Transitions
What will it take for America to accept transgender people for who they really are?
Eliza Gray
June 23, 2011 | 12:00 am
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/90519/transgender-civil-rights-gay-lesbian-lgbtq (http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/90519/transgender-civil-rights-gay-lesbian-lgbtq)
On April 18, a transgender woman named Chrissy Lee Polis went to the women's bathroom in a Baltimore County McDonald's. When she came out, two teenage girls approached and spat in her face. Then they threw her to the floor and started kicking her in the head. As a crowd of customers watched, Polis tried to stand up, but the girls dragged her by her hair across the restaurant, ripping the earrings out of her ears. The last thing Polis remembers, before she had a seizure, was spitting blood on the restaurant door.
Transgender people are some of the least protected, most persecuted people in the United States. In a recent study of transgender students, nearly half said they'd been "punched, kicked, or injured with a weapon" at least once in the last year. On average, a transgender person is murdered because of their identity every month, according to the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund.