We Are the Dead: Sex, Assault, and Trans Women
by Cara on 4.12.2010
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/04/12/we-are-the-dead-sex-assault-and-trans-women/This guest post is a part of the Feministe series on Sexual Assault Awareness Month. C. L. Minou is a blogger and writer inhabiting a Great American Metropolis. In addition to her work at the Second Awakening, she has written for Shakesville, the Guardian's Comment Is Free, and is a co-blogger at Tiger Beatdown.
Trigger Warning
So here's the thing. I want to talk quite seriously about the whole issue of sexual assault and trans women, bring in all kinds of good scholarship, talk quite soberly and calmly about the facts, weighing each one with all due rational consideration. In fact, as I type this my browser has a forest of tabs open to anti-violence centers, studies on the incidences of violence in the LGBT community, articles, policy papers, and citations to more of the same.
But I really can't be scholarly and rational, I fear. I really can't sit back and give you the statistics that will horrify for a moment, break up your day with some hideous imagery for however long it stays in your memory. I can't do this because for one thing, the studies are practically non-existent–not too many people have bothered to investigate the prevalence of sexual assault in the trans community (and, as we'll see, there's probably a lot of underreporting anyway.) That's one reason.
