Sanesha Stewart, Lawrence King, and why hate crimes legislation won’t help

February 20, 2008

Sanesha Stewart, Lawrence King, and why hate crimes legislation won’t help
Published by Jackat February 20, 2008 in (in)justice system, people of color, prison abolition, queer and racism.
I’ve been out of town and subsequently out of touch for a while now, visiting El Paso with my partner to meet her incomprehensibly adorable two-week-old nephew. But in the midst of the happiness that babies and family and vacation bring, two pieces of tragic news have weighed heavily on my mind. Both of them demonstrate how dangerous and hostile a world this is for people who are trans and gender non-conforming.

On February 10, Sanesha Stewart, a young trans woman of color, was brutally murdered in her apartment in the Bronx. This is tragic and deeply saddening in and of itself, and part of a frightening and enduring pattern of violence against trans people. But because of this woman’s identities - trans, woman, person of color, low income - the tragedy doesn’t end with her death and the grief of those who knew and loved her. Instead, the mainstream media, specifically the Daily News, has managed to add to the tragedy with grossly disrespectful and transphobic journalism - if such garbage can even be called journalism. This, too, is part of a pattern, one that I’ve written about before. And yet, every time I read another disgustingly transphobic article, I’m still shocked and appalled that some media sources will stoop so low. Even in death, even after having been murdered, trans people are given no respect and are treated as less than human.

In an eloquent and resonating post on Feministe, Holly posits a world in which Sanesha Stewart’s murder would be treated with respect for the victim and a cold eye for the killer, then contrasts that with the lurid reality:

There was no respect and no cold eye, none at all. I must be imagining some completely different universe where young trans women of color aren’t automatically treated like human trash. Where we all live, business as usual is to make a lot of comments about what the murder victim dressed like and looked like, reveal what her name was before she changed it, automatically assume she’s getting paid for sex, and to make excuses for the alleged killer.

Only days after Sanesha was murdered, Lawrence King, a 15-year-old, openly gay, gender non-conforming junior high schooler was shot in the head and killed by Brandon McInerney, a fellow classmate, a 14-year-old boy. McInerney has been charged with first-degree murder and a hate crime, for which he could face a sentence of 24 years to life with an additional three years because of the hate crime status.

It’s mind-boggling. Mind-boggling that someone so young could be so severely punished for simply being himself; mind-boggling that someone so young could have so much hatred or anger inside of him that he could kill another kid. Or, as Holly suggests in another post, that perhaps McInerney was not acting out of simple hatred:

I fear the worst — and the worst would not just be that some homophobic asshole killed a child. There’s an even worse worst: that a child is dead, and the other child who pulled the trigger did so because he couldn’t deal with his own feelings. And now that second child will be tried as an adult, and another life destroyed.

When crimes like the murders of Lawrence King and Sanesha Stewart occur, I often hear queer and trans advocates call for strong hate crimes legislation. In a statement from the Human Rights Campaign about King’s murder (mind you, I doubt the HRC would ever release any statement about Stewart’s murder), Joe Solomnese reiterated this demand:

While California’s residents are fortunate to have state laws that provide some protection against hate crimes and school bullying, this pattern of violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students is repeated too often in schools and communities across America each day. This tragedy illustrates the need to pass a federal hate crimes law to ensure everyone is protected against violent, bias-motivated crimes, wherever they reside.

I disagree with this response. I cannot see how hate crimes legislation can do anything to protect anyone - queer and trans people, people of color, women, and other victims of hate crimes. Hate crimes legislation only works after the fact, after someone has been victimized, hurt, or killed. Hate crimes legislation cannot undo what has been done. Nor can it undo what has been done to our society and to the individuals within it: the inscription of hatred, of intolerance, of prejudice upon our psyches. Hate crimes don’t occur because there aren’t enough laws against them, and hate crimes won’t stop when those laws are in place. Hate crimes occur because, time and time again, our society demonstrates that certain people are worth less than others; that certain people are wrong, are perverse, are immoral in their very being; that certain people deserve discrimination, derision, and disrespect.

