Do You Know How Hard It Is…

…To live if you are trans and black?

Eleven trans women were killed this year and three of us in three days, because it didn’t happen all in one place at one time it is not news. It seems like someone put up a sign that says “Open Season on Trannies”

Man arrested in connection with attack of transgender woman at Cal Anderson Park
A 28-year-old man was arrested Thursday night on suspicion of attacking a transgender woman at Cal Anderson Park.
By Walker Orenstein
Seattle Times
July 24, 2015

A 28-year-old man was arrested Thursday night on suspicion of attacking a transgender woman at Cal Anderson Park, according to Seattle police.

The man reportedly harassed the woman, threw a cup of ice water at her, and punched her in the head, a news release says.

She was lucky, she only got punched.

On MSNBC Janet Mock read the names of the trans women that were killed so far this year here in the US.

In an article on TakePart, Janet Mock talks about the traps that lead so many black trans women on to the streets…

“A lot of the ways in which I dealt with it and a lot of my girlfriends dealt with it was underground economies,” said Mock. “Some dealt drugs or dealt with that piece of it, and some, like myself, dealt within the sex trade.”
[…]
“What I find shameful is a culture that exiles, stigmatizes, and criminalizes those engaged in underground economies like sex work as a means to move past struggle to survival,” Mock wrote in a blog post last year.

Her time as a sex worker was a means to an end. After high school, Mock headed off to New York University, graduated with a degree in journalism, and went on to become a contributing editor to fashion magazine Marie Claire and the host of MSNBC series So Popular.

For many black trans women there is no happy ending. Their “johns” find out that they are transgender and kill them. They were just trying to survive and it cost them their lives. For many they are unemployable because their family threw them out on the street and with no education, they turn to the only way they know how to survive… working the streets.