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"TransPositive"
Fighting Hate Violence Is Everyone's Job
By Jessica Xavier
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"Until or unless steps are taken to track and
curb gender-based violence, it will continue. Moreover, as more
and more transgender-identified people come out of the closet,
we face the prospect of a dramatic escalation in such violence,
yet a grossly inadequate social response."
- Conclusion of The First National Survey on Transviolence
by GenderPAC
It happened 17 years ago, and like so much of my
past, I've tried to forget about it. It was about 2 a.m. in a
parking lot outside a brew pub, where my band had just played
four sets. As usual, my band-mates took off and left me alone
to finish loading my car with all my keyboard gear. Three bikers
looking for some fun decided I was their toy of the moment. In
those days, I suppose I barely passed as a man, and perhaps my
principal antagonist could sense that when he grabbed my glasses
to keep me in his thrall. After he got tired taunting me to take
them back from him, he pinned me up against my car, hit me several
times in the face and head, knocking me to the ground. Fortunately, he
and his friends were drunk, so I had a moment to snatch my glasses back,
jump in my car and take off, scared out of my mind. And angry.
Violence will do that to you. It strips you of your
power, your freedom, your wits and your resolve. It also can
destroy your health and even claim your life. Violence has many
faces. The robber. The rapist. The serial killer. Violence
is often associated with criminal acts and is a crime in of itself,
yet not all of its perpetrators are commonly considered criminals.
The cop who slams you up against a wall when your "attitude"
becomes his identified problem. The class bully in third grade.
A husband who batters his wife. A lesbian who beats up her partner.
Parents who spank or slap their kids.
The straight media has traditionally focused on violence
connected with crime, with Domestic Violence getting much, much
less coverage, probably because it is viewed as largely a woman's
issue, and because so many victims of DV remain with their abusive
husbands. Only rarely do stories on hate violence emerge in the
national media, like last February's bombing of the Other Side,
an Atlanta LGBT bar. Here in Washington, D.C. a tear gas attack
on a popular gay country and western bar in Capitol Hill last
August sank in just seconds from the radar screens of our local
media.
Violence leaves more than physical scars. Some of
its survivors suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for the
rest of their lives. Families of victims suffer too, from loss
of income to the stress of extended caregiving for a victim's
recovery to lack of conjugal relations. And please, let's not
trivialize it by calling the hate speech of the radical right
violence. Although such rhetoric creates the climate by which
its perpetrators may act without guilt, real violence is personal.
When someone lays their hands on you, punches you, chokes you,
rapes you or puts a knife or a bullet into you - that is violence.
Although overall crime statistics are down, violence
of all kinds - criminal, domestic and hate - continues to be a
huge problem for our country, especially our minorities. People
of color are far more likely to become victims of violence through
ordinary crime (murder, assault, rape, robbery, etc.) but hate
violence also affects them as well. All those burning churches
in the South last year were powerful reminders that the fires
of racism still rage in America. There are groups like the Southern
Poverty Law Center and The Anti-Defamation League that monitor
hate violence in country. The ADL defines a hate crime, also
known as a bias crime, as a criminal offense committed against
a person, property, or society which is motivated, in whole or
in part, by the offender's bias against a racial, religious, ethnic/national
origin, sexual orientation, disability or gender group.
After people of color, the next largest group affected
by hate violence are the sexual minorities. Queer people. Gay
men, lesbians, bisexual men and women, and the transgendered.
Gender queers. Us. Gay men, like the 17 whose murders over
the past five years have gone unsolved in the District of Columbia.
Lesbians, like those two hikers last year on the Appalachian
Trail, and the other couple in Oregon. Nearly thirty years after
Stonewall, many if not most gay men and lesbians feel empowered
enough to report the hate crimes committed against them. But
bisexual people and transgendered people are scarcely reflected
in the gay and lesbian community's own statistics.
Why? As transpeople, we know that at least at some
point in our lives, all of us possess physical or behavioral characteristics
that make it easy to identify us as queer. So that should make
it far more likely, on a per capita basis at least, that transpeople
may fall victim to hate violence, certainly more likely than those
gay men or lesbians who can pass for straight.
Are we transpeople invisible? Or are we being counted
as gay men or lesbians? Or is it a failure to report? If so,
are gay and lesbian anti-violence groups to blame, or is that
reporting failure our own?
We are fortunate here in Washington to have an experienced
anti-violence group. GLOV (Gay men and Lesbians Opposing Violence)
has been working to stop hate crimes in the District for over
nine years. Some of you may remember GLOV as the principal group
that lead the coalition which formed in the wake of Tyra Hunter's
death and mistreatment by the DC Fire Department in the fall of
1995. I have worked with and been inspired by these wonderful,
committed, caring gay men and lesbians for the past four years,
and this past June I joined their Board of Directors - the first
transgendered person to do so. According to GLOV's 1996 statistics,
there were 97 hate incidents reported to them in the District
of Columbia alone, but there were no reports by people identifying
themselves as transgendered or transsexual. Why?
