Demonstrators converged on the Los Angeles neighborhood of Westlake late Monday to rally for justice following the brutal stabbing of a transgender woman Sunday night.
CBS News reports that unknown assailants attacked Daniela Hernandez, a transgender woman, as she walked through MacArthur Park just off Wilshire Boulevard. According to Hernandez, a group of men started calling out anti-gay slurs at her before proceeding to stab her multiple times. Los Angeles police are treating the attack as a hate crime.
Related: Transgender woman found brutally murdered in Missouri. Are police mishandling the case?
“It is unbelievable that there is no compassion for members of our community in the midst of this global pandemic,” Bamby Salcedo, president and chief executive of the TransLatin@ Coalition said. “I do not get why people continue to have this kind of hate towards our community, being that our community is one of the hardest hit from this pandemic. Transphobia is (rampant) towards our sisters and we need to stop it now!”
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At the time of this writing, Hernandez remains hospitalized in stable condition.
The attack on Daniela Hernandez is just the latest in a series of brutal attacks on transgender women nationwide. According to the Translatin@ Coalition, 2020 has already seen the murder of 27 transwomen, most of them women of color.
Kangol2
My heart goes out to her friends and loved ones. I’m heartened to see protesters speaking up on Hernandez’s behalf too, and I pray the murderer and accomplices are caught swiftly.
Kangol2
My bad–I read right past the line saying she’d survived, so I’m very glad to hear that. I still hope they catch her attacker and the accomplices.
novadude
I’ve always blamed transphobia ultimately on misogyny.
A misogynist is going to see M2F transition as abhorrent because they view it as a male willfully discarding his male privilege by becoming female.
Similarly, a misogynist is going to see F2M transition as abhorrent because they view it as a female illegitimately appropriating that same male privilege.
Since these views require the perpetuation of male privilege (which is synonymous with women somehow being “less than” men) it stands to reason that if we can abolish misogyny then transphobia will go with it.
Jake123
@novadude What if the abuser is female though ??
Jake123
Thank god she survived!! Queerly will you keep us updated on this story??
novadude
@Jake123, good point. I had to think a bit about that but here goes:
Misogyny is not innate. It is a flawed mindset that is learned through exposure to a toxic environment or society.
The same is true for homophobia. (It’s pretty common for gay people to recognize and then reject some amount of internalized homophobia as part of their coming-out journey.)
It seems to me that being female is no more a shield against learned misogyny than being gay is against learned homophobia.