Cleveland Plain Dealer Dehumanizes Murdered Transgender Woman
http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2013/04/30/cleveland-plain-dealer-dehumanizes-murdered-transgender-woman/ (http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2013/04/30/cleveland-plain-dealer-dehumanizes-murdered-transgender-woman/)
4/30/13
By: Laurel Ramseyer
Most newspapers leave the dehumanization of transgender people to the trolls in the online comments. But not Cleveland's Plain Dealer. They bring the sewage right to the surface.
Their article about the discovery of the body of a brutally murdered 20 year old African-American woman, Cemia Acoff, begins with the title "Oddly dressed body found in Olmsted Township pond identified", and goes downhill from there. Here's an excerpt:
Acoff had been stabbed, tied with a piece of rope attached to a block of concrete and dumped into a pond on MacKenzie Road north of Cook Road.
The body was clad in a red Betty Boop tank top, three black bras on top of one another, and a light black hooded jacket. It was naked from the waist down, police said at the time. The rope was tied from the back and also attached to a steel pipe.
Acoff had identified himself as a woman to to RTA officials, according to records.
Police said after they contacted area law enforcement for help identifying the body, Cleveland detectives told them they had a missing person matching its description.
They actually edited the article after it was first published because the outrage from the local trans community was so much.
The title as it appeared before being edited was even worse... it was "Body of oddly dressed man found..." then another Plain Dealer article was titled "Brutal slaying marks the end of Cleveland man's fight for acceptance." And in both articles, it constantly misgendered, despite reporting that Acoff identified as a transgender woman, making points about her "trying to pass as a woman," and it even went so far as to say that "They found him carrying drugs, and hormones used to treat low estrogen in women." (No s***. It's called HRT, people... that thing that pretty much every trans-woman in the entire freaking world uses.)