Being transgender in today’s society is hard enough. Gaining acceptance from family, society, and even the government is hard enough in 2017. But for Brandon Teena in 1990′s rural Nebraska the struggle was twice as hard.
Brandon was born Teena Renae Brandon on December 12th 1972. Growing up, his mother JoAnne Brandon described him as “tomboyish”. But Brandon wasn’t merely a tomboy; he was a man trapped inside a woman’s body. In his teen years Brandon began presenting as male by cutting his hair short, wearing masculine clothing, and sometimes stuffing a sock in the front of his pants. Brandon also asked his family and friends to call him Brandon instead of his birth name Teena. But acceptance was hard to come by for the lonesome teen. His mother refused to call him Brandon or accept his male identity and still insisted on calling him her daughter. He often clashed with teachers at the strict school he was in attendance at and his grades dropped. Brandon’s only happiness came from dating girls in his area. Girls he dated described him as, “handsome, charming, and a good kisser, essentially the perfect boyfriend.” But they lost those sentiments when they discovered he was born female.
Brandon’s love for girls got him in financial trouble as well; he began stealing and forging checks to pay for gifts for his girlfriends. It was this legal trouble and his desire to start a new life as the male he knew he was that led Brandon to relocate to the nearby town of Humboldt, Nebraska. While in Humboldt, Brandon met a 19 year old girl named Lana Tisdel and fell in with her group of friends which included single mother Lisa Lambert, and two ex-cons by the name of John L. Lotter and Marvin Thomas Nissen. Brandon and Lana soon began a romantic relationship, much to the chagrin of Lana’s ex boyfriend, John Lotter.
On December 19th 1993, Brandon was again arrested for forging checks. When Lana went to bail him out she found that Brandon was being held in the female section of the jail, which led to the discovery that he was assigned female at birth. Faced with this news and a limited capacity to understand, Lotter and Nissen reacted with outrage and violence. On Christmas Eve at a Christmas party they forced Brandon into the bathroom and demanded that he pulled his pants down. Once Brandon complied they forced Lana Tisdel to see that her lover was in fact anatomically female. But the men didn’t stop there. After that emotional torture they forced Brandon into a car and took him out to an abandoned warehouse where they brutally raped him.
After taking Brandon back to Nissen’s house and forcing him to take a shower they released him with the warning not to report their heinous crime to the authorities. Brandon didn’t heed their warning and told his girlfriend Lana who insisted that he go to the police. When Brandon did report his crime to the authorities, although a rape kit was done, he wasn’t taken seriously by the small town’s sheriff, who instead of focusing on the crime of which Brandon was a victim, focused on his sexual identity, denying Brandon the protection he needed from his attackers and possibly putting his life in even more risk.
After Nissen and Lotter found out that Brandon had gone to the authorities they decided to silence him for good. They tracked him down to Lisa Lambert’s house where they shot him, as well as Lisa and a family friend Phillip DeVine, leaving only Lambert’s infant son alive. Nissen later testified that after noticing Brandon was “twitching”, he took a knife and stabbed him in the chest to make sure he was dead.
Nissen was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, and Lotter received the death penalty, which was later reduced to life in prison when the state of Nebraska abolished the death penalty. Both men have appealed their sentences, thankfully with no success.
Brandon Teena’s life has been chronicled in the documentary “The Brandon Teena Story” as well as the award winning movie “Boys Don’t Cry”. Although Brandon’s life was unfortunately cut short in an act of hate and ignorance, his story and legacy has inspired thousands of people across the country, transgender and cis-gender alike, and the protection of transgender individuals is now seen as a priority in most areas.
Brandon is buried in Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Lincoln, Nebraska, the city in which he was born.
