The Issues:
Hate Crimes and the Transgender Community
Violence against the transgender community continues at an alarming rate in the United States. Transgender people are perhaps the least understood of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
Transgender people are often targeted for hate violence based on their nonconformity with gender norms and/or their perceived sexual orientation. Hate crimes against transgender people tend to be particularly violent and prevalent in relation to their numbers. For example, one researcher reports that transgender individuals in the United States have a one in 12 chance of being murdered1, in contrast to the average person's likelihood of one in 18,0002.
I was in a parking lot in Canton when I was attacked by a group of 16- to 18-year-old males. My breasts were bound to my chest and I was wearing facial hair. One man grabbed the collar of my shirt pushing and pulling me back with it. He stretched and tore my shirt so much that it exposed the ace bandage holding my breasts down. One of the boys said, "Look at the faggot." One boy said, "What the fuck are you?" Someone hit me in the back from behind. The boys were saying things like, "Beat the fag! You want to be a man, fight!" I was punched in the chest. One boy said, "You fucking dyke!" He spit at me.
– Owen, a young transgender man in Baltimore
However, many transgender people do not report crimes against them because they doubt that state and local authorities will treat them with respect or investigate the crimes, or because they fear that exposure of their transgender identity will cause them to lose their jobs or housing or damage their relationships with friends or family. Maryland's Hate Crimes Statute protects individuals based on both sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.
"Transgender" is a broad term that applies to people who live substantial portions of their lives expressing an innate sense of gender other than their birth gender. Generally speaking, a transgender person manifests a sense of self, the physical characteristics and/or personal expression commonly associated with a sex other than the one he or she was assigned at birth. This encompasses transsexuals, cross-dressers, or intersex people (those born with sex chromosomes, external genitalia, or internal reproductive system that are not considered "standard" for either male or female). It also includes people who may not conform or be seen as conforming to society's rigid stereotypes about what it means to be a man or a woman in our society -- for example, masculine women or effeminate men. All of the people described above are at risk for discrimination and violence based on gender.
Anti-transgender hate crimes continue to be under-reported. Unfortunately, data on anti-transgender hate crimes is not currently collected in Maryland.
In 1998, Marylanders were shocked to read about the murder of Lynn Vines. Leonard "Lynn" Vines, a 32 year-old cross-dresser and native of East Baltimore, was accosted in front of his cousin's home and shot six times by a group of 10 people asserting that "we don't allow no drag queen faggots in this neighborhood." Vines survived the attack, which police investigated as a hate crime, and received an outpouring of support from Maryland residents outraged by the violence.
In 1999, a group of six went on a crime spree in Baltimore that included over a dozen armed robberies and four carjacking incidents. While most of the victims were threatened at gunpoint and otherwise not injured, one man was hit in the head with a baseball bat, and Tacy Ranta, prominent transgender activist, was fatally shot in the chest. According to the detective on the case, one of the assailants asked the shooter why he had shot "that lady." The shooter replied, "That was no lady -- that was a faggot." Many transgender activists believe that since Ranta, who was the only one killed, was identified as transgender by her assailant, the murder was a hate crime.
Crimes Motivated By Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity & Expression In Hate Crimes Laws
In 1988, the Maryland General Assembly enacted a Hate Crimes Statute. This legislation, originally co-sponsored by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., made it a separate criminal offense if a person "harasses or commits a crime upon a person or that person's property because of his or her race, religious beliefs, or national origin."
However, despite the high prevalence of crimes that are motivated by a victim's sexual orientation or gender identity and expression, these categories were not covered in Maryland's hate crimes statute until our historic victory in 2005.
To read more about hate crimes and the LGBT community, click here.
1 Kay Brown, instructor for "20th Century Transgender History and Experience" at the Harvey Milk Institute in San Francisco, Washington Blade, Dec. 10, 1999.
2 Based on the FBI's "Uniform Crimes Reports, Crime in the United States 2000," showing the murder rate of 5.5 people per 100,000.
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