Emerson Whitney
Writer, reporter and artist
Carmen Carrera and Janet Mock on Lorena Escalera, Media Justice, and 'Utmost Fabulosity'
Posted: 05/26/2012 4:01 am
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emerson-whitney/carmen-carrera-janet-mock-lorena-escalera_b_1542649.htmlA wildly insensitive New York Times article on the life and death of trans artist and drag performer Lorena Escalera flared tensions between the gender-variant community and the paper when it was published as part of the Sunday edition on May 14. The article, called "Woman Dies in a Brooklyn Fire That Is Deemed Suspicious," served as a painful exemplar of the media's salacious, oversexualized understanding of trans women of color, said Carmen Carrera, Escalera's friend and fellow trans-identified drag performer. Carrera is most widely known for her performance on the third season of Logo reality series RuPaul's Drag Race.
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"When I read that article, I was like, 'Wow, are you serious?'" she said. "They put her gender above everything else. My first thought was, 'When I die, is that how it'll be? Nothing's going to matter besides my gender? Nothing I do for others, nothing else? What's the point, then?'"
