Anyone that's followed me for a few years might remember that I used to post about Brandon Teena. A LOT. Brandon Teena was a transgender man who was raped and murdered in 1993. His story served as the inspiration for the 1999 movie Boys Don't Cry.
And it's like at first, I identified with Brandon because he was a trans man who like me was also a rape victim. I was terrified of ending like him -- murdered -- and what terrified me even more is that no one seemed to remember him. For one brief blip in the 90s, his death brought attention to the existence of trans men.
Then his death served as a cautionary tale for MILLIONS of other trans men, growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s.
And when I bring up Brandon to other trans people when they DO remember him I'm met with, "Oh, well he wasn't a good person". Because he committed check fraud because he couldn't hold down a job but that -- that just NEGATES the fact he was not only raped but that the rape was COVERED UP by the police! You can watch the documentary, The Brandon Teena Story -- the cop admits he did it because he wanted Brandon punished for "pretending to be a man" -- and then he was murdered because of the inaction. And all you fucking remember is a stolen check book?!
Then I read his autobiography about his family saying, "Oh, well, he went by a boys' name and put socks in his underwear since he was 14" and I get to listen to other people saying, "Oh, well, you don't know that SHE wasn't really a lesbian"! Are you fucking kidding me?!
And it doesn't end there. Who knows who Tony Dade is -- how many of y'all know about him?
You might know him as the 12th transgender person murdered in the 2020. That's right -- you might know him as a fucking number. Tony Dade was a Black trans man murdered in Florida in 2020 and he's remembered as a number. A fucking number.
His name was a footnote in November 2020. November is Transgender Awareness Month. It gets overshadowed every year by a holiday that celebrates mass genocide, and a list gets put out every November of all of the trans people murdered during the year. I remember being horrified in 2020 when I saw the list. It was more like a poster and Tony's name was written in the smallest font.
Transgender men serve only as a footnote in transgender history and the trans community. Yet we get to sit and listen while our abuse, our rapes, our murders are erased and get told that we're the enemy because WE. HAVE. SO. MUCH. PRIVILEGE.
His death is believed to be the at least 12th violent death of a transgender or gender non-conforming person this year in the U.S.
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