Trigger Warning for discussions of sexual violence, prison violence, anti-trans violence, rape apologism, and transphobia and misgendering.

Recently, a woman was allegedly raped orally by a prison guard at Riverside Correctional Facility. She reported the assault to authorities, and an investigation was begun. During that investigation, officials learned that she was not cis, as they had apparently been assuming, and promptly transferred her to a male prison (trigger warning on the link).

Jovanie Saldana, who has been named by prison authorities and the media despite being the victim of sexual assault, has now had her basic rights violated many times over. She was violated when a prison guard entered her cell and forced her to perform oral sex on him. She was violated when her brave decision to report this assault resulted in an investigation that placed her under scrutiny and revoked her right to privacy. She was violated when she was sent to a male prison, both denying her true gender and placing her at extreme risk of further physical and sexual violence. And she was violated when her name was released and spread without concern for her privacy or safety.

Clearly, trans prison inmates are not seen to be deserving of the same rights as their cis, non-inmate counterparts. That Saldana is a black woman also could not have helped these already abusive and oppressive figures to see her as more human. (Indeed, trans women of color are at much higher risk of violence than white trans women.) Saldana’s cousin strongly believes that the transfer to a men’s prison is retaliation for her rape allegations; the timing, media attention, and reaction of the prison guard’s union certainly make these charges credible.

If true, it means that the Pennsylvania prison system essentially punished an inmate for reporting rape by subjecting her to likely future rapes. (Fifty-nine percent of trans women are sexually assaulted while incarcerated, and the vast majority of trans women inmates are housed in men’s facilities.) Even if retaliation was not the primary motive behind the decision to move Saldana, the facts remain the same; a victim of prison rape has not been protected, but instead placed in a position where future prison rape is more likely than not.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, however, is far more concerned with Saldana’s gender presentation and genitals than with the allegation that she was raped by a prison guard who had control over every aspect of her daily life. They also are far more concerned about the prison’s apparently lax policy on cavity searches than the fact that a woman is now residing very unsafely in a men’s prison so shortly after reporting that assault. Indeed, they seem more concerned about the threat that Saldana allegedly presented to her fellow prisoners merely by existing:

A source close to the prison system, who asked not to be identified, complained that the slip-up “jeopardized a lot of women over there [at Riverside],” adding that Saldana tallied at least two infractions for fighting with other inmates during Saldana’s stint in the female jail. On average, Riverside houses about 730 inmates daily, Hawes said.

Of course, it’s not noted how many “infractions” most inmates at Riverside have or whether Saldana is the one who instigated the fights. It’s also not explained how, exactly, Saldana is more of a threat than any other inmate at the prison. We’re simply supposed to “understand” that trans women are “really men,” and therefore threatening to all cis women. The specter of sexual violence is also present, as trans women are routinely portrayed by everyone from Christian Conservatives to self-identified feminists as sexually predatory men in disguise.

Through this defamatory portrayal of Saldana, we are supposed to forget that the true sexually violent perpetrator was a cis man. In reality, it’s Saldana who was the victim of sexual violence, and the real threat to the safety of all women in the prison, both trans and cis, was the armed cis guard lording over them. Only in a kyriarchal society could the black trans woman who was raped and then placed in a position where she is very likely to be raped again be effectively transformed into the “real” sexual threat against more socially valued womanhood.

Indeed, the corrections officers’ union plans to exploit Saldana’s trans status to brand her as a liar, unrapeable, or some combination of both (warning for misgendering):

Lorenzo North, president of the union representing corrections officers, declined to discuss the officers’ failure to perform the required cavity searches.

“I don’t know how [Saldana] got through,” North said, adding that all inmates should be searched. “If you don’t strip-search somebody thoroughly, then you’re not 100 percent sure of getting whatever [contraband] that inmate has. He may have something up his butt.”

But North claimed the goof proved that the officer whom Saldana accused of sexual abuse is innocent.

The officer was transferred to another prison after Saldana’s recent complaint.

“I’m trying to get him back to RCF [Riverside] as soon as possible, because he didn’t do anything wrong,” North said.

How, exactly, Saldana being trans — and officers failing to do their jobs, for that matter — proves that she lied about being raped is not exactly clear. We are either to assume that trans women are “liars” by mere fact of living their lives as women (and that people who lie sometimes cannot tell the truth about being raped), or that trans women have no right to bodily autonomy to begin with and therefore cannot be sexually violated.

Either way, the purposeful dehumanization of Saldana and all inmates by proxy is terrifying, as is the stark inability to accept responsibility and hold guards to a standard of professionalism. North’s attitude as a prison guard authority inadvertently makes it incredibly easy to see how the original sexual assault occurred in the first place. Clearly it’s because those tasked with protecting prisoner safety do not give a shit, and excuses for violations will always be made.

This woman’s safety has been severely jeopardized. She needs protection and recovery services for the assault she endured, not an incredibly more dangerous set of surroundings and public outing. The prison system has behaved abysmally, showing a blatant disregard for inmate safety. Rape is not supposed to be a part of the punishment for any crime. And this rule isn’t only supposed to apply if you’re cis.

via Transgriot

Arizona legislators are working on a new anti-immigration bill that is essentially the hospital equivalent of their notorious SB 1070. The new bill, SB 1405, would require all hospitals within the state to verify the immigration status of all patients. If a patient cannot prove that sie is in the country legally, hospital staff would be required by law to contact immigration officials.

A new bill making its way through Arizona’s state legislature is drawing a lot of attention. It’s Senate Bill 1405. Some call it the hospital version of SB 1070.

Anyone who has spent a day at Maricopa County Medical Center knows people from all walks of life are wheeled through the halls.

But if a new piece of legislation passes, some of those patients will be wheeled from the emergency room to immigration officials.

If SB 1405 passes, hospitals would be required to check a patient’s citizenship status after administering any emergency medical care.

If the person isn’t in the United States legally, the law would require they be turned over to immigration officials.

Yes, this bill is real. It can be read in full on the Arizona State Legislature’s website, and view the official fact sheet.

Now, the bill itself does not actually require that hospitals refuse treatment to those who are undocumented or cannot prove immigration status. SB 1405 doesn’t go quite that far — at least, in this draft.

But do not be at all mistaken — if passed, an inability to access medical care will be precisely what occurs all the same.

Already, some immigrants, terrified and terrorized by the very real raids and surveillances that are a daily threat to their communities, falsely believe that hospitals are required to check immigration status. As a result, they avoid medical treatment, even when it is dire. People have become very ill, risked their lives, been left with lifelong conditions that would have been treatable earlier, and undoubtedly died. Because there is a war to protect U.S. borders, and undocumented bodies have inevitably been declared its enemy.

If this bill is passed — and with the passage of SB 1070, it is most certainly more than a remote possibility — that situation will be multiplied many times over. People will forced to choose between the dangerousness of refusing medical care and hoping they survive and the dangerousness of interacting with institutions have declared their existence, their very selves to be “illegal.” As now with those who can’t afford care in the U.S. for-profit medical system, serious conditions will be nervously brushed off. Rape victims, victims of intimate partner violence, and women and trans* people who are having pregnancy complications will go without treatment. There will be no such thing as safety. Violence will become even more inescapable than it is now. And people will die.

