Gwen Smith Rebuttal

A rebuttal to "A Death In Newark"

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

Gwen Araujo is dead at seventeen. It's tragic -- and this tragedy is
compounded by those who want to somehow blame the victim for her own
death.

In this case, I speak of Blade columnist Charles Karel Bouley II, who
while he does certainly disagree with the actions of those who killed
Miss Araujo, he does seemingly have some issues with her and her family,
too.

He claims that the family should have -- and I quote -- "have him or her
out of any rural town as soon as the first dress went on." Never mind
that the night of her death was the first time she had publicly worn a
skirt, is this a realistic expectation? This assumes that the family
both knows what to do about their transgendered child, and that they have
the resources at hand to pick up and move. Never mind that this "rural
town" was a largely working-class suburb of San Jose and San Francisco.

More than this, Bouley feels that Gwen Araujo was "different," and should
have been prevented a normal life with normal friends. I would like to
think that everyone on this planet is allowed as normal a life as they
wish, and that in a country based on the rights of life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, the right to live regardless of gender or
transgender status should be secured. I am at a loss to explain why
Bouley feels that it is best to hide away and "ghettoize" our own
transgender youth, unless this points to his own discomfort.

Maybe this lies at the heart of it all. Bouley referred to Gwen Araujo
throughout his column with masculine pronouns, aside from a few that were
likely revised by his editor. Gwen Araujo identified as a woman, even
her own mother accepts this. I can only assume it is Mr. Bouley's
discomfort with Gwen Araujo's transgender status that causes him to
reframe her as a male.

Bouley says that Gwen got what she deserved for "living like that."
Perhaps, then, it was wrong of transgender and gay activists to stand up
at Stonewall, knowing that the police could have just as easily killed
all involved. It was a hard world, and they would have deserved it for
standing up to the cops. Maybe Harvey Milk deserved to be killed at the
hand of Dan White. After all, he made the mistake of getting elected to
office and being openly gay in a time when it was clearly very dangerous
to be such -- by living like that, using Bouley's logic, it only makes
sense that one should die.

The key here is not not send our youth to the slaughter. I agree that
this is a rough world, and the very face that more than one person is
reported dead each month due to anti-transgender violence speaks to how
hard it can be. But rather than try to hide our youth away in ghettos of
our own making -- and unrealistic and unworkable solution -- we need to
work to make all places safer for transyouths.

Part of that is in the nature of hate crime laws, an item that Bouley
seems dead set against. he feels these simply crate another "class" of
victims, rather than seeing them for what they are -- enhancements
designed to fit the very nature of the crime at hand, or a definition of
the crime as presented.

After all, Gwen's death was not a simple death. This was a case where
her killers were so enraged that they beat her to death, dragged her into
a garage and strangled her, then buried her body in a shallow grave 150
miles away from the scene of the crime. This was nut just murder, but
obliteration -- an attempt to wipe away the very existence of a young
transgendered woman.

Maybe existing laws truly aren't enough for such crimes.

I'll also agree with another point of Mr. Bouley's: there has been one
too many funerals. I attended Gwen Araujo's, and no-one present was
unmoved by the event. Regardless of any choices that Gwen Araujo made
have made, it does not excuse her killers from paying the price for what
they did. There is no excuse for what happened, and no amount of blaming
the victim for what one columnist views as "stupidity" will change that.

The old quote is that we mourn our dead, and fight like hell for the
living. Fighting doesn't mean hiding away in closets, and chastising
those who "get what they deserve" for upsetting someone's concept of
status quo.

-----

Gwendolyn Ann Smith is the founder of the Remembering Our Dead project
and the Transgender Day of Remembrance. She can be reached at
gwen@gwensmith.com.

ORIGINAL COLUMN:

KAREL'S KOMMENTS

A DEATH IN NEWARK
By Charles Karel Bouley II

Gwen Araujo is dead at seventeen. It's tragic - yet another case plucked
from the headlines, a story forged in bigotry and hatred nurtured in the
small town of Newark, Calif. Gwen, by all accounts, was sweet, kind,
gentle and well-liked. Not the kind of person that should end up beaten
nearly to death, then strangled and buried in a shallow grave.

How did seventeen-year-old Gwen end up with such a fate? Through ignorant
acts of violence, a comic series of cataclysmic events that were destined
to end poorly - events that shouldn't happen in a perfect world, but do -
events that have happened before and yet we have chosen to ignore.

