The Twentieth

Sadly the count continues to grow.

Itali Marlowe Is the 20th Trans Person Killed in 2019
Out
By Nico Lang
October 9, 2019

For the already 20th time this year, the trans community is mourning the killing of one of its own.

According to the LGBTQ+ magazine OutSmart, Itali Marlowe died after sustaining multiple gunshot injuries in Southwest Houston. After police responded to reports of a shooting at 15829 Ridgeroe Lane near the neighborhood of Ridgemont around 2 p.m. local time, the 29-year-old was found in a nearby driveway.
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Authorities have reportedly identified a suspect in her killing: 23-year-old Raymond Donald Williams, who was living with Marlowe at the time of her death. Williams is said to have fled the scene and has not yet been arrested.

Marlowe is the fourth trans woman to be murdered in Texas this year, following Muhlaysia Booker, Chynal Lindsey, and Tracy Single. Booker and Lindsey were both killed in Dallas, while Single also lost her life in Houston. All of the victims were Black, as have been the majority of transgender women killed this year.

Last year it was Ohio that was the trans murder capitol, before that Florida, and now Texas… Next year what state will claim the title?

When will the hate end?

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“A Backlash Against Our Existence”: Laverne Cox Speaks Out on Violence Against Trans Women of Color
Democracy Now
By Laverne Cox and Chase Strangio
October 7, 2019

[…]
LAVERNE COX: It is really hard for me to continue to talk about the murders of trans women of color. I was talking to my makeup artist, Deja, who’s also openly trans, early yesterday. And I told her, when I started transitioning medically in 1998, that violence — that this was a reality in my life in 1998, that there were trans people being murdered all around me, and this insane fear: “Will I be next?” I remember going to a memorial for Amanda Milan, a trans woman who was murdered in the early 2000s here in New York City. She was stabbed outside of the Port Authority. And for my entire life as a trans woman, for 21 years, I have been hearing about, witnessing, going to memorials, going to Trans Days of Remembrance. And the trauma of that is — I don’t actually even have words for the trauma of that. And I think about just black people in general who have watched our people be murdered in the streets and the collective trauma of that. And I disassociated from it so much because it’s too much. It is way too much.

And we live in a culture that consistently stigmatizes trans people, tell us that we aren’t who we say we are. When I read the Alliance Defending [Freedom] brief on Aimee Stephens’ case, they bent over backwards to not use female pronouns to refer to Aimee Stephens. There was this insistence in misgendering her. And what underlines most of the discrimination against trans people is the insistence that we are always and only the gender we were assigned at birth, that we’re somehow fraudulent. And when we have an administration and we have government policies that continually stigmatize us, it makes it OK for the person on the street who sees a trans person and decides that we should not exist anymore.

And it is just — I’m really at a loss, because I know it’s intersectional. I know that it’s about employment. I know it’s about healthcare. I know it’s about homelessness and having access to all of these things to keep us out of harm’s way, that so many of us don’t have access to. The unemployment rate in the trans community is three times the national average, four times that for trans people of color. The majority of us make less than $10,000 a year. And so, when you cannot make a living, you find yourself in street economies, you find yourself homeless. That makes you more of a target of violence.