People will die.

They will die, and this fact — this is not speculation, it is a simple cause and effect analysis, it is a fact — is neither a secret nor a mystery. And clearly, that’s at least part of the point. As KPHO Phoenix reports:

Those in favor of the bill said hospitals shouldn’t be treating people in the country illegally.

They don’t quote a proponent of the bill in support of this statement, but such people are not exactly difficult to find. They are everywhere, asking why should “they” (undocumented immigrants) get to use “our” (U.S.) schools, anyway? Clearly, children whose parents don’t have the right papers do not deserve an education, they do not need to read or add or write. They are seen asking why “they” should be allowed to use “our” police forces. Clearly, some of us deserve access to the institutions generally regarded as the primary means to keep communities safe, some of us deserve to report crimes against us, to not be assaulted and raped, and some of us do not. And they are indeed seen asking why “they” should be allowed to use “our” hospitals — there is a health care crisis already, so how dare they use up resources?

Clearly, some of us deserve to live and some of us deserve to die. Because that is what the ability to access health care comes down to. And those supporting this bill know it.

And then there is this:

Senate President Russell Pearce, a Mesa Republican who was chief sponsor of last year’s immigration law, says the hospitals bill is part of a broader effort to crack down on illegal immigration. The hospitals bill wouldn’t bar people from getting care, but it would put the onus on hospitals to “do due diligence,” Pearce said. “We’re going to enforce our laws without apology.”

Added Pearce: “It’s the law. It’s a felony to (aid and) abet. We’re going to enforce the law without apology.”

This is what happens when we declare people “illegal,” when we start calling them by that slur publicly and officially. If they are illegal, their very lives are illegal. To protect the health and safety of those declared illegal, to afford them the very most basic human rights, to treat them as human beings, becomes a crime.

As ms. radically hott off writes:

How much more savage and vindictive can we be? what other mami will have to choose between the health of her children and a place to live/work? Do you know what that feels like? To see your sick child and know—I’m going to have to take her in? To *dread* getting help for your child? I feel like that all the time because of money—I can’t even imagine the added burden of knowing that you will lose everything because your child has a right to live and be healthy.

Those proposing and supporting this bill don’t even recognize that this right to live and be healthy exists for certain bodies, including those which belong to children. They certainly don’t mind putting it in extraordinary jeopardy.

The bill was originally scheduled to go before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, but was yanked at the last moment due to a lack of votes. The sponsors, however, have stated that they are considering other committees. We have most certainly not seen the last of SB 1405, and with numerous other states considering legislation similar to SB 1070, we are witnessing the mere beginning of a white supremacist resurgence in the U.S. In the general public consciousness, the bars for what constitutes either “extreme” or “racist” have both been raised. Progressives can only ignore efforts like these and assume they will just go away at the risk of people losing not only their homes and incomes and right to be near their families, but also their lives.

Last week, a woman was sent to jail for ten days, placed on two years probation, and ordered to complete 80 hours of community service for a felony conviction. Her crime was fudging documents so that she could send her two daughters to the “wrong” school district, in the richer Akron, Ohio suburb where her father lived. She was led away in handcuffs.

On Saturday, a jury found Williams-Bolar guilty on two counts of tampering with records. She was also facing one count of grand theft, but the judge declared a mistrial on that charge after the jury couldn’t reach a verdict.

Williams-Bolar could have been sent to a state prison for up to 10 years, but Judge Cosgrove decided on a 10-day sentence in the Summit County Jail after weighing Williams-Bolar’s lack of criminal record with the seriousness of her crimes.

“I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school systems,” Cosgrove told NewsChannel5 after the sentencing.

Prosecutors said Williams-Bolar lived in Akron, but falsified enrollment papers in the Copley-Fairlawn School District so her two girls could attend schools for two years.

Prosecutors said the lies cost the district about $30,000. Copley-Fairlawn does not have open enrollment and out-of-district tuition is about $800 per month.

The school district spent about $6,000 to bring the case to trial. That included hiring a private investigator who followed Williams-Bolar and her children around while secretly videotaping their movements.

Superintendent Brain Poe said Copley-Fairlawn has lost hundreds of thousand of dollars because of parents illegally enrolling their children into the schools.

Poe said residency disputes are usually resolved after parents prove that they live in the district, pay tuition or remove their kids from the schools.

This marked the first time that one of their residency challenges went before a jury in criminal court. Poe said prosecuting this case was meant to send a message.

“If you’re paying taxes on a home here… those dollars need to stay home with our students,” Poe said.

One cannot honesty discuss this case without discussing the fact that Williams-Bolar is a black woman, raising black children in a city that has a large non-white population, living in a home secured through the local Housing Authority, while Copely is a very comfortably middle-class and overwhelmingly white town. Williams-Bolar is a mother who has been jailed for sending her kids to the “wrong” school district. But she’s also a black mother who has been jailed for sending her kids to a white school district.

Still, some will inevitably argue that this is not an issue of race or even class. It’s an issue of rules, of order. Someone broke the rules, and now they have to pay.

I would like to remind them firstly that who pays and how is always political.  But just as importantly, it is not arbitrary where we place borders, how we enforce borders, and who we punish for crossing them. Borders, especially modern ones, are chosen. They are artificial. We like to tell ourselves that we create borders out of necessity, to more efficiently manage communities and resources. But we also create those borders specifically to keep other people out, to control resources in a way that prevents certain populations from accessing them. There is no accident in how borders are drawn and who is being kept out and removed from resources, not along lines of race, and not along lines of class — especially not in a country were so many borders were explicitly drawn with racist intent, during times of colonization, during times of slavery, during times of Jim Crow and less “official” forms of segregation, or even during modern times of “legals” and “illegals.” It’s a little too easy to write off as coincidence that the “wrong” school district was white in a country that has a very long and modern history, both official and unofficial, of keeping all non-white but especially black students out of white schools.

As Superintendent Poe explicitly states up above, this is about “our” tax dollars, and keeping them where they belong. And anytime we start talking about “us” and “them,” we need to look at what we mean by those words, because it rarely reflects well on our intentions and prejudices. William-Bolar crossed a border that was designed to keep her out. She “stole” resources that were apparently not her or her children’s to have. (Indeed, she was also charged with grand theft, which resulted in a hung jury.)

I think it’s about time we think about what we mean by “racism” if a black mother landing in jail because she sent her kids to a better school that would not have them doesn’t count, if calling it “stealing” when she gives them access to resources these white parents get to take for granted doesn’t qualify. If we don’t understand the racism of the much higher likelihood that a black mother will have to send her child to a sub-par school that will not teach them all they need to know than a white mother, if we don’t understand the racism of punishing her for fighting back against that inherently unequal, oppressive, white supremacist system, we don’t understand the first thing about racism at all.