Perhaps advocates of hate crimes legislation believe that such laws would send a message to people that homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of prejudice and hatred are wrong. I don’t think it will. How could such laws counteract the prejudices that permeate our society? I seriously doubt that hate crimes legislation that is only brought up after someone is hurt or killed can make a dent in the ubiquitous flood of messages that we receive from politicians, religious leaders, the media and pop culture that queers and trans people are less deserving of respect and rights than straight and non-trans people. In this country, all signs point to queer people being second-class citizens, and trans and gender non-conforming people being maybe third or fourth-class citizens. That is what sets up a situation where someone is targeted because of their sexuality or their gender identity, just as such dehumanization is what has fueled racist and sexist violence for centuries. And that’s simply not going to be undone by hate crimes legislation. Attacking a few of the symptoms of hatred while leaving others unhindered and the root causes untouched is never going to change much of anything.

Moreover, hate crimes legislation is far too tied up with our unjust judicial system and prison industry. How can we rely on systems that continuously target and abuse people of color, queer folks, and trans folks to protect us from targeting and abuse? Can we really trust the police, the courts, and prisons to protect us when much of the time they’re violating our rights, tearing apart our families, and ravaging our communities? Is it likely that hate crimes legislation will be applied fairly across the board in a system that consistently fails to treat all people equally? I think not. For communities that often find themselves being victimized by the judicial and prison systems, there can be little to gain in bolstering those systems and giving them more power to imprison, possibly unjustly. For my part, I’m invested in prison abolition, so “protections” that serve primarily to send more people to jail for longer periods of time are counterintuitive.

In fact, because hate crimes legislation involves no analysis of power - it’s not legislation against homophobic or transphobic or racist acts, but rather against general hatred in any direction - such laws can even be applied against oppressed people. Now, I’m not defending or condoning acts of violence or hatred perpetuated by oppressed people, nor am I saying that one form of violence is better than the other. But the lack of a power analysis built into such legislation reminds me of accusations of “reverse racism” in that they both completely miss the point. Queer folks, trans folks, people of color aren’t disproportionately victimized simply because some individuals hate them; that hatred is backed up, reinforced, and executed by an entire system of institutionalized power that allows and in fact encourages such acts of violence. The lack of acknowledgment of these systems of power in hate crimes legislation only reinforces my belief that such legislation is relatively useless in doing anything to stop homophobia, transphobia, racism and other forms of oppression, and therefore won’t do much to stop the violence that stems from said oppression.

Hate crimes legislation won’t bring Sanesha Stewart or Lawrence King back, nor will it protect other trans and gender non-conforming folks and people of color from violence fueled by hate. Instead of reacting to hatred with disapproval after the fact, we need to instill a proactive condemnation of hatred, prejudice and discrimination into our society. Sure, that’s a much more difficult job to do, but it can be done, slowly but surely, and it’s the only way we’re truly going to protect those who need protection most.

Sanesha Stewart is dead and I have only tears and frustration for her

Februar12,2008

A man named Steve McMillian apparently stabbed Sanesha Stewart to death on Saturday morning. Who was she? She lived in the Bronx. She was tall and femme and well-liked by her neighbors. She was a client at the law project where I volunteer, but I never met her myself. Some of my colleagues helped her get her name legally changed more than a year ago. None of the above mattered at all to the news media, which handled this tragedy with the appropriate combination of sensitivity, respect for the victim, and a very cold eye for the man who the police dragged from her apartment, covered in her blood.

Oh no… wait one second and back up. There was no respect and no cold eye, none at all. I must be imagining some completely different universe where young trans women of color aren’t automatically treated like human trash. Where we all live, business as usual is to make a lot of comments about what the murder victim dressed like and looked like, reveal what her name was before she changed it, automatically assume she’s getting paid for sex, and to make excuses for the alleged killer.

And please note: “Cops: Ex-con slays Bronx transsexual ‘hooker’” is not the original headline of this NY Daily News article. The original one was “Fooled john stabbed Bronx tranny,” until pressure from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation got them to change it. They are still suggesting that people take action by writing to the editors–follow that link for more details.

The Daily News also published a follow-up story in which Sanesha’s downstairs neighbor insists that she wasn’t getting paid for sex; the Daily News doesn’t offer any proof for their earlier assertion that Sanesha Stewart was a “hooker,” other than “police sources.” And as many trans people in New York City will tell you, the NYPD assumes that almost any young, Black or Latina trans woman walking around on the street, or going into an apartment building with a guy, is getting paid for sex work. Profiling is constant; women have been arrested around here simply for having a gathering in someone’s apartment, apparently it’s too suspicious. I mean why would any normal person want to hang out with one of THEM, right?

