Background
One harrowing example of persistent social inequality around sexuality and gender is the transphobic murder each year of dozens of transgender individuals. The vast majority of them are trans women of color. On November 20 each year, the trans community, supported by its allies, memorializes those who have been lost during the previous year. This is the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance (https://tdor.info/). In my face-to-face classes, I read aloud all of the names and locations of these tragic deaths. I encourage you to take on a similar practice in your life moving forward.
A particularly egregious miscarriage of justice when it comes to incidents of violence toward both transgender and non-heterosexual folx is the “trans panic/gay panic” defense. The panic defense is an argument that has been used (with occasional success) by defense attorneys to get their clients acquitted by claiming that the perpetrator’s sudden discovery of their victim’s status as a queer or transgender person caused the perpetrator to panic and become temporarily insane.
The “panic” argument was meant to suggest that the defendant was not actually responsible for their violent actions. You don’t have to squint very hard to see the irony here: if the perpetrator isn’t responsible for the murder, then who *is* responsible? The victim herself?
Yikes.
Fortunately, a number of states — most recently, New York (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/nyregion/gay-panic-ny.html) — have outlawed the use of this defense in court. But that alone will not stop deadly violence against transgender people.
Discussion Question
For this thread, please begin by reading up on the life and death of a transgender person who has died by violence since the start of 2019. Write up a brief report on who they were and the circumstances under which they died. Please include a photograph of the person you are profiling (you can do this by doing a screen capture and then uploading the image into your post).
After completing your profile, please use your sociological imagination (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociological_imagination)to explain the social factors surrounding the persistence of fear, hatred, and violence toward trans folx. Then, provide some realistic societal strategies for decreasing this fear, hatred, and violence.
I provided some links. Please address any questions you may incur and do not plagiarize. Thank you.