In fact, (though I object to his metaphorical use of the word “cripple”) I can’t say it any better than Dr. Boyce Watkins did in his blog post:

This case is a textbook example of everything that remains racially wrong with America’s educational, economic and criminal justice systems. Let’s start from the top: Had Ms. Williams-Bolar been white, she likely would never have been prosecuted for this crime in the first place (I’d love for them to show me a white woman in that area who’s gone to jail for the same crime). She also is statistically not as likely to be living in a housing project with the need to break an unjust law in order to create a better life for her daughters. Being black is also correlated with the fact that Williams-Bolar likely didn’t have the resources to hire the kinds of attorneys who could get her out of this mess (since the average black family’s wealth is roughly 1/10 that of white families). Finally, economic inequality is impactful here because that’s the reason that Williams-Bolar’s school district likely has fewer resources than the school she chose for her kids. In other words, black people have been historically robbed of our economic opportunities, leading to a two-tiered reality that we are then imprisoned for attempting to alleviate. That, my friends, is American Racism 101.

This case is a textbook example of how racial-inequality created during slavery and Jim Crow continues to cripple our nation to this day. There is no logical reason on earth why this mother of two should be dehumanized by going to jail and be left permanently marginalized from future economic and educational opportunities. Even if you believe in the laws that keep poor kids trapped in underperforming schools, the idea that this woman should be sent to jail for demanding educational access is simply ridiculous.

You should read everything he has to say on the subject.

In the end, William-Bolar’s real punishment is not the indignity and injustice of her 10 days in jail. It is the felony record that will follow her for many years to come. It will inevitably keep her from obtaining employment, from creating an economically better life for her daughters. Specifically, it will keep her from getting the teaching license she has been studying for at college — money, time, and effort all sent down the drain. A dream and opportunity taken from her because she had dreams for her daughters, wanted opportunities for them, and did the best she could in an oppressive system to see to it that they got them.

Maybe we should talk about that when we want to talk about theft, what was stolen, and from whom.

via sheresists

UPDATE: Information on how to help Kelley Williams-Bolar with her legal fees can be found here.

Berkeley, California has recently been considering beginning to provide some benefits to its trans employees for sex reassignment/affirmation surgery. It’s unclear precisely which procedures would be covered under such a plan, since all news reports merely use the outdated and offensive term “sex change” to describe what is being considered.¹ A vote on the very modest proposal has just been delayed:

The Berkeley City Council has postponed a vote on a proposal to use taxpayer money to pay for sex-change operations for city employees.

Council members on Tuesday decided to delay a final decision on the issue until Feb. 15.

The proposal calls for the city to maintain an annual $20,000 fund for gender-reassignment surgery, which can cost up to $50,000. The money would be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Berkeley health insurance providers Kaiser Permanente and Health Net don’t pay for the procedure under the city’s current health plans.

To be eligible for the fund, employees would have to have lived as the opposite sex for at least one year and undergone hormone therapy. They also would have to have worked for the city at least a year.

The San Francisco Gate notes that several of the city’s 1,500 employees have apparently inquired about such benefits.

So basically, even if this proposal were passed, trans people would have to race each other to claim the woefully incomplete benefits, the inadequacy of which any cis person who is supposed to be receiving health care through their job would rightly throw a temper tantrum over. Trans folks, on the other hand, not only have to fight tooth and nail for these minimal benefits and defend themselves against national furor and smear campaigns that seek to define their health care needs as frivolous, deviant, and unnecessary, but also stand neatly in line so that one person a year might succeed at obtaining them.

Particularly as a cis woman with mountains of privilege in this debate, I’m not arguing that that the benefits would not be very real for those very few who might be lucky enough to access them. My point is simply that more is deserved. And as a general rule, if we were talking about cis folks, more would be expected. But because it’s trans rights up for debate, those same cis people are looking at the proposal as “special rights.”

One also has to wonder precisely how many cis employees must first satisfy their employer’s medical, not occupational, requirements in order to access specific kinds of care. Surely, health insurance carriers have restrictions on what they will and will not cover, and when they will and will not cover it. But one’s employer rarely designs those restrictions themselves, and rarely leaves it up to themselves to decide which medical criteria must be met. The idea that trans employees seeking such benefits must “have lived as the opposite sex for at least one year and undergone hormone therapy” is all kinds of absurd and cissexist. (For a start, how can one’s real gender be “opposite,” and how can a gender be “opposite” when there are more than two genders?) As though trans folks don’t suffer enough cis gate-keeping regarding whether or not they’re “really” trans. As though they are likely to find any cis gate-keepers who would provide such surgery to them without these restrictions being met already.

The possibility of these crumbs being thrown trans people’s way has nevertheless ignited outrage, even in Berkeley, with its reputation of being as liberal as anywhere in the U.S. gets. We’ve got biased fear-mongering headlines like “Berkeley taxpayers may pay for sex-change surgery,” Fox News surprising no one with its sensational coverage, and others filing a story about basic health care access for trans folks under “strange news.”

The general spin is an old one: SRS is “weird,” it’s unnecessary, it’s wasteful, and it’s going to result in countless cases of fraud and abuse. There’s a reason, after all, why transition-related benefits are left out of most insurance, and why the right to these benefits was not guaranteed in the latest U.S. health reform. It’s not about actual cost. It’s about what the public believes is “deserved” and “legitimate,” and who they’ll tolerate being left out in the cold. Sadly, a vast majority of the population is cis, and couldn’t care less about trans health, the very real health reasons why many trans people need medical transition care, or what happens when that need is not met.

So we’re seeing Berkeley delay its vote pending “further research.” Because clearly, research is required to determine whether or not trans people should be afforded rights slightly more equal to their cis peers.

I’m so sick of debating whether all people deserve access to health care, or just the ones who meet some arbitrary standard of social approval. Until we view health care as a fundamental human right, there’s always going to be someone who is undeserving of it — whether it be because they’re poor, or sex workers, or disabled, or trans, or in need of care related to their reproductive organ that offends somebody’s sensibilities. Until health care is a fundamental human right, there will always be someone whose life is not worth as much as “our” tax dollars.

At the same time, it’s important to remember that even framing health care as a fundamental human right still wouldn’t fully solve the problem. “Human rights” rarely end up applying to those who society still sees as less than human, and even “universal health care” rarely works out well for trans people. So health care as right or not, until trans folks are properly understood to be just as human and deserving as cis folks, the equation of “our” (super special cis-only) tax dollars being worth more than trans lives is unlikely to change.

Trigger Warning for transphobic violence and police violence

At the beginning of December, an altercation between a trans woman and an off-duty police officer resulted in the woman being charged with assault (h/t). The problem is that this charge is in spite of the fact that she alleges the officer assaulted her — and that two witnesses corroborate her story. The Washington Blade originally reported:

D.C. police last week arrested a transgender woman for spraying a chemical repellent into the face of a man who she says called her names and assaulted her before identifying himself as an off-duty District police officer.

