From the Dallas Voice Weekly E-Blast - 11.19.10
As North Texans commemorate Trans Day of Remembrance, one trans woman remembers the attack she survived as a child
DAVID TAFFET | Staff Writer [email protected]
To many people, statistics on anti-transgender violence are just numbers. Astounding, perhaps frightening, but still just numbers.
Winter Mullenix is the face of one of those numbers. One of many.
Mullenix was attacked when she was 9 years old by someone who had apparently been stalking her for a while.
“He was disgusted by my behavior. I was living as a boy, but it was obvious to everyone,” she said, describing herself. “I would dance and prance and I hung out with the girls.”
http://www.dallasvoice.com/face-antitrans-violence-1053014.html
Comments
I find it astonishing
that someone thinks they have the right to attack and attempt to kill another person because they don't like how that individual lives. I accept that people may hold opinions with which I differ, and they have a right to express those opinions providing they don't incite others - but to attack and sexually abuse - I don't understand. Maybe I did come to the wrong planet, I was seeking one with intelligent life, seems I failed.
Angharad
Angharad
No comment
The thing that, in an odd way, amuses me is how often the act that these charming folk perpetrate on the 'abomination' is the same thing they condemn them for.
I could write more, but Ang has summed it up. So in short: 'gay' paedophile rape. That will teach the sinners.
Not completely true...
I think the great majority of people are kind and good. The word "humane" didn't spring out of thin air, after all, and its opposite, "inhumane," or "inhuman," is an indictment and insult combined. Unfortunately, being inhumane is not something we can put people in prison for, which would keep these grown-up savages out of the way of the rest of us, so we have to put up with their hatred and greed until such time as they are caught at one indictable crime or another.
Most of us have learned what it is to be human -- and humane -- by the time we reach adulthood, after a period of savagery growing up which varies in length, probably highly dependent on the good example (or not) of a child's parents and/or caregivers.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Humanity
Something I try and put across in my writng is my belief that the vast majorty are not just 'human', but 'humane', and the only reason that the scum of this world are so memorable is their rarity.
That said, culture is the problem. The trck in encouraging 'inhumanity' is to dehumanise the 'other', so that race, for example, or sexual orientation become reasons to allow inhumanity to flourish, because the target is no longer 'human'. I cannot agree with Khadijah's suggestion about vigilante law. Them coloured gentlemen done looked at my daughter; that morphadite will infect my son with pansiness; that old man walks past the school every day, so he must be a peed.
Vigilante action is probably exactly what our rapist at the start of the thread considered he was doing.
Wise Conduct
My comment is offered with out the intention to minimize the injustice of attacks against T folk, or anyone for that matter, and is offered with a view at minimizing these attacks. She said that she left the house, on her own, after everyone was asleep. Does anyone think that was a healthy choice? The last time I left the house after 11:00 PM at night, on purpose, I was wearing my legal pistol and had a permit to carry it. What insued hopefully modified the conduct of a certain young man.
We try to look at what propogates the uncivilized conduct, and I lay it at the feet of the parents. All we can do in our society is educate, educate, educate; hoping that some day it will penetrate. Still I fear that all the education in the world will never make venturing out at night by a solitary individual will never be safe conduct.
My last Hollween, in 1957, I was 10 and walked alone; visiting a halfdozen or more houses in a space of about 4.5 miles. My Mom thought I would visit only our close neighbors. I walked the entire loop that has SW Wilsonville Rd as the bottom leg, with Ladd Hill about half way up the left leg of it. Even today, the route is easily traceable. Just google, Ladd Hill, Oregon, USA. The area is still almost like it was in October of 1957.
It is not something that I would have allowed my child to do. Mine either did not care, or did not know. It was over 50 years ago.
Khadijah
Times change...
When I was a child, we were pretty much allowed to roam and be children, because no one could conceive of the sort of vicious criminal who would hurt a child. If one reads the stories of Ray Bradbury, particularly Something Wicked This Way Comes and Dandelion Wine, many are set in that nostalgic past. I can well remember walking and running around with a group of kids from the neighbourhood long after dark, boys and girls together, or all girls, and the only real limit was bedtime.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Not to insult the memory of the fallen
My comment was not to insult the memmory of the fallen, because the things they suffered were the most heinous of crimes. I merely wanted to encourage people to engage in conduct that will promote their longevity.
Yes, I think that in many ways those were very innocent times, and I blame it on some things that most people would object to my curtailing. Video games, violent programming, lewd magazines, would all go away; while a certain amount of vigilante justice would return.
I do remember that we often played until dark, or after. But in our neighborhood, strangely to me at the time, girls were excluded. Now, I understand the reason. I can still remember my Mom telling my older brother to make sure he kept an eye on his sister.
Much peace
Khadijah