Angie Zapata: Another young trans woman murdered...
I dimly thought I had blogged about this before, and I looked back and found I hadn't. Which is a serious oversight -- as Lisa pointed out, we all blogged about Kyle Payne and about Jon Justice, but so many of us have been silent about a young woman's murder. And that is a bizarre set of priorities for us to have.
So here I cite Lisa and Queen Emily on the murder.
Lisa
Angie Zapata was murdered on July 17th. Her murderer claims that he was so enraged by the idea of having sex with her that he had to kill her to reassert his manhood. People try to excuse this hate crime and blame Angie for getting killed.
This trope, this idea that trans women are deceivers, are deliberately luring men to have sex with them, and that the man’s anger is somehow understandable or excusable, is not really different from the idea that the best defense against a rape verdict is to call the victim’s virtue into question. That is, it’s semantically identical, even if the details are different.
The fact is that some men perceive women as automatically available just for being women. When those women don’t cooperate, violence comes into the picture. Men who rape defend themselves by claiming that their victim was asking for it, had really consented and changed her mind, that the way she dressed meant that she was inviting it.
It’s also true that men will have sex with trans women and come back later to kill them, or even live with those women for months before killing them. These men are not unaware that they are having sex with trans women. But they know that they can get away with killing these women with a slap on the wrist.
Right now, Angie Zapata’s dead and her murderer’s claiming that her trans status enraged him beyond all reason. At first I didn’t like how the media provided a blow-by-blow account of what Andrade had done, but now I think it’s important for people to see the kind of violence inflicted on trans women for being trans. These killings aren’t a matter of just a bullet or two, or maybe a stab to the chest. They’re brutal, they’re clearly motivated by a desire to annihilate.
....Zapata picked Andrade up in Thornton where he lived and the pair returned to Zapata’s Greeley apartment together. Andrade told police Zapata performed a sexual act on him.
The following day, the affidavit explains, Andrade started to look at photos in the apartment and questioned Zapata’s sex. That night, Andrade questioned Zapata directly, according to the affidavit, and Andrade says Zapata responded, “I’m all woman.”
Andrade told police he grabbed Zapata in her genital area and felt a penis. He became angry and hit Zapata with his fist before grabbing a fire extinguisher and hitting her in the head twice, according to the affidavit.
Andrade explained to police that he thought he “killed it,” referring to Zapata but when she made gurgling noises and started to sit up, he hit her with the extinguisher again.
And look at that - Andrade says “he killed it.” Not “he killed her” or even “he killed him,” but “it.” It is a pronoun typically used to describe inanimate objects, and is used against people to dehumanize them, to strip them of their personhood. But also, Andrade assaulted Zapata physically - he grabbed for her genitals because she wouldn’t tell him that she was trans.
He obviously felt entitled to handle her body as he saw fit. What would have happened if she hadn’t been trans, or had previously had surgery? It’d be sexual assault. It still is sexual assault, followed immediately by a brutal murder.
....This has happened a few times this year. How many more by the end of the year?
Emily
An open letter to cis feminists
Stop fucking up.*
I have complained numerous times that the feminist blogosphere, such as it is, has one main conversation about trans people, one that is returned to again and again and again - the political implications of our transitioning. Click here if you want yet another example of pointless bloody "analysis."
I don't CARE about whatever horrible thing some feminist has said anymore. I care that these discussions centre on cis concerns, even (maybe especially) allies respond mostly to the slurs, but rarely address the real issues.
....Spend some actual time and energy on trans issues. Here is one thing you are barely talking about - the continual violence against transgendered people for being transgendered.
Blog about Angie Zapata. Blog about Ebony Whitaker. Blog about Sanesha Stewart (to name just three trans women murdered this year).
Try subjecting all that torturous analysis to something actually useful - how violence against trans people occurs. Try thinking about the fact that it is overwhelming trans women of colour being murdered. Try thinking about the intersections between race, transness, misogyny and sex work.
Try writing about the way that institutions collude with this violence - that medical professionals may willingly leave you to die, that police may not prosecute, that lawyers use "trans panic" as a defence to justify the death, and then to add insult to injury, the media effectively blames the dead person for their own deaths AND misgenders them.
And for fuck's sake, don't blame the fucking victims.
I can't possibly say anything as well as Lisa and Emily are here. But I will say that I've been reading several blogs that have closely covered Zapata's story, and I'm continually amazed and sickened by this murder, and the other murders like it. Like Lisa says, these murders are horrific violence. Attempts to not only kill someone, but to utterly destroy her, erase her, almost make it the case that she never existed at all. Just for living her life in a way that these men don't like.
Or, as Lisa points out there and elsewhere, maybe not even. Many of these men, as she points out, have long-standing relationships with trans women before killing them, and THEN act like they just found that pesky penis that made them... homicidal? Really? One little configuration of skin, and not only that, part of a system that's closely analogous to a cis woman's body anyway? And that makes you KILL? Seriously?
Yeah, I don't get it. Maybe in the Zapata case this guy really did just suddenly realize that this woman had a history he didn't like. Let's suppose that's true. Well, in that case, yes, we do in fact live in the fucked up kind of culture where men are trained that that would "make them gay," and what's more, that "gayness" is a kind of taint, a blemish on your masculinity. So maybe that feels weird. Let's go with that for a moment and see where it leads (but also, let's not forget that it's equally possible he suspected, or even knew, from the beginning and just wanted sex.)
So he had oral sex with this person, discovered something that disgusted him about her, and got very upset. Well, how do you handle it when you've participated in something and then discovered there was some aspect of it that really doesn't jive with how you see yourself? You get annoyed. Maybe you even get into an argument.