Chloe [redacted] Moore, 25, was charged with simple assault following a 2 a.m. incident on Dec. 1 along the 1500 block of K St., N.W. According to court records, Officer Raphael Radon alleges that Moore squirted him with pepper spray in an unprovoked action following a brief exchange of words.

But two police sources said a sergeant and detective who responded to the scene determined through interviews with witnesses that Officer Radon initiated the altercation and may have committed a bias-related assault against Moore.

The police sources, who spoke on condition that they were not identified, said a night supervisor apprised of the incident by phone while at her office at the First District D.C. Police station overrode the recommendations of the sergeant and detective and ordered that Moore be charged with simple assault.

Officer Radon was not charged in the incident.

According to the Washington Blade report (full details can be read at the link), Moore claims that she asked off-duty Officer Radon for a light for her cigarette, when he began shouting transphobic insults and slurs. She claims that he pushed her, and fearful for her safety, she pepper sprayed him and ran. Moore alleges that Radon chased her for two blocks before grabbing her by the back of the neck, throwing her to the ground, and only then identifying himself as a police officer.

For his part, Radon claims that Moore and her friend approached him and offered him sexual services for money. He claims that when he turned them down, Moore pepper sprayed him in the face, and then ran after Radon identified himself as a police officer.

Between “cis man randomly assaults trans woman” and “sex worker randomly assaults man for turning her down,” I personally know which story intuitively makes most sense and seems more likely to me. But my personal inclinations don’t count for much. The recommendation of the responding officers, however, probably should. And so should witness statements, which corroborate Moore’s version of events:

But the report says two other witnesses backed up Moore’s version of what happened. One of the two apparently is the transgender woman who was with Moore. The report, which does not identify any of the witnesses by name, suggests that Witness 3 may have been standing nearby and was not with any of the others involved in the incident.

“Witness 3 recounted the same story as D1 [Defendant 1—Moore],” the police report says.

Local attorney Dale Edwin Saunders, who practices criminal law in the District, described as “highly unusual” the decision by police and the United States Attorney’s office to charge Moore in the case.

“This person would have never been arrested or papered if the complaining witness had been a civilian,” Saunders said. “The defendant had two witnesses corroborating her version of the events.”

One also has to wonder whether she would have been arrested if she had been cis.

Officer Radon’s version of events just so happens to follow a convenient popular narrative regarding trans women as both violent (and therefore “manly”) and sex workers. The latter allegation, particularly, is one which a set of dangerous, (trans-)misogynistic cultural biases regularly allow to work against trans women. As both sex workers and trans women are portrayed as deviant and hypersexual as compared to all other people, trans women are regularly represented as sex workers even when they are not. Because sex workers are so devalued and scorned by dominant society, accusing a person of being a sex worker becomes not only an insult (oppressing both the target and sex workers in general), but a process of dehumanization. When sex workers are seen as generally undeserving of basic safety, and trans women are viewed similarly, accusing trans women of being sex workers is an easy way to reinforce the notion that they deserve violence, belong in police custody, and are unworthy of the same basic respect and rights as other citizens.

Ms. Moore’s story, on the other hand, follows a very real pattern of behavior that is generally ignored by dominant society, in which cis men feel their gender identities and sexualities are challenged by the mere presence of a trans woman, and lash out violently against her in rage and abject hatred. Trans women are a particularly “easy” target of violence anyway, since their rights and humanity are so widely disrespected. As a result, everyone ignores the highly tenuous sense of safety that trans women live with every day, and it is officially assumed that she is the one who must have done something wrong — often, by merely existing.

But as Sylvia Renee points out at The New Gay (Trigger Warning for graphic descriptions of rape against a trans woman in a men’s prison), most people are likely to believe Officer Radon’s version of events not only because they generally fail to recognize or simply do not care about the violence that trans* folks face, but also because Officer Radon is a police officer. And police officers? Well, they’re the good guys, right? They don’t behave violently. They must be telling the truth.

A week ago, the D.C. Transgender Coalition released a statement with regards to this case. They state, in part:

“What’s especially disturbing about this case is that it features several flagrant violations of MPD’s general order on dealing with trans people,” said Alison Gill, a DCTC attorney.  “Medical attention was apparently not provided promptly, and the use of degrading, transphobic language is expressly forbidden,” Gill continued.  Since June, DCTC has been working with several LGBT community organizations to train officers affiliated with MPD’s special liaison units in cultural competency and relevant MPD policies.  So far, roughly 70 officers have been trained in this program.  “What this incident shows us is that training self-selected volunteers is only a small step toward ensuring that MPD officers fully comply with DC’s human rights law.  We want to see a swift rejection of this kind of behavior from the highest levels within MPD, along with a real plan for making sure that every law enforcement officer knows and follows the law, including mandatory training for the entire force,” Gill said.

DCTC highlights a particularly disturbing part of this story that might have otherwise gone ignored: even though the responding officers apparently ultimately believed Moore’s version of events, only to be overridden by a supervisor over phone, they allegedly did not see fit to provide Moore with requested medical attention. Of course, whether they believed her version of events or not should be irrelevant to this issue — all people deserve medical care, no matter what they’ve done. But the point is that apparently even when a trans woman is seen as legitimately the victim of a crime, she is still not seen as fully human. Not fully human enough to have the injuries she incurred as a result of her victimization treated.

These allegations are despicable, but they are unsurprising. They are a part of a pattern — not only in D.C., but virtually anywhere that trans* people interact with law enforcement, or are the victims of crimes. They’re part of a pattern in which law enforcement generally treats marginalized victims as criminals. Only certain members of society are seen as entitled to safety. They’re the same members we view as entitled to commit violence against everyone else.

UPDATE: Title changed to add “cis” after critique of ciscentrism by Helen G

UPDATE 2: Change.org is running a petition demanding that D.C. police address anti-trans bias within their department. Click through to sign.

Last year, a woman named Maria Bolanos called the police during a domestic dispute with her partner, hoping that they would protect her. Now, as a result of that phone call and the subsequent interaction with police, because she is an immigrant who is undocumented, it is probable that she will be deported soon.

Last Christmas Eve, Maria Bolanos made a decision she would later regret: During a fight with her partner, she called the Prince George’s County police and sought their protection.

The call for help had disastrous consequences for Bolanos, a 28-year-old undocumented immigrant from El Salvador. Within months, she found herself ensnared in an increasingly controversial immigration enforcement program designed to deport undocumented criminals.

Bolanos now faces deportation and possible separation from her 21-month-old daughter, who was born here and is a U.S. citizen.

Her case illustrates what immigrant-rights advocates and some local officials consider the shortcomings of Secure Communities, the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement efforts and a program that has helped generate a record number of deportations.

Secure Communities, which already operates in the District, Maryland, Virginia and will soon be running nationwide, relies on the fingerprints collected by local authorities when a person is charged with anything from a traffic violation to murder.

In Bolanos’s case, the officer who responded to the domestic dispute at her apartment in Hyattsville later charged her with illegally selling a $10 phone card to a neighbor – an allegation she denies. The charge was eventually dropped, but by then Bolanos had been been fingerprinted and found by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be in the country illegally.

