To Paraphrase Kermit… It Is Not Easy Being Trans

Around the country and around the world trans-people are being murdered. Sadly there have a number of murders this past month both here in the U.S. and abroad.

Philadelphia police seek information on transgender woman's killing
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Allison Steele
September 12, 2012

Philadelphia police are searching for information on the death of a 27-year-old transgender woman found shot in the head in the Northeast last week.

The victim, known to friends as Kyra Kruz, was well-known in the city's gay community, said Gloria Casarez, director of the city's Office of LGBT Affairs.

"She was a visible, friendly presence," Casarez said. "This has been surprising and upsetting to all of us."

Down in Central America seventeen trans-women were murdered this year…

Trans-woman activist gets last-minute reprieve
The Copenhagen Post
By Ray Weaver
September 19, 2012

Authorities reopen asylum case after appeal from support group
Fernanda Milán said that she fears she will be killed in Guatemala (Photo by J. Jackie Baier)

Fernanda Milán said that an eleventh-hour decision by Flygtningenævnet, the government’s refugee board, to revisit her application for asylum may have saved her life.

“The thing I was most afraid of was that I would be killed if I was sent back to Guatemala,” Milán told Politiken newspaper. “I was fearful that I would be attacked and tortured.”

Seventeen transsexuals were killed in Guatemala in the first five months of this year, according to human rights organisations.

It criminal that many of these murders went uninvestigated by the police, but even worst is that because of her work for transgender rights in Guatemala a police officer held a gun to her head and told her to stop trying to get human rights for trans-people.

But her story doesn’t end there; when she fled Guatemala to Denmark…

While waiting for her case to be heard, Milán was raped in Sandholm Asylum Centre, a facility operated by the Danish Red Cross. After the attack at Sandholm, Milan fled the centre and was trafficked into prostitution for two years. Police discovered her during a raid on a brothel in Jutland.

More than 200 people attended a rally last month protesting the decision to deport Milán after her initial application for asylum was rejected.

We are easy targets for brutality and bigotry because of our marginalization; people feel that they can get away with it because they think no one will stand up with us. But more and more they are finding out that is no longer true as the 200 people at the rally showed.

Back here in the US. just last week a trans-woman was attack in Greenwich Village in New York City at a McDonald’s,

Man defending his transgender girlfriend slashed by 350-pound man at Greenwich Village McDonald’s
A McDonald’s in Greenwich Village, notorious for previous acts of violence, was the scene of yet another attack when A 350-pound man used gay slurs to berate a 24-year-old then used a razor to slash the victim across the face and neck.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
By Rocco Parascandola, Pearl Gabel And Stephen Rex Brown
Published: Friday, September 21, 2012,

A 350-pound brute hurled slurs at a gay man and his transgender girlfriend and then whipped out a razor and slashed one of them at a crime-plagued McDonald’s in Greenwich Village, police said.

Jamar McLeod, 24, said he and his girlfriend, Jalisa “JoJo” Griffen had just picked up her hormone medicine Wednesday night and were headed back to their apartment in Bushwick when they ducked into the fast food joint on W. Third St. to use the bathroom.

McLeod, who is 5-foot-6 and 170 pounds, was holding hands with Griffen, who was wearing a tight-fitting pair of sweatpants and sweatshirt. The suspect, who was waiting for his cheeseburger around 7 p.m., apparently overheard them talking about gay bashing.

And you don’t even want to read the comments to this article, they are so vitriol.

It is time to end the hate...