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

Identities Under Seigeinterpreted as instances of racial and ethnic injustice often also involve apolicing of gender and sexual boundaries. 22Moreover, most of the hate crime victims of anti-transgender violenceare poor. They have been forced out of school, out of homes, andout of jobs, resulting in the interconnection of poverty and gender-nonconformityin many of these fatalities. Victims are disproportionatelyfrom economically disadvantaged communities and are forced to relyon low-paying jobs (such as that of Álvarez-Hernández who worked in ameatpacking plant), or because of other mitigating factors, such as ChristinaSmith’s forced uprooting and temporary homelessness after HurricaneKatrina.The lack of money and resources forces many victims, like JessicaMercado, Donathyn Rodgers, and Shelby Tracey Tom, to trade temporarysex work for food and shelter, increasing their vulnerability to assaultfrom a client and police. Most of these victims of gender-based violenceare ignored by the media and oftentimes also ignored by the mainstreamlesbian and gay communities. According to a recent GenderPAC reporton violence against queers, only eleven victims generated sustained mediacoverage, and then only when an arrest and public trial was involved. 23The thirty-two non-trial murders averaged only a single 500-word article,and 24 percent of victims received no coverage at all. 24Most of the victims of gender-based violence suffered multiple stabor bullet wounds, or a combination of strangling, stabbing, and beating.In a number of cases, victims appeared to have been shot, stabbed,or bludgeoned, even after death. The extreme violence used by assailantssuggests that the attacks were motivated by intense rage and that the purposeof these attacks was not simply to terminate life, but to punish andtorture for gender-non-conformity. Furthermore, most of the murders oftranspersons of color are often unsolved and unrecognized not just by thenation and mainstream presses, but also by the communities in whichthese individuals resided.Queer RacismMany transpersons of color cannot seek refuge in the larger LGBT communitybecause of racism. 25 Racism in the queer community is nothingnew, as numerous historical examples illustrate pervasive racism, from thewhite-run gay bars and clubs of 1950s, where gays and lesbians of colorwere not welcome, to the multiple forms of identification still neededfrom queers of color to get into bars. Even the celebration of Stonewall as145