I don’t know if Sanesha Stewart was doing sex work or not, and I don’t think it really matters, other than the fact that the usual assumptions are being made. I don’t know what else to say. This kind of thing always leaves me at a loss for words, there’s not much to do but sit, and cry, and wonder how long it will be until the next murder. Until the next young, poor or working class, Black or Latina trans woman is murdered just for being trans, and then mocked by so-called journalists before her body cools.

Worst of all is the fact that even the newer article ends with a hint of what will undoubtedly be part of the next chapter of this story: the “tranny panic” defense.

Ramel C., 37, said McMillan had a girlfriend. He said his life-long friend must have been shocked to discover he was with a man.

“I’m not saying that’s a reason to kill anyone,” he said. “But I’m sure he was in some type of turmoil or shock.”

(Right, because no guy with a girlfriend has ever slept with or dated a trans woman.)

Read this, and then go look at some of the comments on those stories and the other news sources that megan_julca rounded up. The “trans panic” defense was used in the trials following the murder of Gwen Araujo, and those murderers got reduced sentences. We still live in a place and time where people think it’s “perfectly understandable” that someone would flip out and want to kill a trans woman just because they find out she’s trans. And those are the people who claim not to condone violent criminal reactions! Others are happy to step right up and say (at least on the anonymous Internet) that they’d react the same way and do the same thing. Trans people take the blame; trans people should be the ones walking around with prominent badges of shame, so all the “normal” people don’t make the wrong assumption. The question nobody ever seems to ask is, why would you automatically assume that the person you’re on a date with isn’t trans?

I mean, would you want someone to make that kind of assumption about you and your body — and have that kind of failed expectation when it turns out you’re not trans? Let’s say, for the non-trans folks in the audience, that you go on a date, and your date for some reason makes an assumption about your body, or the gender category you were assigned to at birth. Later on they find out they’re wrong: you’re not a trans person! What the hell?! So misleading. Are they justified in feeling like they want to beat the crap out of you? Should they get a lesser sentence if they kill you? Or how about if they just threw up everywhere like in The Crying Game. Of course, “common sense” would never say yes to any of these questions — and the only excuse that can be given is that non-trans people are “normal” but trans people are “weird.” The freaks pay the price and are the ones who must make sure nobody’s interacting with them who doesn’t absolutely want to.

I’ve got nothing else but tears and disgust. But I’ll quote from what some other people had to say.

Lisa Harney talks about the different treatment of trans women and I have to quote a lot of this because it’s good:

Imagine the response if a cis woman’s murder were filled with detailed discussion of her appearance and how it obviously contributed to her murder, as if her murderer’s reactions were instinctive and perhaps understandable? Imagine if a cis woman’s murder was presented as she deceived a man into thinking she was more attractive than she really was, and upon discovering that it was all makeup, plastic surgery, and a corset, he savagely stabbed her to death? What if she’d legally changed her name - would the press be sure to dig up her birthname for added sensationalism? Referred to her legal name as a “nickname?” What would be the response if news stories so thoroughly delegitimized and sensationalized a white cis woman’s identity while reporting her murder?

belledame seethes about the inherent homophobia+transphobia of the “panic” excuse, and a bunch of other stuff besides:

Because there’s nothing worse than finding out you are sexually attracted to, hell, even had fond feelings about, is there? a person whose gender and/or sex is not the gender and/or sex you are SUPPOSED to be attracted to, according to God or your parents or the lads or the Sisterhood or the feverish little rabbit running your brain. Who doesn’t understand -that-? the raw revulsion, the terror, the PANIC leading even unto VIOLENCE that such momentary existential cage-rattlings provides. It’s only human.

And last but certainly never least, little light memorializes as only a true poet can. I almost don’t want to quote her — like all of her posts, it’s an elegant and spiritual work of art that needs to be appreciated in full. But this part haunts me into repeating it:

We all might die alone. But some of us have to be ground and ground and ground down into the ground so the rest of us can feel a little better about our own chances at avoiding it. We have to make them more alone, even in death. We have to take away their names and their dignity. We have to take away even the chance that they might be mourned as real human beings who are gone and never coming back, who are missed by loved ones somewhere, who meant something. A murder is incomplete, and we cannot stand ending on an unresolved chord. We all have to join together and finish it, so the eyes of the murdered cannot accuse us in our sleep.

In the past, I have been known to complain that far too little attention has been paid to the fact that there are multiple oppressions at work here. We talk about these as murders of trans people, recall them again on the Trans Day of Remembrance. But it’s not just any transgender people who are being murdered: over and over, the most vulnerable members of the population are the ones who are extinguished. People who are living on the margins, women who have had to do what they can to get by, women targeted by racism and poverty on top of transphobia. That’s who’s getting killed at nearly ten times the average rate of the American population, according to one estimate.

But little light’s words remind me that this is also about all of us. Even without a guiding intent behind the wave of blood, the repeated and constant murders of young trans women, year in and year out, wreaks psychological terror on innumerable trans people. Why? Because they are murdered for being trans. For not fulfilling the “correct” expectations. And that’s something we should all care about. When you are undressed — by your lover or an X-ray machine, in front of a customer or a doctor, on a stage or in a bedroom or a police precinct — do you meet the expectations of those who gaze at you? Should it matter so much if you do, if you don’t? What would happen if you didn’t?

Does anyone ever deserve her fate?

Hate Crimes in 2008- Fight OUT Loud

True Hate Crimes

Ellen DeGeneres Discusses The Recent Tragic Death

The Trevor Project Teen PSA

Memorial to honor gay victims of hate

Scott Hall didn't think much about gay rights, even after a stranger cracked him across the head with a baseball bat 25 years ago outside a gay bar in Melbourne.

''When I was attacked, I felt there was nothing I could do about it,'' said Hall, now 43. ``The concept of people thinking that I was gay was more frightening than me having my head smashed in.''

A year ago, Hall had an awakening. ''I was home watching TV one night and saw this little blip on the TV about a young man being brutally murdered in Polk County,'' he said. ``It caught me off guard. I sat there and thought about it.''

The March 2007 death of 25-year-old Ryan Keith Skipper -- stabbed 20 times and dumped on a roadside in Winter Haven -- spurred Hall to action. The Cocoa Beach auctioneer began the Gay American Heroes Foundation, which honors gay hate-crime victims with a traveling memorial. It will be previewed during this week's Winter Party Festival in South Beach.

''Scott's memorial speaks to our society as a whole,'' said Skipper's stepfather, Lynn Mulder, 49, of Auburndale. ``It will help awareness all across the nation. . . . Ever since Ryan's murder, I've been acutely aware of all the horrible things happening across the nation.''

Hall says he already has the names of nearly 600 gay hate-crime victims for the monument. The latest addition: Lawrence King, a gay 15-year-old shot to death two weeks ago at a school in Oxnard, Calif., about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Lawrence was targeted by a younger boy because he came to school dressed in girl's clothing, authorities said. Prosecutors have charged 14-year-old Brandon David McInerney with premeditated murder, say he committed a hate crime and want him tried as an adult.

MAKING EXCUSES

Hall believes the speed with which McInerney was charged is unusual. Typically, police believe gay hate-crime victims ''got what they deserved,'' he said.

' `He hit on me' is the defense they use a lot of times,'' Hall said, recalling the 1995 murder of Scott Amedure hours after he revealed on The Jenny Jones Show his secret crush on another man.

Hall envisions a monument composed of 10-foot-wide, 7-foot-high vinyl-and-aluminum panels emblazoned with the names and pictures of gay hate-crime victims.

The monument would travel from city to city and be displayed outdoors.

''If we go into a civic center, we'll have to encourage people to come in,'' he said. ``And we'll be preaching to a choir.''

The project isn't cheap. Each panel would cost about $5,000. So far, Gay American Heroes Foundation has raised $25,000 and has been offered a $100,000 matching grant by Palm Beach philanthropist Bruce Presley.

JOINING FORCES

Many Florida gay activists have signed on to the project, including Chip Arndt, a one-time Amazing Race champ; Carole Benowitz, a founder of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida; and Waymon Hudson, a founder of Broward's Fight OUT Loud. National honorary board members include U.S. Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts; singer Cyndi Lauper; actress Jill Clayburgh; Matt Foreman, executive director the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force; and Broadway star Alan Cumming.

A lesser-known woman supporting the memorial is Elke Kennedy, whose son Sean, 20, in May 2007 took a fatal punch to the face in Greenville, S.C.

''I get up each day knowing that this is what I need to do for the rest of my life,'' said Kennedy, 46, of South Carolina, now an activist lobbying for a national hate-crimes law.

''I did not want any mother to have to go through this again,'' she said.

Ryan Skipper's family will be in South Florida for a Heroes reception Friday night at Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, where the model will be displayed later this week.

''Scott Hall and the people working with Gay American Heroes have done a phenomenal job,'' Kennedy said. ``I hope we can see this memorial in every town and every city in the United States.''