{"id":11790,"date":"2023-11-24T00:04:26","date_gmt":"2023-11-24T05:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=11790"},"modified":"2023-12-04T23:01:14","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T04:01:14","slug":"political-economy-of-passing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2023\/11\/political-economy-of-passing\/","title":{"rendered":"Political economy of passing"},"content":{"rendered":"

N<\/span>ovember 20 marked the 24th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), a day of mourning that concludes Transgender Awareness Week and honors the trans lives lost to violence. In the past year, 321 known transgender and gender nonconforming people have been killed worldwide, and at least 33 people<\/a> in the United States.<\/p>\n

A report from Transgender Europe<\/em><\/a> shows that 94 percent of the 321 trans lives lost to violence globally over the past year were trans women or transfeminine and 80 percent were people of color. The most common age group is between 19 to 25 years old, and about three-fourths of the victims range between 19 to 40 years old. Victims were almost just as likely to be killed in their own homes (26 percent) as they were on the street (28 percent) and almost half the victims (48 percent) were involved in sex work.<\/p>\n

In the United States, similar trends were present<\/a> with 88 percent of the victims being people of color, and 54 percent being Black trans women. The average age was 28 years old. About half the victims (47 percent) were killed by a romantic partner, friend, or family member, and 50 percent were later misgendered or deadnamed by either the police or the press. During this same period, incidents of hate crimes against LGBTQ people increased by 32 percent. This figure includes the murder of O\u2019Shae Sibley<\/a> who was stabbed to death outside of a Brooklyn gas station in reaction to his voguing. The rise in physical violence corresponds with a rise in legislative violence. 2023 has seen the introduction of 500 anti-LGBTQ bills at statehouses across the U.S.<\/p>\n

Last year’s observance of the TDOR was further impacted by the massacre at an LGBTQ nightclub<\/a> in Colorado Springs, CO. From drag shows that have been criminalized, LGBTQ literature that has been banned, trans athletes like Lia Thomas, and trans celebrities like Dylan Mulvaney that have faced vicious attacks for attempting to exist. The shooting in Colorado Springs a year ago that killed five people along with the everyday violence that continues to see far too many mostly young mostly Black and Brown queer and trans lives violently cut short, and countless more lost to suicide is a result of these ongoing attacks against queer people and queer culture.<\/p>\n

In honor of Transgender Awareness Week and of the trans lives foreclosed by physical and legislative violence, Tempest reprints this essay that originally appeared in the American Philosophy Association\u2019s LGBTQ Philosophy Bulletin<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"A
Photo<\/a> by Ted Eytan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I. Furtivity<\/h4>\n

In 2012, eight years before millions of protesters were to rise in antiracist rebellion to proclaim Black Trans Lives (also) Matter, CeCe McDonald\u2014a Black trans woman\u2014is sentenced to three and a half years in prison. McDonald, just twenty-three at the time, pleads guilty to manslaughter for defending her own life against a white supremacist who, statistics project, would have killed her if given the chance. Writing from a men\u2019s prison, where she would ultimately serve nineteen months, McDonald represents the asymmetry of law. Too often, weaponized judiciary statutes categorize and contain queer life, poor life, Black and Brown life. McDonald fits all three.<\/p>\n

Like CeCe, transgender and gender-nonconforming people are often caught within a web of carceral logics. Trans people experience significantly \u201chigh rates of poverty, homelessness, and discrimination in schools and the workplace,\u201d which, in turn, leads to \u201cdisproportionate contacts with the justice system, leading to higher levels of incarceration.\u201d1

A year following CeCe\u2019s January 2014 release, I attend Haymarket Books\u2019 annual Socialism Conference, a gathering of authors and organizers, artists, and academics who will shape my thinking for years to come. Standing in a hotel conference room located inside the downtown Chicago Loop, I fidget with a notebook that will remain empty when I walk out of the conference room doors. Inside, the room is cramped; it is humid, and at its front, CeCe McDonald recounts the moments that lead to her incarceration. At her story\u2019s crescendo, the room surges with emotion: \u201cAs I got closer,\u201d she tells us, \u201cI start to hear all types of epithets, you know faggots, chicks-with-dicks. You dress like that because you want to rape men, trick men.\u201d2

Fumbling for a pair of scissors in her handbag, CeCe will stab her attacker resulting in his death, and although she is acting in self-defense, CeCe will be handcuffed, arraigned, and ultimately found guilty: \u201cWhat is considered a crime and who is considered a criminal\u201d is determined always by social constructions.3