You don't kill people. You don't mutilate them. You get angry and avoid them and go the hell on with your life.
You sure don't attempt to destroy them, notice with dismay that they're still alive, and think of them as "it" and make sure to finish the job.
So here I cite Lisa and Queen Emily on the murder.
Lisa
Angie Zapata was murdered on July 17th. Her murderer claims that he was so enraged by the idea of having sex with her that he had to kill her to reassert his manhood. People try to excuse this hate crime and blame Angie for getting killed.
This trope, this idea that trans women are deceivers, are deliberately luring men to have sex with them, and that the man’s anger is somehow understandable or excusable, is not really different from the idea that the best defense against a rape verdict is to call the victim’s virtue into question. That is, it’s semantically identical, even if the details are different.
The fact is that some men perceive women as automatically available just for being women. When those women don’t cooperate, violence comes into the picture. Men who rape defend themselves by claiming that their victim was asking for it, had really consented and changed her mind, that the way she dressed meant that she was inviting it.
It’s also true that men will have sex with trans women and come back later to kill them, or even live with those women for months before killing them. These men are not unaware that they are having sex with trans women. But they know that they can get away with killing these women with a slap on the wrist.
Right now, Angie Zapata’s dead and her murderer’s claiming that her trans status enraged him beyond all reason. At first I didn’t like how the media provided a blow-by-blow account of what Andrade had done, but now I think it’s important for people to see the kind of violence inflicted on trans women for being trans. These killings aren’t a matter of just a bullet or two, or maybe a stab to the chest. They’re brutal, they’re clearly motivated by a desire to annihilate.
....Zapata picked Andrade up in Thornton where he lived and the pair returned to Zapata’s Greeley apartment together. Andrade told police Zapata performed a sexual act on him.
The following day, the affidavit explains, Andrade started to look at photos in the apartment and questioned Zapata’s sex. That night, Andrade questioned Zapata directly, according to the affidavit, and Andrade says Zapata responded, “I’m all woman.”
Andrade told police he grabbed Zapata in her genital area and felt a penis. He became angry and hit Zapata with his fist before grabbing a fire extinguisher and hitting her in the head twice, according to the affidavit.
Andrade explained to police that he thought he “killed it,” referring to Zapata but when she made gurgling noises and started to sit up, he hit her with the extinguisher again.
And look at that - Andrade says “he killed it.” Not “he killed her” or even “he killed him,” but “it.” It is a pronoun typically used to describe inanimate objects, and is used against people to dehumanize them, to strip them of their personhood. But also, Andrade assaulted Zapata physically - he grabbed for her genitals because she wouldn’t tell him that she was trans.
He obviously felt entitled to handle her body as he saw fit. What would have happened if she hadn’t been trans, or had previously had surgery? It’d be sexual assault. It still is sexual assault, followed immediately by a brutal murder.
....This has happened a few times this year. How many more by the end of the year?
Emily
An open letter to cis feminists
Stop fucking up.*
I have complained numerous times that the feminist blogosphere, such as it is, has one main conversation about trans people, one that is returned to again and again and again - the political implications of our transitioning. Click here if you want yet another example of pointless bloody "analysis."
I don't CARE about whatever horrible thing some feminist has said anymore. I care that these discussions centre on cis concerns, even (maybe especially) allies respond mostly to the slurs, but rarely address the real issues.
....Spend some actual time and energy on trans issues. Here is one thing you are barely talking about - the continual violence against transgendered people for being transgendered.
Blog about Angie Zapata. Blog about Ebony Whitaker. Blog about Sanesha Stewart (to name just three trans women murdered this year).
Try subjecting all that torturous analysis to something actually useful - how violence against trans people occurs. Try thinking about the fact that it is overwhelming trans women of colour being murdered. Try thinking about the intersections between race, transness, misogyny and sex work.
Try writing about the way that institutions collude with this violence - that medical professionals may willingly leave you to die, that police may not prosecute, that lawyers use "trans panic" as a defence to justify the death, and then to add insult to injury, the media effectively blames the dead person for their own deaths AND misgenders them.
And for fuck's sake, don't blame the fucking victims.
I can't possibly say anything as well as Lisa and Emily are here. But I will say that I've been reading several blogs that have closely covered Zapata's story, and I'm continually amazed and sickened by this murder, and the other murders like it. Like Lisa says, these murders are horrific violence. Attempts to not only kill someone, but to utterly destroy her, erase her, almost make it the case that she never existed at all. Just for living her life in a way that these men don't like.
Or, as Lisa points out there and elsewhere, maybe not even. Many of these men, as she points out, have long-standing relationships with trans women before killing them, and THEN act like they just found that pesky penis that made them... homicidal? Really? One little configuration of skin, and not only that, part of a system that's closely analogous to a cis woman's body anyway? And that makes you KILL? Seriously?
Yeah, I don't get it. Maybe in the Zapata case this guy really did just suddenly realize that this woman had a history he didn't like. Let's suppose that's true. Well, in that case, yes, we do in fact live in the fucked up kind of culture where men are trained that that would "make them gay," and what's more, that "gayness" is a kind of taint, a blemish on your masculinity. So maybe that feels weird. Let's go with that for a moment and see where it leads (but also, let's not forget that it's equally possible he suspected, or even knew, from the beginning and just wanted sex.)
So he had oral sex with this person, discovered something that disgusted him about her, and got very upset. Well, how do you handle it when you've participated in something and then discovered there was some aspect of it that really doesn't jive with how you see yourself? You get annoyed. Maybe you even get into an argument.
You don't kill people. You don't mutilate them. You get angry and avoid them and go the hell on with your life.
You sure don't attempt to destroy them, notice with dismay that they're still alive, and think of them as "it" and make sure to finish the job.