“Black trans lives matter! My sister’s life mattered! If one goes down, we all go down — and I’m not going nowhere.” Melania Brown, sister of Layleen Polanco, a transgender who was found in dead in Riker’s Island.
When I was younger, presumably around ten or eleven, the idealization of sexuality outside of heterosexuality. In Catholic education— for which I experienced my whole life until college — homosexuality, or in other words, any sexual expression outside of cisgender view were forbidden. So, when experiencing the presence of gay or bisexuals the world was different, not in a dark way, of course, but in a special haven for which everyone was welcomed — fat or skinny, white or black, poor or rich. Since my emergence into this world one facet constantly struck my mind and that’s the unequal representation of transgenders. Being transgendered is something I’ll never first-hand comprehend. Transgendered people are constantly oppressed by straight males as sex workers, not knowing sex work is the only survival in a white normative world; transgendered people are constantly oppressed by their family members, commonly referred to as freaks in the early nineteen-seventies, nineteen-eighties ; transgendered people are even oppressed by their kin, with some devaluing their status (as seen with Tracy Norman’s modeling career, in which a black gay hairstylist outed the model causing her to escape towards Europe). So, when making this data I’ll be 100% honest: I don’t have transgenders friends around me. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t honor the community, while I love to do an article about the pillars of the community, such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, I’m telling the stories of those who’ve lost their lives due to ongoing prejudice against trans bodies. Looking from 2018 to 2020, I looked towards the patterns, and most importantly, the stories of the women tragically lost.
To understand transgendered bodies we must first see who makes up this accumulation. In 2016, The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, which specializes in Gender Identity Law, found that 0.8% of African-Americans and Latinos identify as transgender, while 0.5% of White adults identify as transgender (0.6% of another race, which could consist of Asian or mixed, identify as transgender). This was research was found in 2016, a year marked by transition of political power, and a year, marked as the second year in which organizations — such as Human Rights Organization or Trans Lives Matter Info — profiled the deaths of transgendered or non-conforming individuals. Sacred, brave, resilient, these individuals have been devalued since Reganomics, with a lack of funding with HIV/AIDs medication, but since 2017, have been viciously prayed upon — at least that’s what shown today as there’s no telling how many bodies were lost pre-internet. Commonly brutalized by bigots or in some cases their loved ones (i.e. boyfriend/girlfriend, close friend), transgendered woman are the most risk as their represented 84% of those killed in three years. One case in particular physically and spiritually resented with me. Brayla Stone was a girl from Arkansas, 17-year-old, with bright purple hair that some wish they were exposed to! Last year, during the summer, Brayla Stone’s life was snatched, her dreams unfilled, her body left to rot in a car. This atrocity is reason enough to lead towards tears, however, when her 19-year-old murderer went on Instagram boasting about “zipping” (slang for killing) someone for payment, my tears became fury. Brayla Stone’s life was equivalized for $5,000, while her murderer, and seemingly his followers, glorified the grounds on which Stone walks — the ground in which black trans walk.
News stories would never correctly tell transgender or non-conforming murders, as a result of mislabeling; entertainment would never fully contextualize the stories of those lost, as a result of whitewashing (while some may say Pose as an pillar for trans stories, I’ll beg to differ and advise anyone to watch HBO Max Veneno which — quoting from African-American poet, Essex Hemphill (1957–1995) — gives the whole “ass-spitting truth”); hell, even I can’t correctly tell transgender or non-conforming stories because lack of having those same people around me. 500 words are not enough to examine this story, but with these graphs hopefully we can have qualities that evolves each day: learning and growing. Importantly: Valuing Trans Lives.
