by Eunbyul Lee
Leelah Alcorn was a 17-year-old transgender girl who published a heart-wrenching suicide note on Tumblr in late December 2014 explaining her reasons for becoming defeated as a trans girl in a cissexist world. She identified her parents as the primary antagonists who bullied her and forbade her from transitioning.
Before we continue, I want to call us out. I want to call out everybody who has readily acted in honor of Leelah but so effortlessly failed to recognize Islan, Alejandra, Tiffany, Jennifer, Gizzy, Zoraida, Kandy, and Yaz’min. As a trans person, I want to help end violence against trans people, but I need us to destroy the racism embedded in the making of trans legacies.
Particularly in the face of the senseless murders and subsequent erasure of trans people of color, this insidious pattern of constructing white individuals into emblems and heroes is anything but harmless. Within the LGBTQ community, trans people of color face disproportionately high murder and violence rates compared to our white counterparts. Media coverage of injustices against trans people is racially fragmented. While everyone is quick to circulate petitions online in Leelah’s name and be distinguished as allies for the trans community, why do they continue to turn a blind eye to the lives and deaths of trans women of color?
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The 1969 Stonewall Riots are a classic example of the whitewashing of trans legacies. Many who cite Stonewall as a cornerstone of the [white] gay liberation movement could not identify crucial TWOC leaders like Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and Miss Major. In the same way that the application of ‘gay” as an umbrella term has erased the legacies of trans people (particularly trans WOC), elevating Leelah’s recent story to this measure is another tool for eclipsing, and therefore suppressing, trans WOC. Trans women of color are owed a legacy, too. Leelah’s dying wish was for us to fix society. We need to fix transphobia. But we must also remember that our trans identities cannot be isolated from history, from context, from race.
I am aware of the lived realities of trans people, white and POC alike, but it is clear that racism runs rampant in the portrayal of trans deaths. I have encountered many white trans people who fail to recognize how their combined power and prejudice produce undeniably racist ideologies, as if their trans identities erase their systematic privileging over trans POC. Violence against trans POC is buried under six feet of blatant disregard while Brandon Teena, a white trans man, had two films produced in honor of his life and death. Laws are likelier to be made in honor of white trans people. In death, humanization can be a reality for white trans people. I need us to challenge the hypervisibility of a white trans tragedy, and the subsequent invisibility of the tragic deaths of trans POC. I want people to give a shit when trans POC have our voices, our histories, our lives, and our legacies stolen from us.
Where is justice for Islan Nettles, who was beaten unconscious by her murderers across the street from a police station? What about Alejandra Leos, harassed and shot just steps outside her home? Where was widespread coverage of the murders of Tiff Edwards, Jennifer Laude, Gizzy Fowler, Zoraida Reyes, Kandy Hall, and Yaz’min Shancez? When we fail to illuminate the dimmed narratives of trans people of color while advocating for justice exclusively for white trans people, we further notions of white supremacy. When we choose whose deaths are deserving of our mourning, it appears as if we are only adopting certain attitudes (“trans lives matter”) in order to fit a specific aesthetic (“I am a trans ally.”) We become complicit in replicating the very systems of oppression that we claim to reject and we must hold ourselves accountable for these inconsistencies. We must advocate for justice for Leelah, but we mustn’t do so at the expense of trans women of color. We mustn’t erase the legacies of trans women of color.
These are the names that testify to the twisted disfiguration of trans legacies by our deeply-instilled racist belief that white lives somehow matter more. These are the names that indicate how our response (or lack thereof) is contingent on race. These are the names that are erased from the trans narrative:
Islan. Alejandra. Tiffany. Jennifer. Gizzy. Zoraida. Kandy. Yaz’min.
Where is our heartbreak? Where is our frustration, our rage, our tears? Where is the sudden outpour of support and advocacy, where are the protests, where is our justice?
Islan. Alejandra. Tiffany. Jennifer. Gizzy. Zoraida. Kandy. Yaz’min.
These are just a few of the names of trans women of color who were murdered in the past year and a half. These are the names that will never be pushed off the tips of our tongues when we discuss trans legacies, because they were never there in the first place. These are the names that will never be entitled to a place in our construction of mainstream LGBTQ history. These are the names that are stepped on, bleached, stowed away, stolen from, names that will never have a place on headlines or in mission statements, names that will never make it beyond a biased and fabricated police report. These are the names that do not elicit the same fire, the same drive for justice, the same magnitude of compassion, the same measure of grief.
Islan. Alejandra. Tiffany. Jennifer. Gizzy. Zoraida. Kandy. Yaz’min. Leelah.
These are the names that cannot be forgotten.
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Eunbyul Lee is a queer/nonbinary Asian American feminist who is trying to unlearn and learn again. They attend Wellesley College while trying to bridge the gap between theory and practice in the context of social justice. They are a shameless idealist who eats carbs after dark.