She has been told she probably will be deported after a Wednesday hearing before an immigration judge in Baltimore.

First of all, fuck the police officer who charged Bolanos. A woman being abused calls for help from the authorities, expects them to protect her, and is instead charged with illegally selling a $10 phone card. A $10 phone card. Fuck that. It is the height of irresponsibility, misogyny, racism, pick an -ism. It’s so repulsive it makes the bile rise up in my throat.

Fuck that officer, and fuck the Obama administration with its “Secure Communities” plan. “Secure Communities” apparently means broken communities, separated communities, communities missing parents and other family members, communities living in fear, communities in which women can be beaten with impunity because if they call the cops to help them, no matter how fearful for their lives they just may be, they will be severely penalized. This is what “Secure Communities” means? Fuck that.

No, I’m not sorry for either the language or the sentiments. I’m fucking pissed.

With a record number of immigrants deported in the past year — only half of whom, I should note, have criminal records, with even the overwhelming majority of those being drug convictions — immigrants are worse off under Obama than they were under Bush.

Let me repeat that, today, on election day: Immigrants are worse off under Obama than they were under Bush. On election day, when the Obama administration is touting the improvements they’ve made to the U.S.in effort to get us out there to support their fellow Democrats, “reminding” us how much worse life was under Republicans, how much worse it could be again.

To be clear, I’m not telling anyone not to vote. I’m headed out myself later on this afternoon. And the day I actually vote Republican is the day that hell freezes over. I’m simply pointing out some facts about the lies we’re being told. I think we should all know the truth, and stop taking those lies at face value.

Because immigrants are less safe and more vulnerable to being removed from their homes under Obama than they were under Bush. And the Obama administration has the gall, the audacity, the outright conceit and smugness, to brag about it.

Even for someone who labels himself progressive, people’s very lives have become a political bargaining chip.

And anyone with a single progressive bone in their entire body should be outraged at that truth. At the truth that people’s lives do not matter unless they have a certain slip of paper. That certain people just don’t deserve protection, don’t deserve to live peacefully and unmolested. That certain people just aren’t really people anymore, anyway.

We are talking about people. Real, living, breathing people with hopes and dreams and families and inner lives. I think it’s time to center that. The fact that while the Obama administration and bureaucracy has forgotten, Maria Bolanos is a person.

Maria Bolanos works two jobs to pay her bills. She does janitorial work at an apartment complex Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. and pulls a 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift at a restaurant Thursday through Sunday.

“Dora the Explorer” plays endlessly on the TV in her second-floor apartment, in deference to the wishes of her daughter, Melisa Arellano-Bolanos.

Framed pictures of the the Last Supper and of Jesus and Mary hang above the dining table. A photo of Bolanos’s partner, Fernando Arellano, hugging Melisa is tucked into one corner of one of the frames.

Bolanos said she came to the United States in 2004 in search of a better life. She paid $7,000 to coyotes to help her cross the border via the Arizona desert.

The first time her party was caught, she said. She was released in the desert across the Arizona border from Mexico after being fingerprinted and photographed by authorities–and almost immediately crossed the border again.

She found her way to the Washington area and met Arellano at a restaurant where she worked. Arellano, now 34, was also undocumented and from Mexico. They fell in love and moved in together. Melisa was born in January 2008 at Washington Hospital Center.

She’s a person. A person who, because her partner allegedly assaulted her, because she allegedly sold some fucking phone cards, was shackled and detained. Shackled and detained, despite her pleas to be released on account that she was breastfeeding, until a doctor found her breasts engorged with milk.

She’s a person who would have no legal recourse if she was assaulted again. A person who has been let hung out to dry, saying, “You would have to be crazy to call the police. I would never call the police again.” A woman of color who, because of who she is, does not have the same exact right to not be beaten as a U.S.-born white lady like me.

A woman involved in a domestic dispute was so afraid of her partner that she called the police. Now, as a direct result of that phone call, she’s likely going to be deported. And though her story may be particularly outrageous, it’s not isolated. This shit is happening all the fucking time.

via Amanda Hess

In Canada in 2007, a woman who has been identified in the press as N.S. accused her uncle and cousin of molesting her as a child. The case was taken to a preliminary hearing, where N.S., a Muslim woman, was ordered to remove her niqab — a face veil that leaves the eyes visible — as a condition of testifying. Believing this to be a violation of her rights, N.S. took her case to the Ontario Court of Appeal. A few days ago, this court ruled that the order for N.S. to remove her niqab was wrong … sort of:

As long as it doesn’t prejudice a fair trial, the court ruled, Muslim women should have the religious right to wear their niqab when testifying.

But if a judge is convinced by the accused that he can’t properly defend himself if she’s testifying against him behind a veil, the witness must remove her niqab and allow the face-to-face confrontation that is the norm in Canadian courts.

“The criminal justice system as it presently operates, and as it has operated for centuries, places considerable value on the ability of lawyers and the trier of fact to see the full face of the witness as the witness testifies,” wrote Justice David Doherty in the ruling released Wednesday morning on behalf of the three-judge panel.

“There is no getting around the reality that in some cases, particularly those involving trial by jury where a witness’s credibility is central to the outcome, a judge will have a difficult decision to make.”

It was not a clear-cut victory for any side, but one cautiously applauded by all.

“It’s a real step forward,” said David Butt, lawyer for N.S., the Toronto woman who was ordered to remove her niqab at a preliminary hearing.

“This walks a middle ground that balances two very important, competing rights.”

N.S. came forward in 2007 and accused her uncle and cousin of sexually abusing her as a child. When the case went to a preliminary hearing in 2008, she said she wanted to testify while wearing her niqab.

When the judge ruled against her, she took her case to the Ontario Court of Appeal in June.

In their 54-page decision, the three-judge appeal panel ruled that there needs to be a “case by case assessment” and for the first time set out guidelines for judges in these previously “uncharted waters”.

For N.S., the appeal court overturned her niqab ban and said she must be given a proper hearing to show why her religion requires her to cover all but her eyes.

The notion of the woman’s niqab impeding “face to face confrontation” has come up in numerous articles I’ve read, to the point that it kind of amazes me. The woman will be right there, forced to sit in the same courtroom as the men she has accused of raping her. She will have to look at them; they will be able to look at her.

Where exactly do they think these people think that her face will be? The niqab is a piece of fabric — it is not a wall, and it does not magically transport a person’s body parts to another room. It does not cause the accused to be any less “face to face” with their accuser than would a pair of glasses or long loose hair, than a bandage or a prosthetic. In all cases, the person’s face may not be 100% visible, but it is 100% present.

While glad that the court did not rule against N.S., I am angered that they did not rule entirely with her, either, and have instead demanded that she adequately grovel before the judge in order to convince him or her that her reasons for wearing her niqab are good enough. Expecting an almost certainly non-Muslim individual to rule on the sincerity, significance, gravity of a Muslim woman’s personal and religious beliefs is nothing short of oppressive, Islamophobic, and misogynistic.

