Sabrina Rubin Erderly, Rolling Stone
July 30, 2014
CeCe McDonald's encounters with violence are far from an isolated experience. Transgender women face daily lives fraught with peril. "You have to be ready for anything," says 35-year old Miasha Forbes of Brooklyn. Knowing how swiftly a benign situation can turn ugly, many trans women adopt strategies to help predict or preempt violence; like battlefield soldiers, they constantly gauge their environment, testing the threat level with a finely-tuned sensitivity to nuances largely lost on everyone else. That preparedness also means that in a Code Red emergency, they often respond with quick-thinking calm—as when once, Forbes found herself followed through a shopping mall by a pack of rowdy, flirtatious men.
"I stayed clear of them," says Forbes. "But when I left the mall, they were waiting for me in the parking lot," catcalling her from inside two cars, until they suddenly realized Forbes was trans, and turned furious. "You made me look at you! I should kill you!" one man shouted amid the slurs, claiming to have a gun. Quickly surveying the scene, Forbes managed to escape by heading down a hill separating the mall parking lots, where her assailants' cars couldn't easily follow. She walked in a zigzag pattern in case they decided to shoot. "I walked slowly, 'cause if I'm gonna die, I'm not gonna give them the satisfaction of running," Forbes says, echoing an oft-repeated sentiment: That faced with extreme bigotry, preserving one's dignity can become as paramount as one's safety.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/transwomen-and-danger-more-tales-from-the-front-lines-20140730 (http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/transwomen-and-danger-more-tales-from-the-front-lines-20140730)