Syntactical Distancing in the Case of Myra Ical
http://www.cristanwilliams.com/b/2011/01/18/syntactical-distancing-in-the-case-of-myra-ical/Today, January 18, 2011 marks 1 year since Myra Ical was murdered and still no justice! This case, like many trans murders in Houston, is now an unsolved cold case and HPD will NOT give this case another glance unless someone steps forward.
The following paper was presented at the 2010 Rice University SWGS Symposium by Laura Richardson on March 26, 2010. The paper is perhaps the most articulate and insightful deconstruction of the postmortem violence inflicted upon Myra Ical's humanity.
Syntactical Distancing in the Case of Myra Ical
Myra Ical, a transgender woman, was murdered on January 18th of this year and found in a field on the 4300 block of Garrott Street. In the police report of the incident and in many of the early media responses to the crime, Ical was identified as a man, by her birth name, and with male pronouns. One report by Houston Press, which has since been revised, even went so far as to claim Ical fooled or tricked police – as if her dead body was telling a lie to law enforcement officials who initially recognized her for what she really was: a woman. This identification serves as a second type of violence inflicted on Ical – a representational injury that amounted to a disavowal of her person.
