Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Visibility




A couple of weeks ago on July 17th, Angie Zapata, a MTF transgender, was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Angie had been on a date with Allen Andrade, a man she had met on a dating website, when Andrade noticed photographs around Angie’s apartment and questioned her gender identity. Upon discovering that she was a transwoman, Andrade beat Angie until he thought that he had killed her. When he realized that she was still alive and barely breathing, he continued to beat her until she finally died, fleeing the scene in Angie’s car.

Unfortunately, crimes like this are not uncommon. Everyday, members of the transgender community suffer from discrimination, exclusion, hate and violence. A large part of society does not recognize the challenges that transgender people face on a daily basis. Imagine fearing for your safety in a public restroom. Having someone judge your every move. Being fired from a job simply because of who you are. Visibility needs to be brought to the transgender community. Our society needs to recognize the treatment of transgender people and the rights that they are frequently denied.

What struck me about the story of Angie Zapata’s death is that when Allen Andrade was caught by the police, he explained what he had done, claiming that he had “killed it.” IT. He referred to Angie Zapata as IT. Not as a woman, a transwoman, or a human being but IT, a word used to represent an inanimate thing.

I cannot imagine any circumstance in which it is okay to call another human being IT. And so, I did this photo to bring about an issue that I think needs our attention. There needs to be greater punishment and attention given to hate crimes that occur on the basis of sexual and gender identity. There also needs to be an expansion of visibility and understanding of the transgender community. We need to educate our children, each other, and ourselves to think outside of the gendered boxes.

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