Trans women of color: murdered by capitalism

Philadelphia

As Transgender Day of Remembrance — traditionally held on Nov. 20 each year — nears, we reel in grief as we remember those trans women, particularly trans women of color, who were murdered. We reel in grief knowing that only recently have police taken seriously our often violent demise. We reel in grief as we know that trans women of color have a distinctly lowered life span.

While it’s impossible to succinctly tell the stories of every trans woman of color who was murdered, even when focusing on the East Coast as this article does, we can go through several stories and see the common ties between them.

Spark that lit the flame of the trans remembrance movement

Rita Hester was a Black trans woman who hailed from Hartford, Connecticut. Hartford in the 20th Century was not welcoming to trans people, let alone a Black trans woman. Hester moved to Allston, a neighborhood in Boston. She attended rock clubs and was generally fearless in how she lived her life.

One fateful day, Nov. 28, 1998, her friends and loved ones didn’t hear from her but assumed she was okay, because she was prone to doing things on a whim. Unfortunately, however, she was actually in her apartment, where she was stabbed several times and died. Police took their sweet time to reach her.

After her murder, the national press didn’t cover her death, and the local Boston press deadnamed (referring to a trans person by the name they no longer use) and misgendered her. Even the queer newspaper of note, Bay Windows, did the same. To deadname a trans person in any situation is awful; to deadname a person violently murdered for who they are is absolutely heinous and adds an extra layer of violence to the violence they already experienced.

The Boston police never found Hester’s murderer, and her case remains unsolved.

On Nov. 29, 1999, Gwendolyn Anne Smith, a San Francisco Bay Area trans activist who never knew Hester, started what would become the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Nizah Morris: victim of the Philadelphia Police Department

On December 22, 2002, Nizah Morris was out drinking at the integrated queer bar in Philadelphia, Key West. She was drunk, and people were concerned about her wellbeing, so they, unfortunately, called the Philadelphia Police Department — known for its anti-trans policies even recently. Officers Elizabeth Skala-DiDonato, Thomas Berry and Kenneth Novak came to the scene and offered Morris a ride home. According to the pigs, Nizah sobered up and left the car at 3:25 a.m.

Only a few minutes later, she was found bleeding and unconscious in the street. Berry had said that there was no crime committed, but he covered her face while she was still alive and kept her on the scene for 40 minutes. At 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 24, Christmas Eve, she passed away due to blunt force trauma that could only have come from the butt of a gun. These officers were most likely involved in Morris’s death; Officer Novak could not — or would not — account for his whereabouts during the murder.

In the decades that followed, the killer or killers were never identified. Bad actors in the form of police, who are the most probable suspects, were never charged, not even for the lapses in policy that took place.

In the time between Berry’s murder and now, the PPD claim to have changed their policies to be more “trans friendly.” But police are still police and still violent towards people of color in general and trans women of color specifically.

Trans attraction and murders of Diamond Williams, Islan Nettles 

Sexual attraction to transgender women, especially by men of color, is a difficult subject. There is a stigma in the overarching community against attraction to us. Some men of color, with sensitive masculinities, believe that if it’s known that they desire trans women of color, that they’d be clowned on by other men of color. At times they harm us.

There are two murders of trans women of color that engage with this problem specifically: the murders of Diamond Williams in Philadelphia and Islan Nettles in New York City in 2013. 

Diamond Williams was a Black trans sex worker who was hired by Charles N. Sargent. Sargent, knowing Diamond was trans and known to have sex with other trans women, brutally murdered her because — he claimed — she got violent after asking him to pay her for oral sex. After that line of defense had been exposed as a lie, Sargent then claimed that he didn’t know Diamond was trans, misgendering her deliberately throughout the trial.

Islan Nettles, too, was a Black trans woman, but this time all she did was walk down the street. A man, James Dixon, catcalled her. His friends told him that Islan was “a man.” In his anger, he approached Nettles, asked her if she was trans and entered what he called a “blind fury,” beating her so hard she hit the concrete and died of brain injury a few days later.

The masculinity of cis men of color when it comes to the existence of trans women is purposely sensitive, made so by white patriarchy. Too many believe that trans women are men or that because trans women were assigned male at birth, to be attracted to us is the same as being gay — and that being gay is bad or shameful. 

This is because of racist and patriarchal messaging and the implantation of white supremacist, patriarchal masculinity from white supremacist society to cis men of color and even other queer people. Communities of color have to overcome the self-hatred that white supremacist, capitalist society inflicts on us.

Charles Sargent and James Dixon were both sentenced to jail, although the families of Williams and Nettles believe they were not sentenced harshly enough. While it’s tempting to celebrate the imprisonment of those who harm trans people, we have to understand that under no circumstances are bourgeois prisons able to actually create conditions for justice and freedom for trans people. What was needed to prevent the deaths of Williams and Nettles was a destigmatization of trans bodies and queer sexualities.

We — trans women of color and revolutionaries of color — have to fight this belief to protect the lives of trans women of color.

The murders of Rita Hester, Nizah Morris, Diamond Williams and Islan Nettles were different, with different contexts and histories. But one thing ties them all together: the lack of value that this society places on the lives of trans women of color. What do we, as people of color, need to do to solve this? We need to overthrow the shackles of patriarchal masculinities rooted in the capitalist system. Once that has been done, we can become liberated in our communities and then struggle to be liberated from white supremacy and capitalism.

There are hundreds of trans women who have been murdered. I dedicate this article to all of them and to a few specifically: Rita Hester, Nizah Morris, Diamond Williams and Islan Nettles.