Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-and-Prison-Industrial-Complex

Identities Under Seigesupremacy into concrete realities. 7 One of these concrete realities was thebrutal death of Jessica Mercado. Jessica was a 24-year-old, Latina transwomanwho lived in New Haven, Connecticut. In May 2003, firefightersand police found Jessica’s body riddled with stab wounds, draped over amattress, and set ablaze. 8 Fire investigators determined that the mattresswas purposefully set on fire and police suspected that the killers ignitedit, hoping to cover all evidence of the crime. 9 Police classified the deathas a homicide because under current law, Connecticut does not have hatecrime penalties for attacks based on gender identity. 10 In September 2004,four sentences appeared in the local New Haven paper in an article entitled“Arrest Made in Transvestite Murder.” Michael Streater plead guiltyto murder and arson and was sentenced to thirty years in prison. 11The New Haven queer community held no marches or candlelightvigils following Mercado’s murder. Not one person took to the street inprotest. The Hartford Advocate interviewed multiple members of the LGBcommunity to understand why queers were not expressing a public outcry.Several suggested that it was Jessica’s occupation as a prostitute thatprevented many from caring about her brutal death. Some gay communitymembers claimed that her role as a sex worker pointed to a motive—therage of an unsuspecting client, surprised to learn that she wasanatomically male. 12However, this silence from the queer community is not an anomaly.Like Jessica, several other anti-transgender deaths from hate-motivatedviolence reveal glaring similarities. For example, Shelby Tracey Tom was a40-year-old Asian transsexual and sex worker who was murdered in NorthVancouver twenty-two days after Jessica. Her body was discovered in ashopping cart behind a Laundromat. 13 Although the police waited severaldays to announce Tracey’s death, there was still no newspaper or mediarecord of her murder and no public outrage or grief from the LGB community.14 Another transgender victim, Donathyn J. Rodgers, a 19-yearoldAfrican American transwoman and sex worker from Cleveland, Ohio,was shot multiple times and killed in November 2005. 15 Although she wasactive in the Lesbian-Gay Community Service Center of Greater Cleveland,the center published no memoriam or information about her death,and her case remains unsolved. Similarly, Selena Álvarez-Hernández was aLatina transwoman who worked in a meatpacking plant in Omaha, Nebraska,and was found stabbed several times and unconscious on the lawnof a house in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 2003. 16 She was pronounced dead ashort time after being found, and there is little to no information available143