A young transgendered woman was murdered in CO, and today the verdict came back as harshly as it could. A lot of people were surprised. Here is the story:
The personal relevance this has to me is that a classmate of mine, who is/was also transgendered, mysteriously disappeared about 2 years ago and nobody knows where she went or what became of her. Her family, friends, nobody seems to know. She just vanished. This story at least makes me think that if something happened to her, some day society will fully wake up to realize that these people are not disposable.
That’s a change. Often, prosecutors are reluctant to describe homophobic hate crimes as hate crimes. There was a bashing here in Vancouver a few years ago, which came to trial shortly after the government changed hands to a more conservative party. The victim was killed, and one of the perpetrators was tried as a youth, while 3 were over 18 and tried as adults. The youth pled guilty and was sentenced accordingly, but for some reason the prosecutor conducting the adult’s trial point blanc refused to argue that a carload of suburban teens who’d loaded up with baseball bats and gone to a well known downtown cruising location, and there beat a man to death had done so because he was gay.
The judge even pointblanc called on the prosecutor and asked if there was anything he wished to say about the crime, and the prosecutor said “no”. Activists were furious, and from what I can tell, with good reason.
I don’t like surprises, but I’ve never felt the need to kill anyone over it.
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But that’s the standard defense any time a straight man kills a gay man. The four kids I alluded to in my post above, who made an excursion to the most famous gay cruising ground in the province, after loading up on baseball bats, claimed they were ‘surprised’ to encounter a naked gay man, too.
It’s also remarkable how many men managed to postpone their surprised reaction until after they come, too. In this story, for instance, the killer had been living with the victim for three days.
I actually briefly dated a guy who, shortly into our relationship, I found out was not born male. There was really no way to tell other than by looking at his genitalia. And he didn’t tell me before we were intimate. It was an akward situation: he thought I knew. I didn’t.
After we’d been together a day and I had processed everything, I told him I wished him well but I couldn’t continue.
Well, sometimes I guess you assume the other person knows. It can be pretty obvious, or it can be a total surprise.
The next time you’re in line at the grocery store, look at all the people around you. Any of them could be biologically the other gender. They may feel that it is obvious, whereas you have no idea.
The victim in this story was 18. The write up doesn’t say, but I’m sure that there are no 18 year old post-op transgenders. You can get hormones on the black market, but you can’t get surgery.
In the US, there may be 18-year old or younger transgendered individuals, as the sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) is legal to perform on teens, though most doctors are hesitant to perform it that young, according to this article (about an Argentine teen transsexual): http://www.bookrags.com/news/argentine-teen-wins-court-approval-for-moc/