Targets of transgression

[kweerwolf]

Chances are you know who Brandon Teena was, if only because Hilary Swank won an Oscar for portraying Teena in Boys Don’t Cry, a film based on Teena’s murder. It’s likely you were outraged by the 1993 Humboldt, Neb., case where two men brutally beat and raped the 21-year-old preoperative transgender man when they found out that he was biologically female. You probably couldn’t believe that the authorities – who referred to Teena as “it” – didn’t arrest the two when the beating and rape was reported. And you almost definitely said you saw it coming when, five days later, it was reported that the two men shot and stabbed Teena to death.

But you haven’t likely heard of Amanda Milan, Allison Decretal or Willie Houston. Or the hundred-plus other transgender murders that have happened in the last decade.

Amanda Milan was 27 when her throat was slashed while cab drivers cheered and applauded and three men shouted such incendiary remarks such as, “You’re a man!” and, “I know that’s a dick between your legs!” The New York transgender woman had no one to help her.

Allison Decretal was out celebrating Halloween with some friends in Inverness, Fla., when she was literally run down by a car driven by two other teenagers. The two teenagers in the car had driven by the small group of young people, who were cross-dressed for the holiday, shouting gay epithets, including “faggot.”

http://www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=6238

(In honor of Day of Remembrance this Sunday, an annual observance of transgender individuals who have been victims of murder.)