As a white, Western, non-religious woman who grew up steeped in Christian culture, I am far from an expert on the topic of the niqab and other forms of veiling, myself. So I want to be very careful to not make any inferences about what the niqab means generally to women who wear one, or to the victim N.S. specifically, as these are things I cannot claim to fully understand. (And please correct me on anything I do get wrong.)

But I do know a few basic things for sure, things that we should be able to apply across the board. I know that one should not have to violate a deeply held belief in order to be allowed access to their right and duty to testify in a court of law. I know that one should not face an interrogation about their religious conviction or lack thereof — to get you or me or some random judge to a place where they understand one’s religious conviction — in order to access that right and duty, either. I know that one should not be made deliberately and unnecessarily uncomfortable as a condition of participation in the legal system. I know that one should not be forced to remove the articles of clothing that one generally wears in public to sit in the witness stand — just imagine the uproar if this was expected of non-Muslim women. I know that people communicate differently — as a result of culture, language, disability, personality, and a whole host of other factors — and that whether one meets an arbitrary, dominant, normative expectation regarding communication should not be the marker of their credibility.

And I know that all of these simple truths become even more dire when we are talking about a woman who has reported sexual violence. I know that if all of the above is not taken as common sense, there is a whole class of women who will no longer feel entitled to seek justice for the violence committed against them, who will no longer possess that right. If a woman cannot wear a niqab and testify against her accused rapist at the same time, then women who wear the niqab no longer have the full legal right to not be raped.

I believe that the attempt to force N.S. to remove her niqab was little more than an intimidation tactic by the defense and an exercise in cultural superiority by the judge. And I agree with N.S.’s lawyer that claims about how her right to wear one supposedly impedes a jury’s ability to establish credibility are based on a wholly faulty premise:

N.S.’s lawyer, David Butt, argued that how a person looks when answering questions isn’t useful in determining whether the person is telling the truth, so nothing would be lost if N.S.’s face cannot be seen.

“Poker is an interesting game precisely because demeanour can be so misleading,” Butt said.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association agreed. Courts regularly accept testimony from witnesses whose demeanour can only be partially observed, said its lawyers, Bradley Berg and Rahat Godil.

“The right to make full answer and defence is not infringed when a witness is blind, or when a witness’s mouth occasionally twists into a grimace due to a congenital defect,” they say in their material.

In other words, strict universal standards are not only unrealistic and impossible to meet, they’re also naturally prejudiced, assuming a biased standard of “normal” and construing as difficult, disruptive, and abnormal all who cannot meet them. (And while people with disabilities are used as an example of how the same standards are not applied across the board, people with disabilities have many times been oppressed in legal systems on the basis of not meeting normative standards of communication and behavior.) Further, determining an individual’s guilt or innocence –  making the decision whether a person becomes incarcerated and has a permanent criminal record — based on a series of peoples’ facial expressions, is just a really scary way to do things, period.

I hope that N.S. is finally given her deserved fair day in court, and that a jury will decide her alleged rapists’ guilt based on the merits of the prosecution’s case, rather than either rape myths or the accuser’s religion.

Note: Islamophobic comments will not be published.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported on plans in the Venice Beach section of Los Angeles to “crack down” on homeless people who live in R.V.s and vans, parking them either on the street or in beach lots at night.

Every day, Diane Butler and her husband park their two hand-painted R.V.’s in a lot at the edge of Venice Beach here, alongside dozens of other rickety, rusted campers from the 1970s and ’80s. During the day, she sells her artwork on the boardwalk. When the parking lot closes at sunset, she and the other R.V.-dwellers drive a quarter-mile inland to find somewhere on the street to park for the night.

Their nomadic existence might be ending, though. The Venice section of Los Angeles has become the latest California community to enact strict new regulations limiting street parking and banning R.V.’s from beach lots — regulations that could soon force Ms. Butler, 58, to leave the community where she has lived for four decades.

“They’re making it hard for people in vehicles to remain in Venice,” she said.

Southern California, with its forgiving weather, has long been a popular destination for those living in vehicles and other homeless people. And for decades, people living in R.V.’s, vans and cars have settled in Venice, the beachfront Los Angeles community once known as the “Slum by the Sea” and famous for its offbeat, artistic culture.

Yet even as the economic downturn has forced more people out of their homes and into their cars, vehicle-dwellers are facing fewer options, with more communities trying to push them out.

As nearby neighborhoods and municipalities passed laws restricting overnight parking in recent years, Venice became the center of vehicle dwelling in the region. More than 250 vehicles now serve as shelter on Venice streets, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

“The only place between Santa Barbara and San Diego where campers can park seven blocks from the beach is this little piece of land,” said City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, whose district includes Venice. “Over the years, it’s only gotten worse, as every other community along the coast has adopted restrictions.”

And for all of the Venice Beach residents with homes’ allegations of “bad behavior” by those living in vehicles, the issue is really about gentrification and wealthier home owners wanting the neighborhoods they’ve moved into to stop welcoming those members of the community who have been there the longest.

In the past, bohemian Venice was tolerant of vehicle-dwellers, but, increasingly, the proliferation of R.V.’s in this gentrifying neighborhood has prompted efforts to remove them.

“The status quo is unacceptable,” said Mark Ryavec, president of the Venice Stakeholders Association, a group of residents devoted to removing R.V.’s from the area. “It’s time to give us some relief from R.V.’s parking on our doorsteps.”

It’s an issue that’s been going on for some time; the alt text on the header image will reveal that while I was unable to find a legally usable image that was taken for this most recent story, I could find one from a very similar report on Venice Beach in 2004. It’s also an issue that has played out over and over again across the U.S., if not in the form of battles over people living in vehicles, then in the form of battles over homeless people living in tents or using sleeping bags. Anything that makes homeless people more comfortable, safer, and less likely to be exposed to the elements, it seems, is up for scrutiny and fodder for potential legislation.

In response, abby jean writes:

because the best way to deal with homelessness is always to punish or make it more difficult for the actual people who are homeless. do we think if we make homelessness illegal it will cease to exist?

Time and time again, we see evidence of the fact that most people care more about how “unsightly” homeless people in their neighborhoods are than about the fact that said people don’t have homes. That they may be hungry, don’t have a warm, safe place to sleep, or lack access to health care. Those of us who are privileged enough to have homes tend to care more about maintaining the illusion that our cities are happy places that take care of their citizens than addressing the fact that an illusion is exactly what it is.

A big part of this reaction to homelessness is based in the Western, capitalist “bootstrap” myth, that those of us who have economic privilege got there purely through hard work with no luck or social privilege thrown in. The corollary to this belief is that people with homes deserve to have them — and those without homes must have done something to make them undeserving of such a basic right as housing. And when mental illness and addiction are so regularly falsely understood as personal failings, this view becomes all the more pervasive, powerful, and harmful.

