Give Black Trans Women Their Lives and Voices!

Muhlaysia Booker was threatened at gunpoint and suffered violent transphobic attacks by a mob on April 12, 2019 (The Dallas Morning News); her assault was videotaped and went viral on social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Thirty-six days later on May 18, The New York Times reported that Booker was found dead near a golf course in Dallas after having been fatally shot in the head in an unconnected attack.

The brutality of Booker’s assault in the video inspired national outrage and horror over transgender violence; her unconnected murder cemented in the public eye the image of a battered young black trans body, rendered lifeless by the ceaseless transphobic abuse against trans women. The former shocked the public with its violence and grossly transphobic slurs; the latter is now keeping it fixated on the image of Booker’s lifeless body, with a gunshot wound in her head.

Yet, the extent of violence toward black trans women should not be shocking. Black trans women have faced and continue to face stunningly disproportionate violence. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has tracked more than 150 transgender deaths due to violence since 2013. Over two-thirds of the victims have been black trans women. 2019 has already seen at least 21 transgender or gender non-conforming individuals murdered, with a stunning 20 out of the 21 being black trans women. The HRC reported that Brianna Hill, murdered on October 14, was the latest victim of this anti-black, anti-trans violence.

All this points to an ongoing trend of abuse toward the black trans women community, but black trans women’s vulnerability is only visible to us when there is gruesome violence or when the image of death is associated with their bodies. Without visible violence captured in a personal manner, black trans women remain invisible despite the fact that they struggle at the intersection of racism, transphobia, and sexism every day.

Transphobia is entrenched in our cisnormative—assuming that a person has a gender identity that matches their biological sex—and heteronormative culture, but black trans women are especially vulnerable because transphobia intersects other parts of their identities, exposing them to high risks of violence and depriving them of a safety net in the face of violence or partner abuse. Transgender people, for instance, face higher rates of unemployment, earn less than cisgender people, and face discriminatory housing practices due to transphobia. Many trans people also fail to finish schooling because they are unable to withstand the transphobic bullying that pervades schools. Hence, many trans individuals find themselves impoverished and lacking stable shelter, which puts them at a higher risk for transphobic violence. This risk of violence is compounded when the trans individual is a black woman, because black women are even more likely to be denied housing and employment because of racism. According to the HRC, while trans people are more than four times as likely than the general U.S. population to live in extreme poverty, black trans people are more than eight times as likely than the general population to find themselves in extreme poverty. This can translate to black trans women being forced to take up survival sex work that furthers their exposure to violence associated with sexual assault or harassment.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), black trans women also suffer extremely high rates of intimate partner violence (IPV). Black women suffer disproportionate deaths from IPV because of the intersection of racism against the black community, and sexism, both out of and within the community. Black feminist and writer Michelle Taylor writes in her article, “Why Black Women Struggle More With Domestic Violence,” that black women are less likely to seek help when abused by their partners. “Because many black women and men believe racism is a bigger issue than sexism, black women tend to feel obligated to put racial issues ahead of sex-based issues,” Taylor said. When the entire black community is oppressed under white supremacy, abused black women refuse to surrender their black partners to a system that operates against them as a whole. Despite still being deprived of essential rights, black men under patriarchy have gained few rights and claims—however limited these claims are—to their own bodies. They have done so in ways that black women will never be able to. Black women continue to struggle to gain the same rights extended to black men and grapple over the right to their own bodies. Male privilege and sexism continue to exercise violence on black women, who are oppressed by patriarchy but must stand against the racism that oppresses both black men and women.

Black trans women involved with intimate partner violence must deal with the intersection of their trans identity with the sexism and racism faced by black women. According to Adele Morrison, a professor of law, black trans women are quite far from society’s default image of a battered victim of abuse: a “white, heterosexual, middle-class woman.” As a result of their trans identity, they are even less likely to seek help from an abusive relationship than cisgender black women because of both their distrust in a racist authority and the risk of being criminalized even when they do seek help. In Kae Greenberg’s “Trans Women and Domestic Violence,” she states that the Department of Justice found that “members of the LGBT community complained that NOPD officers subject them to unjustified arrests for prostitution […] Police responding to domestic violence calls from trans women also have been known to profile them as sex workers and refuse to help.” In addition to potentially being criminalized as sex workers and refused help, black trans women fear that the police may refuse to acknowledge their transition and insist on misgendering them. The HRC’s efforts to track down black trans women victims of violence are often deterred by the police or the media’s insistence on misgendering and deadnaming, making it difficult to identify these victims who are known by a different name and gender after transition. Compounded by the lack of alternative housing options and poverty, black trans women remain entrapped by their abusers and violence.

Black trans women are at high risks of violence daily because of the way transphobia interacts with racism and sexism. Yet, we are unaware of the violence they face until we witness their violent ends. Booker’s death was so impactful because it forced us to witness the sickening violence and abuse up close, albeit through the lens of a cell phone camera. But the deaths of black trans women have since become increasingly silent because of the lack of visible violence.

To prevent the disproportionately high deaths of black trans women, their struggles against transphobia, compounded by racism and sexism on a daily basis, must be addressed and made visible. While violent murders provoke understandable outrage, public and media attention should shift to ongoing black transgender struggles. Non-discrimination laws should be more strictly enforced in shelters and workplaces, and the police should be held to higher standards of bias training to provide black trans women with alternatives or help in the face of violence. In addition, police and media must stop their misgendering and deadnaming of trans victims. More government funding should be set aside to support LGBTQ justice centers and communities that actively provides LGBTQ individuals with the resources and desperate safety net they need when they have nowhere else to turn to. While there should be more funding to support black justice organizations, these organizations also have an obligation toward both black women and black trans women, who are often abused by their misogynistic partners but silenced by the racist authorities. The vulnerabilities of black trans women should not be told through hypervisible violence and end with their deaths; black trans women should live to tell their stories with their own loud and visible voices.