Remembering Slain Transgender Teen Gwen Araujo

@janetmock @VanessaLPinto A lot of men are secretly drawn to transsexuals. They are in a closet of their own. But the pressure is on.

@janetmock This was a story that has moved me for 10 years, and I am proud to have been able to honor Gwen in some small way :)

Vanessa, I disagree with your description of the murder and how it came about. Gwen wasn't even on hormones, didn't have any breast growth nor (as I understand it) did she have a completely "passable" voice. In other words, as usually happens in these murders, the men having sex with the trans woman know she's trans (or have an extremely strong suspicion) and it's only post-coital that they feel extreme shame, and their homophobia and transphobia takes over. That's when they murder the trans woman, not when they 'discover' her genitalia.

In this case, the violence started when Nicole Brown, one of the murderer's girlfriend (who shamefully has never been charged as an accessory in this crime) announced to everyone that Gwen "is a man" after forcibly examining Gwen's gentals. The men were now "outed" that they had sex with a trans woman. Your discussion of it feeds way too much into the standard trope put forward by "trans panic."

It also needs to be said that many hundreds of trans women (most of them young women of color) have been murdered in the 10 years since Gwen's death, much of them unsolved often due to a lack of motivation by police. Tragic as Gwen's murder was, to discuss Gwen's death as though it's something unique is to make all those other hundreds of deaths invisible. Where is the national outcry at the outrageous rate of murder against trans women, the highest murder rate against any group? And more importantly, where are the social, health and educational services both in the school systems and local, state and federal government which will assure the safety of this incredibly marginalized population? 

In this case, the violence started when Nicole Brown, one of the murderer's girlfriend (who shamefully has never been charged as an accessory in this crime) announced to everyone that Gwen "is a man" after forcibly examining Gwen's gentals. The men were now "outed" that they had sex with a trans woman. Your discussion of it feeds way too much into the standard trope put forward by "trans panic."

It also needs to be said that many hundreds of trans women (most of them women of color) have been murdered in the 10 years since Gwen's death, many of them unsolved (often due to a lack of motivation by police). Tragic as Gwen's murder was, to discuss Gwen's death as though it's something unique is to make all those other hundreds of deaths invisible. Where is the national outcry at the outrageous rate of murder against trans women, the highest murder rate against any group? And more importantly, where are the social, health and educational services both in the school systems and local, state and federal government which will assure the safety of this incredibly marginalized population?