Judith Butler is an acclaimed gender theorist and philosopher. Her 1990 book Gender Trouble is considered by many to be the magnum opus of Queer Theory. Where many of her contemporaries in academia twisted second wave, so-called radical feminism against transgender identity, Butler has publicly supported trans people and affirmed their self-identified gender for decades. She wrote to Broadly in an email. (Her comments are excerpted throughout this piece. They can be read in full here.)If we consider poor, trans sex workers, they are exposed not only to violence from clients and johns, but sometimes from police as well.
Killing is an act of power, a way of reasserting domination, even a way of saying, 'I am the one who decides who lives and dies.'
Though the police quickly announced that Keisha's death was not a hate crime, my investigation suggests otherwise. I stayed in Philadelphia for less than a week, but in that time I heard from other trans women who practice sex work along Old York. They told me that Pedro Redding wasn't just a guy looking to rob someone; one woman claimed Redding was also her client.Read More: The Violent Reality for Trans Women of Color
"Casey received a death strike into the left carotid area of her neck and bled out in less than 25 steps. She died alone in the dirt in the dark. She never got to enjoy being her real self but had her life stolen," Scot said. "The vehicle has never been found." A few months after Casey's murder, Scot says she was targeted by a man in a vehicle after she left a local "Miss Trans" event. "The driver tried to catch me, chasing me across southern Fresno and cornering me in a closed gas station," she recalled. Because she's a police-trained driver, she said, she managed to get away. Scot added that Fresno PD never followed up with her about the incident: "I gave my description to the FBI and it possibly matched the description of the driver of the vehicle that murdered Casey."Casey died alone in the dirt in the dark. She never got to enjoy being her real self but had her life stolen.
Kandis Capris was shot outside an apartment complex in Phoenix, AZ in August. In the wake of her death and police investigation into the murder, ABC 15 reported her family believes that not enough is being done to find the person who killed Kandis. "I want justice for my child," her mother told ABC 15. "I want justice for the transgender community." Family and friends of Kandis believe her murder was a hate crime, although it's not being investigated as one. A representative from the Phoenix Police Department told Broadly, "Determining if a case is a hate-crime is helpful when it comes to the investigation. [But] as far as homicide goes, it's treated as any case."It isn't clear what kind of evidence investigators need in order to correctly categorize these killings. According to Butler, it isn't possible to separate the victims' deaths from the context of the their lives as transgender women, and as trans women of color. "The police are in this sense part of the very problem, refusing to name the crime, and so refusing to prosecute." she said. "The lives of transgender women of color are not accorded the same value as white women who are cisgendered, that is true. But what is really needed is an anti-racist, anti-transphobic movement that draws from women of color feminism and its trenchant critique of racism and police power."Social justice movements have converged in 2015. It isn't a coincidence that the trans movement is gaining traction and coming to a head half a century after gay liberation and the civil rights and women's movements of the 1960s and 70s, or that those movements are having their own revivals. Butler noted that people are angry. "They see how class differences are intensifying [in this millenium], how their future horizons are shutting down, how there is no protection from police. They also see that major powers are thwarting the realization of equality and dignity, whether it is the right-wing assault on Planned Parenthood, the killing of unarmed black men and women on the streets by police who are then exonerated, or the radical lack of publicity given to the killing of transgender people; their deaths are not noticed, their lives are considered ungrievable."These 23 deaths are a natural consequence of structural inequality. We collectively failed these women. If we do not publicly condemn this extreme violence, if we shy away from correctly categorizing it, and if we fail again in 2016 to help these women before more of them die, then their lives and deaths will again be treated as little more than hot topic fodder for headlines and radical social media rallying cries. Yes, these women deserve to be known for who they were when they lived, but what they really deserved was a life without extreme violence.Butler suggested that these acts of killing are an effort to create a world in which transgender women do not exist. "My sense is that a movement that seeks to realize a better world for trans people should be joined by all of us, regardless of how we identify," she wrote, explaining that protecting people from violence is important, but that it would be unwise to rely on law enforcement to do so. "Perhaps another kind of power, the power of self-determination, is what we need to strengthen so that a movement against transphobia is linked with the struggle against racism and poverty, against homophobia and misogyny, and against radical economic inequalities. Countering transphobia is, and should be, central to all those struggles.""All of these are lives that matter," Butler said.Every time one trans person is killed, the message goes out to every trans person: you are not safe, this dead body could be yours.