As Trans People There Is Violence All Around When We Walk Out The Door

For trans people who don’t integrate in to society we have a target on our backs for hate, bigotry, and violence.

How the Transgender Murder Rate Reveals the Ugly Lie of ‘Acceptance’
As 2018 starts with the murder of four more trans women, the author reflects on the contrast of increased media representation set against more brutal, life-extinguishing reality.
The Daily Beast
By Samantha Allen
February 13, 2018

Measuring anti-transgender violence by the year, as both LGBT organizations and media outlets do, feels about as arbitrary as measuring anything on annual basis. Years are just numbers—lines drawn in an agreed-upon place between units of time.

Yet somehow, every year, I naïvely expect the pace of anti-transgender killings—that relentless, awful thrum of headlines—to slow down.

And so far, 2018 has offered no reprieve.
[…]
Mere days later, 33-year-old Viccky Gutierrez, as the Los Angeles Times reported, was stabbed to death and then had her home lit on fire, allegedly by a man she met online who was attempting to rob her.

And the violence was close to home, it struck someone who attended the support group meetings that I attend.

The Berkshire Eagle, citing a friend of Steele-Knudslien, described the pageant founder as “a bubbly, vibrant fighter who encouraged those around her to be their best selves.”

It is an abstract concept when you read off the names of the dead on November 20^th but it becomes so real when one of those names you know; it is not long abstract but real.

In this new violent world of hate and violence we must stand up to the hate.

Perhaps most importantly—or, at least, initially we need to stop assuming that anti-transgender violence will just decrease on its own. It won’t.