We've seen this scenario lead to a horrible end in real life with Brandon
Teena and in countless bad TV movies and films: the girl's really a guy
and other guys freak out. I can't help but think someone should have seen
this coming, a disaster waiting to happen.

Now three men have been charged with murder with a hate crime attachment.
A hate crime attachment? I suppose Gwen would be less dead if they had
killed her because she said something they didn't like, or cheated on one
of them or one of a million reasons used by killers to justify their
actions. I assume the parents of another 17-year-old merely killed for
wearing gang colors by accident in the wrong neighborhood don't want the
same punishment for the killers of their child that the Araujos do for
theirs. Somehow, these boys killing Gwen for being a transvestite is more
horrific and carries more of a sentence than if they had beaten and
strangled him for some other reason.

Poppycock.

Michael Magidson, Jaron Nabors and Jose Merel should be prosecuted to the
fullest extent of the law if they are guilty because they beat, strangled
and killed another human, regardless of whether they called him "fag" or
"Jew" or "nigger" before they did it, regardless of whether they beat him
for hiding his gender or for taking their car keys. Murder is murder,
dead is dead and the words "hate crime" form an oxymoron. Actions, not
motivations, are what's important to the person being attacked. Hate
crime laws are just another way to create a class of victims, people who
need special care and protection under the law because existing laws just
don't seem good enough.

There's plenty of guilt to go around in the death of Gwen Araujo. Most
parents and schools refuse to teach diversity. I don't mean these
stop-gap bully programs some schools have set up where a few students and
teachers try and persuade kids to be tolerant or report name calling. I
mean by incorporating, in a very matter-of-fact way, different
lifestyles, different people, different ideals and ways of thinking. How
many schools would employ known transvestites or transsexuals, even if
qualified? Parents would scream, the same parents that say they're all
for equal rights: not in my back yard. Gay teachers are fine, just not
for my kid (well, excluding P.E.).

And what about this veil of politically - correct - Kumbaya - we - are -
the - world - let's - join - hands - and - sing notion that we pass on to
our minority children? Someone should have told Gwen until they were blue
in the face that there are those out there that would kill her for no
other reason than the fact that she is different. Someone should have
prevented him, physically, if need be, from getting into "normal"
situations with "normal" students because she was not normal; she was
different.

I am not a parent, so I can't speak for the Araujos. But I know if my
child dressed like a woman, I would have him or her out of any rural town
as soon as the first dress went on. I would find a big city with a
special school program for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth
and at least hedge my child's chances of survival through the teen years.
It can be hostile being different in the mainstream. Ghettos serve a
purpose. As much as they segregate, they also protect. And while I am a
firm advocate of integration, 17-year-olds that cross dress aren't ready
to be introduced into senior year high school USA.

The world isn't very accepting of much these days when it comes to
different lifestyles. The puritanical winds are again sweeping through
the land, empowering bigots and zealots to verbally or physically
disparage that which doesn't conform to what they feel is right and
proper. In an effort to believe that the world can be a better place we
often forget that we sometimes need to give harsh, real world advice to
those we love - even if that advice is that you don't always fit in and
it could be dangerous to simply be you in some situations, that any
situation could be a risk and you must learn to assess those before
entering them and know very well how to safely get out of them once you
see trouble coming.

Gwen Araujo is dead. She's not coming back and we live in a world where
some would say that's what she gets for living like that. Well, that's
what he got for living like that. How do we reconcile that viewpoint with
that fact so that no one like Gwen has to die? The answer is illusive,
but we'd better find it quickly, and honestly. These kinds of deaths are
happening too often, from Matthew Shephard to Brandon Teena, Billy Ray
Gather to Gwen Araujo. Those that would kill don't seem to be getting any
less frequent and obvious victims don't seem to be getting any smarter.
That's a dangerous equation and the by-product has been one too many
funerals.

. .
/\\//\ Gwendolyn Ann Smith * www.gwensmith.com
>() < Columnist, Bay Area Reporter &Philadelphia Gay News
\/()\/ Board Member, FTMI * Board Member, GEA
"I want this to be a harmony of voices" - Lauren D. Wilson

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A rebuttal to "A Death In Newark"

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith