith
Ethan St. Pierre
TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE ANNOUNCED
6th annual event will be held November 20, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO, June 16, 2004 – The 6th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance has been set for November 20th, 2004, with over 100 separate
observances expected world-wide.
“Since last year’s event, nine more people have died due to anti-transgender violence,” said Ethan St. Pierre of the Remembering Our Dead project. “So yet again, we will be making it known that such killings are unacceptable.
The most recent reported case of anti-transgender violence leading to death is that of Cedric Thomas of Baton Rogue, Louisiana, who was shot multiple times on May 18th. Thomas died from those wounds on June 5th.
The Day of Remembrance began in 1999 as a way to draw attention to the
issue of anti-transgender violence in the wake of unsolved murders such
as that of Rita Hester. Hester was killed November 28th, 1995. Her death remains unsolved.
Unlike the murder of Rita Hester, many recent cases — including the rash
of Washington, D.C. attacks that left two dead last August — show an increased vigilance on the part of law enforcement and the media to treat these crimes equally.
“That we’re seeing more stories about these cases, more arrests, and more
convictions says that our actions are being taken seriously,” said Transgender Day of Remembrance founder Gwen Smith. “yet there is still so much more to do.”
Last year’s event was honored in over one-hundred locations in eight countries.
The Remembering Our Dead project exists to honor individuals murdered as a result of anti-transgender hatred and Prejudice, and draw attention to the issue of anti-transgendered violence. Remembering Our Dead is a project of Gender Education and Advocacy, Inc.
commentary
I recently read an article by Chip Johnson of the SF Chronicle on the responsibility TG women have to disclose their transgender history with potential partners, and it occurred to me that the one thing I haven’t yet read about is that the problem is not with the TG women – it’s with the violence perpetrated by men whose egos are so fragile they must defend their machismo and heterosexuality at a tremendous cost. I’m tired of it.
I’m sharing a letter I wrote to Chip Johnson articulating these concerns:
Thanks for your article about Gwen Araujo about the danger for TG women of not disclosing their TG history. My husband is TG, & is often assumed to be female even when presenting as male. I have seen the impact this “surprise” can have on people first-hand, even in a non-sexual situation.
That said, I would love it if you and other columnists would clarify that the whole responsibility should not be on the shoulders of TG people, especially – as you pointed out – now that TG women are transitioning at younger and younger ages. What about these homophobic, small-minded bigots who think violence is an answer to everything? When do we write articles about their responsibility in the violence? As you know from the defense that is being offered in Gwen’s case, it is absolutely necessary that we point out the macho, heterosexist attitudes that have got to change – or, at the very least, the idea that violence is any kind of response to a surprise of this kind.
I am what’s referred to as a ‘genetic woman’ in the TG community, and I am astounded over and over again that the unspeakable behavior of some men when faced with a TG woman – or with a genetic woman who says no – is not the issue that is called out in the press.
TG women, like genetic women, have the right to feel safe especially within sexual contexts. Sexual attention from men is not always wanted, but women still have the burden of making sure the men – who are being sexually aggressive – not only know what our parts look like but that their fragile male egos are not bruised by rejection. Why can’t we call them out, for being immature and so locked in macho idiocy, instead? Certainly the gay male community is also all too aware of the violence inflicted by straight men who must preserve their macho pride, at all costs. All of us – gay men, genetic women, TG women – have got to take a stand against this neanderthal behavior, and start demanding that courts not let these bullies have their way.
Thanks again,
Helen Boyd, author of My Husband Betty
SF Chronicle article on Gwen Araujo & deception
No issue of sexual deception
Gwen Araujo was just who she was
Dylan Vade
Sunday, May 30, 2004
link”
Don’t talk to me about deception.
Gwen Araujo, a beautiful young transgender woman, was brutally beaten to death the fall of 2002. In the trial of three men accused of murder in her slaying, defense attorneys Tony Serra and Michael Thorman are using the “transgender/gay panic” defense. Their argument essentially is that Gwen deserved to be killed because she deceived, and thus stole the heterosexuality of the men she had sex with.
No one deserves to be killed for deception.
But in Gwen’s case, there was no deception. Gwen was just being herself. In a world in which we are all told we have to be more feminine or more masculine — Gwen was wise enough to know herself and brave enough to be herself. That is beautiful. She should be our role model.
Instead, transgender people are seen as deceivers. The word “deception” comes up often in our lives.
I will share one of my experiences with deception. I am a female-to-male transgender person. One day, I flirted with someone I assumed to be a gay man, got his number and later went over to his place. He opened the door, and we kissed. A couple of minutes later, I came out to him as transgender. I did it casually. I do not make a big deal out of it, because to me it is not a big deal.
It was a big deal to him. He immediately stopped being interested and told me that I had deceived him. He said: “I thought you were just a cute gay guy.” He said that I should have told him that I am transgender and what my genitalia look like before he invited me to his place.
I was not hurt, aside from my feelings. I was lucky.
What I did not say to him then, but wished I had:
“You deceived me. All this time I thought you were just a cute transgender guy. You really should have told me you are a nontransgender person. I cannot believe that you did not tell what your genitalia look like. I cannot go through with this. I would have never come over to your place had I known.
“Yes, you are right. I did not wear a T-shirt with a picture of my genitalia emblazoned on it. But, honey, neither did you. If we, as humans, decide that proper dating etiquette requires us all to disclose the exact shape and size of our genitalia before we get someone’s number, then, sure, maybe I will go along with that.
“You deceived me. You should have told me that you are transphobic. You should have told me that your head is chock full of stereotypes of what it means to be a ‘real man’ and a ‘real woman.’ You should have told me that when you look at someone, you immediately make an assumption about the size and shape of that person’s genitalia, and that you get really upset if your assumption is off.”
Why do some folks feel that transgender people need to disclose their history and their genitalia, and nontransgender people do not? When you first meet someone and they are clothed, you never know exactly what that person looks like. And when you first meet someone, you never know that person’s full history.
Why do only some people have to describe themselves in detail — and others do not? Why are some nondisclosures seen as actions and others utterly invisible? Actions. Gwen Araujo was being herself, openly and honestly. No, she did not wear a sign on her forehead that said “I am transgender, this is what my genitalia look like.” But her killers didn’t wear a sign on their foreheads saying, “We might look like nice high school boys, but really, we are transphobic and are planning to kill you.” That would have been a helpful disclosure.
Transgender people do not deceive. We are who we are.
Dylan Vade, co-director of the Transgender Law Center, is a lawyer and holds a Ph.D. in philosophy. Sondra Solovay, director of Beyond Bias, contributed to the article.
Continue reading “SF Chronicle article on Gwen Araujo & deception”
Mother's Day
‘In the Name of Womanhood and Humanity…’
By Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com
May 6, 2004
Last year in this space, I took the occasion of an upcoming Mother’s Day weekend to reprint the 1870 call by American poet and women’s leader Julia Ward Howe for the establishment of the holiday. The response was astonishing; the awareness was nearly nil – even by peace activists – that what is now widely viewed as a sentimental tribute to family was originally a call for women to wage a general strike to end war.
This year – as more and more mothers, in America as well as Iraq, mourn their fallen sons and daughters, lost to the insanity of organized violence – Julia Ward Howe’s call for women to not allow their men to constantly play at war is suddenly back in fashion. Around the country, her original Mother’s Day Proclamation will be the basis this year for parades, remembrances, and other events that try to reclaim the holiday’s original spirit in a year when the United States’ (male-dominated) government talks seriously not of avoiding war, but staying the course on the multiple ones we’re already fighting.
The radical origins of Mother’s Day – as a powerful feminist call against war, penned in the wake of the U.S. Civil War in 1870 – are fully compatible with the universal notion of honoring mothers. Women, even more so now, are the primary sufferers of warfare. In the 20th Century, civilian populations bore 90 percent of war’s casualties around the world; mass and indiscriminate attacks, popularized in WWII by the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Allied firebombings in Japan and Germany, and the rape of Nanjing, are only the most spectacular examples of a phenomenon in which women become the rape and famine victims, the refugees, the forgotten statistics in what are invariably the wars of men.
I admit it; I’ll send my elderly mother flowers this year. She appreciates them. But a greater gift for the world’s mothers still awaits: a day in which the voices of women – now, as then, less inclined to rush to war or bask in its false glory – are an equal part in the foreign policy of countries like the United States. As with so many other aspects of American history – May Day is another – a legacy that is now celebrated around the world is farthest from its original intent in the land of its birth. The generals have written our historical memory, in the Civil War, in most popular narratives of the bloody trail of modernizing “Western Civilization.”
It’s worth remembering that the Civil War, a political division that lasted longer and was considered more intractable than today’s Palestine/Israel conflict or indefinite “War on Terror,” and that killed well over a hundred times more people on American soil than the attacks of September 11, was not unanimously lauded at the time. And that women thought they could do something to prevent such bloodshed in the future.
Here is the original, pre-Hallmark, Mother’s Day Proclamation, penned in Boston by Julia Ward Howe in 1870:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.
Maybe next year.
(Lisa sent me the link from alternet.org – thanks Lisa!)
The Gwen Araujo Memorial Fund for Transgender Education
Murder of Gwen Araujo Spurs Philanthropic Fund
Contact: Julie Dorf
Director of Philanthropic Services
415-398-2333 ext. 103 Date: March 8, 2004
For Immediate Release
SAN FRANCISCO – With the Gwen Araujo murder trial set to begin on March 15, Gwen’s family, community activists, and Horizons Foundation have joined forces to create the Gwen Araujo Memorial Fund for Transgender Education. This fund will make small grants to school programs that promote understanding of transgender people and issues among youth.
Gwen’s mother, Sylvia Guerrero, said, “I am so committed to ensuring that what happened to my daughter does not happen to anyone else. The hatred of others because they are different must stop, and this fund will help break the cycle of ignorance and violence – with kids in their schools and with their parents.”
Horizons Foundation is a philanthropic social justice organization that has been serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community throughout the Bay Area for more than 20 years. “As a community foundation, Horizons has a special responsibility to pull together all LGBT people in the Bay Area, through a vehicle such as this fund, to help end the kind of violence and hatred that led to Gwen’s death,” said Roger Doughty, Executive Director of Horizons Foundation. “We are proud to be the home of the fund and to work closely with Gwen’s family and other members of our community to have a real impact on youth.”
The Gwen Araujo Memorial Fund for Transgender Education will be advised by a group of transgender and education experts, and will accept donations from the community on-line via the Horizons Foundation website and through the mail. Horizons encourages other community organizations, youth advocates, and communities of faith to consider supporting this fund.
For more information and press photos, see www.horizonsfoundation.org
Horizons Foundation; 870 Market, Suite 728; San Francisco, CA 94102
Telephone 415.398.2333; Fax 415.398.4783; info@horizonsfoundation.org
Horizons Foundation is a social justice philanthropic organization serving the entire spectrum of LGBT communities. To fulfill this mission, Horizons creates strong organizations meeting the needs, advancing the rights, and celebrating the lives of LGBT people and communities; generates a diverse group of informed, generous supporters giving time, energy, and resources to the LGBT community; and educates the public about the nature and impacts of homophobia.
This Week's Action – 4/26/04
Lobby Days: NTAC & GPAC
This week, two groups representing transgendered people are lobbying DC about our issues.
NTAC (National Transgender Advocacy Coalition) describes its mission as follows:
NTAC’s 2004 lobbying event will take place from April 28th through April 30th in Washington, DC. Wednesday the 28th will be used for training and final preparations. The day’s events will include a press conference at which families of hate crimes victims and surviors of hate crimes can tell their stories. Thursday and Friday, the 29th and 30th, will include visits to YOUR members of Congress to educate them and their staffs on the need for transgender-inclusive Employee Nondiscrimination and Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act (Hate Crimes) legislation.
This year’s effort will also press Congress to drop the sudden fixation on denial of equal marriage rights in order to take action on the serious, longtime employment and hate violence issues that have yet face the transgender community.
GPAC (Gender Public Advocacy Coalition) explain their efforts:
Parents, activists, and youth from all over the country come to the nation’s capital for a 3-day conference to work together to end discrimination and violence caused by gender stereotypes.
The conference beings with the 9th annual Gender Lobby Day, when activists from across the country descend on Capitol Hill to educate their Congress Members. Last year 1500 activists convened over 3 days! Following lobby day, attendees will return to the hotel for two intense and exciting days of workshops, plenaries, and Kimberle Crenshaw’s keynote address.
PLEASE donate to one or both of these groups to support their efforts!
Donate to NTAC
Donate to GPAC
GenderTalk Interview
The interview I did with GenderTalk is now available for listening or download on their site.
It’s Program #448, and I start at 32:09.
Also on the show are Calpernia Adams and Andrea James on the all-trans performance of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” to take place in LA on February 21, 2004, as part of the V-Day anti-violence project.
Amnesty International Request for Testimony
Campaign Against Discrimination > Request for Testimony from LGBT People
Request for Testimony
In the United States, Amnesty International’s (AI) work includes research and organizing around human rights violations by police, correctional officers, and the criminal justice system, as well as human rights abuses based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression, sex, race, national origin and immigration status.
AI is now researching how the police interact with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and communities. For example, we are trying to find out:
* How the police answer calls for help by LGBT people;
* Whether the police fully investigate crimes against LGBT people;
* Whether police officers treat LGBT individuals with respect;
* How police officers deal with same-sex domestic violence or sexual assault;
* Whether LGBT people have experienced verbal harassment from police officers;
* Whether LGBT people have been physically or sexually assaulted by police officers;
* How LGBT people�s experiences with police might differ based on race, sex, age, income, immigration status and gender identity.
The goal of the project is to make real changes, especially for communities who are most at risk of being treated badly by police. At the end of the project, AI will be publishing a report that will describe police interactions with LGBT people across the country, and talk about specific examples. The report will let the public know how police treat LGBT people and communities, and will include recommendations based on our findings. AI will be organizing based on the report�s recommendations.
Gathering people�s accounts of their personal experiences with police is an important part of this project. That is why AI is asking LGBT people to tell us about their experiences with the police. We fully understand that you may want to keep your experience private The information that you provide will be treated in the strictest confidence. We will not include names or identifying information in any public documents unless you tell us that it is OK to do so.
For more information
Amnesty International & GLBT Violence
I’ve long been a fan of Amnesty International, and yesterday I discovered that they are currently “spotlighting” a Human Rights activist who works in the TG community. Rodrigo Lopez Barrera has been threatened, shot at, and received an anonymous death threat. Why? He campaigns actively for the Transvestite Association of Chile.
Amnesty is asking that people send two letters – one to the Minister of the Interior of Chile, the second to the Governor of the Province (Los Andes) that Barrera lives in. The details of the case and the addresses of both officials can be found on AI’s press release about this case.
For you closet CDs, this is a perfect opporuntity to show a little support for your sisters, and to speak out without any chance of being outed. No-one but you & these officials in Chile will know you’re a crossdresser!
I also strongly suggest writing to Amnesty International at information@amnesty.org.uk and thanking them for choosing this case to highlight. AI is a well-respected international human rights group, & their choice, to spotlight a TG case, will have reverberations throughout the world.
If you want to really thank them, send a donation, too.
10 Year Anniversary of Brandon Teena's Death
I found this article here
Brandon Teena 10 Years Later
(Falls City, Nebraska) While most of the world prepares to celebrate New Year’s Eve this week, transgendered Americans are pausing to remember Brandon Teena on the tenth anniversary of his murder.
The December 31, 1993 killing of the good-looking 21 year old galvanized Falls City, Brandon’s hometown, and for the first time put a national spotlight on the plight of the transgendered. It was the inspiration for the award-winning 1999 film, “Boy’s Don’t Cry” and led to the first civil rights laws for trans citizens.
Teena was a female to male pre-op transsexual and had been living as a male for several years. In December, 1993 he went to County Sheriff Charles Laux and reported he had been raped by two men, John Lotter and Marvin Nissen, after they discovered he had been born female and still had female organs. Teen had been dating a female friend of Lotter’s at the time.
Laux refused to investigate. A week later Teen was murdered by the pair who also killed two people who witnessed the killing.
Lotter and Nissen were eventually charged, tried, and sentenced, but not before the nation became gripped by the brutality of the case and the indifference of authorities.
An appeal by by Lotter was rejected by the Nebraska Court of Appeal earlier this year.
But, in his death, Teena gave birth to transgender militancy. Trans men and women across the country began to organize, forming lobby groups to not only educate the public but to press for civil rights.
Today, 65 municipalities and states have hate crime laws that specifically include transgendered people, according to the Transgender Law Policy Institute. California became the fourth state to adopt such a law earlier this year.
“How many times do you get to see a giant sea change like this in people’s perceptions? But you look at Congress, corporate America, and cities and states … and you see this enormous change in how people are looking at gender as a civil rights issue,” said Riki Wilchins, executive director of the Washington-based Gender Public Advocacy Coalition.
Yet, despite the advances, violence against the transgendered continues. Last year, 17 year old Gwen Araujo was murdered in California by three men who discovered she had been born male. A year ago, Nizah Morris a TG performer was murdered in Philadelphia. In the past 12 months, Remembering Our Dead, an online memorial that tracks bias killing of transgendered people around the world, recorded 17 deaths in the United States.