Black Lives Matter to the trans community

by Amanda Kerri
Trans Issues Columnist

I loathe writing about issues of race because I’m white, and frankly I’m terrified that I’ll say something that is wrong, misguided or slightly out of touch. I agree with the philosophy of Black Lives Matter; I believe in what they are trying to accomplish. The issues that face the black community directly concern me because black people live in the same country I do, and I want them to experience all the privileges and rights I do.

Still, I rarely say these things because I don’t want to say anything that might get taken the wrong way, or say something that shows my ignorance about what it’s like to be a person of color and have my good intentions ruined. However, I’m going to make an attempt, since there is a particular overlap of the black community that I share with and whose issues I worry about in many ways, and that is trans people of color.

Every November, we remember all the trans people who have been victims of violence. These people, mainly transwomen, who have been victims of such heinous acts of murder, tend to lean heavily to a certain demographic – they are racial minorities. One thing that I constantly fear is being the victim of violence for being transgender. While I am quite boldly out and open about it, every time I chat with a potential date online, or out in public, I fear the ‘trans panic’ effect.

Where someone is initially interested in you but suddenly becomes violent, usually after becoming physically intimate, and proceeds to physically assault you. For every transwoman killed this way, there are dozens more who are simply beaten.

A reason, but not the sole reason, that there is such a disproportionate number of these transwomen of color killed is that they are having to participate in sex work in order to simply survive. Transpeople suffer a massive disproportionate amount of job discrimination with 15 percent of all transpeople earning less than $10,000 a year, but with 34 percent of black transgender people experiencing the same. A full third of all black transfolk make as much as a high schooler working 20 hours a week at a fast food joint.  

I have been lucky enough to have been able to make a comfortable living. Nothing spectacular of course, after transitioning, but I can understand the difficulties. Back 2010, I lost my job. In my desperation to find one, I began de-transitioning to go to job interviews.

Fortunately, I found an accepting job, but the idea that I might have to work jobs well below my qualifications or even turn to sex work to survive frightened me. I cannot fathom the desperation, despair and humiliation one must experience to have to turn to sex work unwillingly just to merely eat. This is one reason my feelings about sex work changed. I know now that those working these jobs need legal protection in order to ensure they are not being exploited.

Of course this does not mean that all black transwomen are sex workers, but many think exactly that. With the general lack of respect people can treat black people, it gets compounded when it comes to black transwomen. Last year in Iowa, a black transwoman was arrested after checking into a hotel. The only reason that happened is because her driver’s license had her old gender markers on it in addition to the manager thinking they were prostitutes because ‘they were dressed a little bit over-the-top.’

She wasn’t a ‘hooker,’ as the manager called her; she was traveling cross-country to attend a funeral. Yet what happened was the stereotypes for being black, trans and having a particular choice in clothing all came together to send this woman to jail for possessing her hormones allegedly without a prescription. So add the stereotype of being black and using drugs to the mix.

I’ve stayed in very few hotels or rarely flown on a plane since I transitioned, but I get nervous anytime someone has to look at my driver’s license and might question why some of the information doesn’t seem to match up. I get anxious at the thought of possibly running afoul of an overzealous crusader or cop who might find an excuse to make my life difficult. I don’t fear a lot, but I’m terrified of going to jail, and a bad cop can make that happen.        

While what I experience as a transwoman is only similar to what black people, and especially black transpeople experience, it’s enough to extremely bother me. If I don’t want these things to happen to me, how can I, as any sort of a compassionate human being, want it for anyone?

Copyright 2016 The Gayly - 8/13/2016 @ 11:19 a.m. CDT