Another part is plain old prejudice — the above mentioned biases against people with mental illnesses and/or addiction, for a start, as well as other forms of ableism, classism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Social oppression often plays a huge part in homelessness, whether we’re talking about queer and trans* youth being kicked out of their homes, someone being unable to find a job after an arrest for doing sex work, or a person with a disability being unable to access benefits and services needed to stay in their home. Stigma against marginalized group and their over-representation in homeless populations also plays a role in the revulsion that middle-class people tend to express towards them. People “like them” — whatever “like them” might mean in a certain context on a certain day — aren’t perceived as quite as human as the rest of us.

And another factor is that really addressing the issue of homelessness just straight up takes work. It means digging deep and making big changes. It means seeing homeless people as deserving of housing that is more than just temporary, not because they’ve done something to “earn” or “deserve” it, but because their being human is just enough. It means making access to health care a right and not a privilege, and that includes access to mental health care and substance abuse treatment programs. It means addressing the causes of domestic violence, the effect that war has on veterans, the impact that hatred has on LGBT people. It means, frankly, rethinking the exalted place that private ownership and property rights hold in our society, when those rights put other human beings out on the street. It means welfare that actually works and gives people enough to live on. It means addressing economic racism. It means talking about the lack of worker’s rights. It means a critical reconsideration and restructuring of how we live and how we treat others, including a lot more than I’ve listed here.

Facing up to the fact that we’ve built a society that actively harms people is a lot tougher than building a couple of shelters or writing up some tickets. Starting to think of human beings as people again after being so used to treating them like cockroaches (unless, of course, there’s a feel-good lesson involved) is a radical shift.

So instead, over and over again, we as a society just keep pushing the people we don’t see as human out. Do we think they’ll cease to exist? No, but if we don’t have to see them, we don’t have to think about them. And for too many people, that’s apparently close enough.

Trigger Warning for graphic descriptions of violence against people with disabilities, school violence, and victim-blaming.

As evidenced by a recent post, violence of all kinds is a major problem in schools, and school administrations not only frequently fail to respond appropriately to said violence, they’re also often a direct part and/or cause of the problem.

Another example, this time of a lawsuit launched in response to non-sexual violence, was recently sent to me by Kali at Ithaca PAVE. Two years ago, a disabled child was assaulted by a bully on his school bus — as he screamed and cried for help, the school bus driver two seats in front of him watched the attack and did nothing. It took another student to stop the assault. The circumstances of the assault get even more egregious once it’s taken into account that the child’s individualized education plan states that he is to have an aide with him on the school bus — an aide who was most certainly not present on the day of the attack.

Now, years later, the elementary school student remains traumatized, afraid of school, and in need of further services as a direct result of the assault. And the school refuses to make appropriate changes to his education plan.

According to court documents, on May 5, Coolbaugh’s son got on the bus after school and sat three seats behind the bus driver Jeffrey Postle. Another student got on shortly after and sat near him, purposefully pushing into him. The student began slapping and kicking Coolbaugh’s son, which her son apparently interpreted as horseplay and not bullying in nature, the complaint says.

Coolbaugh’s complaint states the student then began kicking and pushing Coolbaugh’s son in a violent manner. He borrowed a pen from Postle and began making threatening stabbing motions toward Coolbaugh’s son.

The complaint states that an on-board video camera captured the events, and that the driver can be seen in the video glancing up in the rear-view mirror at the activity in the bus. The boys were within hearing and view of the driver, Coolbaugh alleges, but the driver made no attempt to stop the harassment or protect Coolbaugh’s son.

The student then began “beating (Coolbaugh’s son) with his fists and violently threw (him) into a seat behind Postle and upon the floor under the seat and then proceeded to pound (him) about the head and shoulders with his fists,” according to the complaint.

Coolbaugh’s son called out for help from the bus driver. The boys were eventually pulled apart by another student, court documents say.

…

“My client approached the district with these circumstances and the school district responded by failing to provide any of the specific request that my client had made,” Kopko said. He said the district refused to accept changes to the boy’s individualized educational plan. “Our contention is that this boy was emotionally traumatized by this assault such that he is in desperate need of additional educational services. That is the aim of the lawsuit – not so much monetary damages, but to give this child FAPE [free and appropriate public education].”

Surveillance footage of the assault as it is described above can be viewed here.

There are several things going on here, with regards to failures by the educational system to protect the students in its care and the treatment of people with disabilities by society at large.

Most readers here who have ever ridden a school bus will have at some point been on at least one end of bullying and harassment. Many will have at different points throughout their childhoods and adolescences acted as both bullies and victims — myself included among them. Big news stories since I stopped riding a school bus have left me with the impression that little has changed. School buses are places where bullies, harassment, and violence thrive. And as all current or past school bus passengers know, students with disabilities, particularly cognitive or intellectual disabilities, are especially vulnerable.

Bullies seek out targets that are particularly vulnerable and who lack social support. By therefore choosing targets who face systemic marginalization on the basis of identity, they’re simply being perceptive about who society values and will bother to support.

In terms of how the driver in this case responded, I think that we’re talking about a case of basic human decency. A student was literally screaming out in distress, and not only did he fail to pull the bus over and help the student, he didn’t so much as utter a word. Adults, no matter what their occupation or relation to the children involved, are ethically obligated in situations like that to do something. That it took another child to take action is despicable.

But recognizing the bus driver’s individual failure and placing the responsibility where it belongs, it’s also important to note that while things can vary greatly among different school districts, training for bus drivers in handling such episodes is frequently limited or even non-existent. It’s not just an individual failure, but a systemic one. Further, while this was clearly a major episode, recognizing and responding to smaller ones while trying to do one’s primary job — safely driving a bus full of children — can be extremely difficult.

I know that when I was a kid, I would have met suggestions of school bus chaperons with horror. For me, at the time, the bus was a place of freedom. And I still think that places where kids can be kids without facing the constantly watching eye of adults are important. But I now know that a part of that supposed “freedom” was my ability to pick on students more vulnerable than I was and the ability of students less vulnerable than I was to pick on me. I know that a part of the “freedom” was enabling of racist, ableist, sexist, homophobic, classist, and fatphobic harassment. I know that it was watching plenty of assaults, most of which I have probably forgotten, including numerous sexual assaults against my friends — all of which faced no repercussions.

And I know that all of this didn’t happen because “it’s what kids do,” but because it’s what kids think adults do. And I now know that as kids, we sadly weren’t all that far off in our suspicions.

Schools have a responsibility to counteract this perception not only through not tolerating this kind of behavior among students, but also by modeling their own behavior to ensure that the perception is at least a little bit less true. Right now, the Trumansburg Central School District is clearly doing a very poor job on all fronts.

After failing to provide an aide to the student who was explicitly supposed to have been provided with one,¹ the school has since failed to take responsibility for its disregard for students with disabilities and willingness to treat their needs as secondary to those of other students. The disregard continues, with the school claiming that the assault was not their fault, and therefore it’s not their responsibility to provide the student with a new education plan — even though the student needs such a plan to effectively learn in their school. This final point is what the lawsuit is most directly about. Despite the fact that it should not matter who is responsible when it comes to whether or not the school is obligated to provide all of its students with an accessible and appropriate learning environment, the school’s line is “not our fault, not our problem.”

