'50 Under 30: Masculinity and the War on America's Youth' documents the tide of murderous violence against gender nonconformity in the United States over the last decade, said Riki Wilchins, executive director of the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition ( GenderPAC ) .
One such murder occurs every two to three months, said Wilchins, who wrote the report. It was released on Dec. 14.
Wilchins believes the report undercounts 'effeminate gay men who were targeted because they weren't being masculine enough and butch women who were targeted because they were not being fem enough.'
There is strong commonality to most violence based on gender nonconformity. 'It is consistent in method and precise in target,' said Wilchins. Roughly 90 percent of the victims 'were biologically male but transgressed gender in some profound way;' were people of color; identified as gay or transgender identified; and were killed by persons about their own age.
About 75 percent of the time, it was not a random bullying that grew out of control. Wilchins said that 'these are crimes of murderous violence that are meant to annihilate the victim. In one of these cases a young woman who was transitioning was stabbed almost 60 times; she was then almost decapitated.'
All of the known assailants are young men; however, the rate of closure on these cases is low, often because the police do not give them their full attention. Most are not categorized as a hate crime, even when there is every indication that they should be. And most are not covered in the mainstream press.
Wilchins said,'There seems to be a unique nexus of vulnerability at the intersection of age, race, gender nonconformity and economic status. Most of these kids are from economically challenged homes or communities.'
'When you cross gender lines you seem to invoke a gut-level hatred, this desire to annihilate [ and ] profound hostility and rage. I'd be lying if I said we understand it. There is something out there about gender that [ makes people ] very, very angry, and very, very violent, and ... willing to kill to maintain gender boundaries,' she said.
'If you add to that additional factors that make you a disfavored American—you are of color, economically challenged, young—it becomes exponentially more likely that you are going to become the target of an attack.'
THE VICTIM
Queen Washington is the mother of Stephanie Thomas, a 19-year-old transgender woman who was 'assassinated along with her best friend' in August 2002 in Washington, D.C. She recounted the journey she had taken with Thomas in coming to terms with her son being transgender. 'I told her God hates a liar,' so be true to yourself, she said.
'I had to be there with her,' she added. 'Along the way I had to fight the schools, I had to fight the businesses, I had to fight the neighbors. My child was a human being first.'
Thomas and her friend, another young transgender woman, died in a hail of more than 20 bullets while sitting in a car a few blocks from home. After four years the case remains unsolved. Washington said the police lied to her repeatedly. She feels they did not adequately investigate the case.
'There is no doubt that this is a human rights issue,' said Mark K.