Although many of us now know that transviolence happens
every single day, convincing the non-transgendered to monitor,
report and especially study it is extremely difficult. The straight
powers that be are uninterested in funding studies of stigmatized
social groups. Fortunately, GenderPAC and its street fighters
in the Transexual Menace have done a lot of excellent anti-transviolence
work, work that often gets unfairly overlooked. GenderPAC saw
the need for facts and figures, and did something about it. It
prepared a questionnaire, collected responses from 402 transpeople
across the country, and last April, released its First National
Survey of TransViolence. Sixty percent of the respondents had
been assaulted at least once in their lifetime. The largest single
group of transgendered victims were cross dressers and drags (27%)
followed by transsexual men (21%) and transsexual women (20%).
About half of the victims of violence and harassment were from
30 to 44. Much higher rates were reported for harassment - usually
verbal, but it also can include vandalism, telephone calls and
even hate mail. Other informal surveys have reported even higher
incidence of violence.
In our poll of the dozen transsexual women at 1994's
Camp Trans protest against the Michigan Women's Musical Festival
(as reported by Riki Wilchins recently in her book Read My Lips)
all twelve of us reported being physically abused or beaten as
either a child or an adult. Seventy-five percent (9) had been
sexually abused as children, with 5 (40%) reporting incest. Six
of us (50%) has been raped, three of us stabbed and two of us
shot. Since GenderPAC and the Transexual Menace began their work,
a major anti-trans hate incident has occurred at least every three
months, and those are only the ones that get reported. According
to TADD (Transgenders Against Discrimination in the District),
what happened to Tyra Hunter was only the tip of the violence
iceberg in Washington. Due to the lack of police interest in
investigating and press interest in reporting these cases, the
amount of under-reporting is likely to be huge. One thing is
certain - the amount of violence we transpeople incur is staggering.
And don't expect much from this Hate Crimes Summit
that's just happened in Washington. GenderPAC wasn't invited,
and for that matter, neither was NOW or the Feminist Majority,
and gender-based violence (against women) is a huge concern for
those organizations too. They didn't even bother to hold the
event in the White House. President Clinton uses these issue-specific
"summits" as fig leafs, or better, as a bone tossed
to those of us starved for action on burning concerns. Of course,
nothing happens afterwards. So don't expect a trickle-down effect
from this meeting, and go looking for your local police to take
a sudden interest in hate violence in your neighborhood.
Yet we can't blame the under-reporting solely on
law enforcement, the media or transphobic gay and lesbian anti-violence
groups. GenderPAC put out thousands of its questionnaires, yet
only 400 of us cared to reply. So what's gives with the transgendered
victims who survive their assaults? Since so many of us feel compelled
to maintain our secrecy, I suspect it's comparable to what happens
to gay men who are not out about their sexuality. They rarely
report their own assaults because their personal devils are in
the details. Their reason for being there will come out. Their
formerly hidden homosexuality or bisexuality will come out. And
so will their shame.
I believe something similar happens to us. When
many of us are assaulted, we will shoulder any injury as long
as the truth of the circumstances remains a secret. Those of
us who are in transition may view an assault is a reminder of
our failure to pass, while still others might deny they are transsexual
or transgendered - they are simply women or men. Although not
reporting an assault as a hate crime may save marriages, jobs
and what's left of our pride, there is a higher cost to be paid.
Our assailants remain free to commit the same assaults over and
over again, while we continue to remain a victim of our own shame,
our own fear, and our own self-hatred. In studies of the psychology
of battered women, many victims who continue to stay with their
battering males have reported feeling that their assaults were
warranted, because they felt they were somehow at fault, although
most could not give a common sense reason why. The researchers
concluded that this revealed the low self-esteem of the victims,
and that the victims felt their assaults confirmed their feelings
of worthlessness. I sense that this is also true for at least
some of us who remain silent after we are assaulted.
But it doesn't have to be that way. We can and must
report these hate crimes to our local queer anti-violence groups
like GLOV. And no, you do not have to give your name, either
- these groups will take anonymous reports. If you do you give
your name and other personal information, they will keep it strictly
confidential. Make sure you mention your transgendered status
(TG, TS, CD) and gender vector (MTF or FTM). As a board member
of an LGBT anti-violence group, I am certain that the under-reporting
of transgendered victims is due more to our failure to report
than their failure to include us. More and more gay and lesbian
anti-violence groups across the nation are becoming fully inclusive,
and they want to take our hate crime reports.
So the next time you get verbally harassed, shoved
up against a wall, arrested for no clear reason, punched in the
face or worse, don't be ashamed - be angry. Fight back! Pick
up the phone and report it. Stopping hate violence is every queer
person's responsibility, your straight sexual orientation notwithstanding.
If you're still afraid to report it, then try thinking of what
you possibly might say to your assailant's next victim, after
you did nothing to stop him, when you had the opportunity to do
so.
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