They’re also engaging in some mighty nice victim-blaming:

The complaint says that the district failed Coolbaugh’s son in several ways, by not protecting him from bullying, not properly implementing the provisions of his IEP, not adequately training and supervising its employees, and other ways. Prior bullying leading up to May 5 put the district on notice that Coolbaugh’s son was facing a dangerous situation and the district could have anticipated further problems, the complaint says.The district denies that anyone could have foreseen the alleged harassment and claims Coolbaugh’s son instigated the altercation, that he was a voluntary participant in the conflict and was aware of the risks of roughhousing on the bus.

So no one could have foreseen that something like this might happen, but dammit, that kid knew what he’d be getting himself into if it did. This kind of talking out both sides of their mouths excuse-making — who knew that this could happen? except the victim, of course, who totally should have known better — ringing any bells for any one else? These are clear echos of rape culture and more proof of how all forms of violence and oppression are connected.

Many members of the community are also doing a poor job modeling basic decency and anti-ableist attitudes. While seeming to be a clear-cut case, the comments on the linked article (trigger warning) are also filled with victim-blaming, both against the child and his mother. They range from calling the mother “sue-happy” to saying that bullying is a part of growing up to arguments that the mother could just place her child in a private school to allegations that this is her fault for not driving him to school herself.

There’s a lot of apologism and classism in these comments — not everyone can afford private school, not everyone has a car, not everyone’s job has a schedule that allows them to drive their kid to school — but also a lot of ableism. The understanding here is that abled kids are “normal” and deserve to have their needs met, while disabled ones do not. The attitude is that students with disabilities, and all people with disabilities, are on their own, with no obligation from society at large to be decent and as equally accommodating to them as it is to those without disabilities. The consensus for these folks is that we — as individuals, as institutions, as a society — do not have the same responsibility to protect people with disabilities as we do towards all other people. In these people’s view, the rights that abled people have to be safe and go about their lives free of violence do not apply to people with disabilities.

And that’s how these kinds of assaults happen — not just because one kid was an ableist jerk, but because far too many of us are generally ableist jerks, who will similarly deny certain people’s bodily rights and autonomy.

Trigger Warning for transphobia/transmisogyny and abuse by health care workers. Some links also contain transphobic language.

Fifteen years ago, a woman named Tyra Hunter was involved in a car accident and in need of emergency care. Adrian Williams, the firefighter/EMT who was the first responder on the scene began treating Hunter for her injuries — but upon cutting open her pant leg, abruptly stopped treatment and instead began mocking her to the other firefighters present, as onlookers begged him to help her and Hunter gasped for breath. When she was transferred to an ER, she apparently received inadequate care there, as well, and one doctor refused to treat her.

All because she was transgender.

Tyra Hunter died shortly thereafter.

Today, access to medical care remains an enormous issue for trans* people, but is regularly ignored by cis folks. I speak not just of trans-specific health care (i.e. medical treatment specifically related to transition or one’s trans status), though such care is extremely limited and surrounded by barriers. I speak not just of issues of poverty and ability to afford to see a doctor, though this is also an enormous problem that needs immediate addressing. In this context, by “access to medical care” I mean “the confidence that once one has actually procured a visitation with a medical professional, sie will not refuse to treat you.” Even if your condition is potentially life-threatening.

In mid-July, Erin Vaught went to an emergency room in Muncie, Indiana because she was coughing up large amounts of blood (h/t). While there, because she is a trans woman, she was mocked, humiliated, called names, and outright refused treatment. Thankfully it turned out that her condition was not immediately life threatening — though there’s no indication that medical personnel knew this with confidence at the time — and she is still alive to tell her story now.

Last week, Erin Vaught shared her entire story over at the Bilerico Project. I encourage you to read her full account in addition to my summary. (Though, Trigger Warning for lots of victim-blaming in the comments.)

After arriving, the intake nurse marked her down as “male” even though her ID clearly said female, and staff proceeded to become annoyed and/or laugh at her when Vaught corrected the mistake. Staff continued to mock her, tell jokes about her, and refer to her as “it” as she underwent routine intake procedures. Following this were inappropriate questions entirely irrelevant to her medical concerns, as well as a psychiatric examination, seemingly conducted based entirely on her gender identity and presentation. And then:

I was quite mad, but I kept it in check and said, “When are we going to see a doctor?” She told me that I could not be seen until I had my doc write orders. (For tests, I think she meant.) I said “Why do I need to do that? This is an emergency room.”

She said, “Well, we don’t know how to go about treating someone with your condition.”

I responded, “I don’t even know my condition. That’s why I’m here!”

She replied, “No. Your other condition. The transvestite thing.” I felt angry, and I was fighting my hardest to keep from crying, I was embarrassed and I grabbed my son and we left quickly so they wouldn’t see me cry

It constantly amazes me that those who are tasked with saving all of our lives — who presumably entered a profession requiring a significant amount of education and long hours because they wanted to save lives — can so easily discount and put at risk the lives of certain people whose identities and/or choices that they deem unworthy. Whether it be the cis woman who will die without an abortion, or the homeless person whose needs are scoffed at, or the trans* person who is denied treatment based on the bigoted and false perception of hir body as grotesque, those who are supposed to value life most have a too frequent habit of deciding that certain, marginalized lives just don’t matter much at all.

Of course, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Health care workers are people, too, products of the same prejudiced society as the rest of us. The problem is that while it shouldn’t be particularly stunning, it is especially egregious when health care workers let their personal prejudices dictate their behavior.

All of us have the responsibility to be decent human beings, a responsibility that is violated every time someone engages in acts of transphobia and cis supremacy. But health care workers have graver responsibilities above and beyond this one — not just the responsibility to treat all people with dignity and respect, but the responsibility to ensure their well-being to the best of their abilities. The ability to look after a person’s health, safety, and well-being is always compromised when there is a failure to provide them with dignity and respect. The further direct refusal to attend to their health and safety at all is an outright violation — of all ethics, medical and social, and of the law.

This kind of behavior — which again, is not uncommon — treats trans* people as “untouchables,” too disgusting and strange to so much as brush against. It suggests that those whose bodies don’t look how most of society narrowly expects them to look have the potential to “infect” those who are supposedly “normal,” and it supposes that by their very nature, trans* bodies are Frankensteinian. It would be appropriately called childish if it wasn’t so incredibly harmful. Such behavior denies trans* people not just their genders and identities, but their very humanity. It has put them at enormous risk, and done them untold physical as well as mental/emotional damage. It has, as detailed above, sometimes cost them their lives.

All because cis people just can’t get the fuck over themselves. Because some cis folks think that their egos and position of superiority and “right” to avoid cooties are worth more than the right of trans* people to live.

Erin Vaught is just one woman who was brave enough — and safe enough, with enough support systems in place — to come forward with her story. She is not alone. From what she now knows, she’s not even alone with regards to this particular hospital. And until privileged people stop calling marginalized folks “it” and expecting generic “investigations” to be a sufficient response, she’s sadly going to stay in abundant company.