Transgender

Forum













%expand(%include(D:\http/ads/ads0.html))

Jessica Xavier

"TransPositive"

Fighting Hate Violence Is Everyone's Job

By Jessica Xavier

"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.

TGF's Home Page