Andrea James

Remembering Monica Loera

Remembering Monica Loera

Murdered trans woman has been treated callously by the media

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Reading the arrest affidavit or local news reports about the death, you’d have no idea that the victim was a transgender woman. The wild curls and wide grins from her Facebook page – and above all else, her chosen name – have been omitted to a staggering degree. Instead Loera has been described using her birth name and masculine pronouns.

The Trans Road Map describes this as a worst-case scenario: “Women in several states have been [identified by their former names] in highly publicized landmark court cases.” It mentions Gwen Araujo, the California teenager who was brutally murdered by four men in 2002, as a tragic example of that indignity.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2016-01-29/remembering-monica-loera/