A few years ago, I briefly had a job ghostwriting obituaries for trans women who were victims of violent hate crimes. I will never forget reading about Josie Berrios, a trans woman burned alive by her boyfriend—the same one she called her “king.” Berrios should have lived far longer than 28 years. In the four years since her death, material conditions for trans women in the U.S. have only gotten worse.
From Bushwick to Louisiana, there is an epidemic of violence against trans women right now, especially Black trans women. Often, these murders—the ones that took the lives of Perisa Conway, Erykah Cadwell, Marlow Trottie, Shyyell Diamond Sanchez-McCray, and so many others over just the last few months—don’t generate headlines outside of LGBTQ+-specific outlets. At the same time, the queer media many of us rely on to learn the news of these injustices is losing ad money.
Back in 2023, Brianna Ghey’s murder in the UK sent shockwaves throughout the community, but now, with animosity toward trans people at an all-time high, it feels more difficult—and dangerous—than ever to move through the world as a trans person. Last month, a 19-year-old trans woman named Juniper Blessing was stabbed to death in her dorm laundry room, and Murry Foust, a trans man at Northern Kentucky University, was found dead after going missing days prior. (Local police denied any evidence of foul play in Foust’s death, and the man accused of killing Blessing was found not competent to stand trial on Monday.) Earlier this year in Vermont, trans swimmer Lia Smith’s death was ruled a suicide after she was doxxed for participating in women’s sports. These deaths did not occur in a vacuum, but as a result of systemic transphobia. The current administration has continually introduced legislation that targets trans people, scapegoating and dehumanizing us.
It’s the most vulnerable populations that receive the brunt of these attacks, but no trans person is totally immune from stigma or scrutiny. If you read the comments on any famous trans person’s social media, the massive amount of vitriol consistently includes threats of violence, with moderators barely bothering to remove such speech anymore. I have been the victim of attempted doxxing campaigns, but many people I’ve interviewed have faced far worse; some trans politicians, like Montana State Representative Zooey Zephyr, have even been swatted by right-wing trolls.
Most of my trans friends are unemployed or working gig to gig. I’ve seen too many pass away from suicide, terrified of the limited scope of their lives. I know too many who have overdosed, trying to numb the pain. But the burden is not on trans people to bootstrap our way toward peace and forgiveness; it is on those who have made our lives so inhospitable to create a world in which trans life is not only livable but valued.
What do we owe today’s trans kids and teens? Certainly, a better future than the prospects we are facing now. “Death before detransition” is a phrase many trans punks sew onto patches or print on stickers and buttons—something that may have seemed extreme before the Trump administration began trying to forcibly detransition incarcerated trans people and all but dismantle gender-affirming healthcare for trans children.
At the end of Morgan Bassichis’s recent one-person show Can I Be Frank?, they sing aloud a portion of “Mourning and Militancy,” queer writer Douglas Crimp’s 1989 essay on AIDS activism. I was moved hearing the words aloud: “There is no question but that we must fight the unspeakable violence we incur from the society in which we find ourselves… Militancy, of course, then, but mourning too: mourning and militancy.”
