Nov. 23, 2011 - Issue #840: Battle the world

Queermonton

Progress in pronouns

Strides have been made, but trans acceptance is a long way off

November 20 is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It's held globally to memorialize trans lives taken every year. A day of remembrance is unfortunately necessary due to the brutal treatment and deaths of  people whose gender identity is different from the norm every year, and 2011 is no exception.
The story of Shelley Hilliard, a 19-year-old from Detroit, is unfortunately a common one. Hilliard had been dropped off by a cab driver to meet a man, but became uncomfortable with the situation when she found three males waiting for her and immediately called the driver back. The cabbie started to hear what the guys were saying before she cried out and the line went dead. By the time he got to the house she was gone.
Despite Hilliard's body being found the night she went missing, family remained unaware and continued to search for her. Somehow a match at the morgue wasn't made until three weeks had passed. Her body had been burned and decapitated. Like far too many other cases of transgender murder, Hilliard's case is currently unsolved.

I wish I could say that Hilliard's death shocked me. It rattled me, disgusted me, made me cry as I do each time I hear about another person taken away. Unfortunately, I know these reports will keep coming. A site dedicated to tracking these murders, transgenderdor.org, has recorded 24 victims in 2011 with photos, ages and the brutal details of the way these people died. That number is likely much higher when one factors in all the deaths that are never reported as gender variant victims and undiscovered crimes. And, of course, all the suicides.
While some people's capacity to hate doesn't surprise me, other's capacity to learn does. I found something rather unexpected when researching the coverage of transphobia's latest murder victim. I thought that I would find a bunch of articles that talked not about Shelley, Michelle or Treasure, the names that Hilliard chose to properly reflect her honest identity. I figured they'd all name Henry Hilliard, a man she never knew and never was. I thought they would all point out her silver dress, piercings and tattoos like the first one I read did, but the rest never mentioned her style or fashion and only talked about her tattoo to explain how they identified her body. Most importantly, every single article correctly identified Shelley Hilliard as a transgender woman, going so far as to specifically use that correct label in all their headlines. They did not say her birth name repeatedly and they didn't highlight her female attire, or use incorrect language or omit info entirely. Fox Detroit even wrote a compassionate piece on Hilliard's mom discussing her daughter. There were no male pronouns in sight, although a few did awkwardly decide to use neither instead, opting for a clunky use of Hilliard's name each time. Still, I'll take clunky over insensitive any day.
I'm not sure what sort of comfort the correct terminology gave Hilliard's mother, Lyniece Nelson in the time after her daughter's body was matched. I do know that at least she didn't suffer the added indignity of justifying her daughter to the world and being forced to explain her identity. We have come a long way.
A couple hours after Edmonton's observance of TDoR I caught a new episode of Family Guy. There was a trans character invited to the Thanksgiving table for no other reason than a multitude of incredibly insensitive and hurtful jokes that stung so much more because of their timing. In one, they simply called the sweet, patient character "a monster." Maybe mainstream media hasn't learned that much after all. V

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