This week’s editorial was intended to be dedicated to National Coming Out Day, a celebration of the progress and success our community has seen in recent years, largely through a commitment to presenting our authentic selves. Instead, it is relegated to a topic that we have had to address far too many times: the murder of a transgender woman of color, whose life was taken from her for seemingly no other reason than being her authentic self.
Kiesha Jenkins was just 22, a young woman with an entire life ahead of her. But a group of men stole that future from her, setting upon her at a Logan park early Tuesday morning. They beat her and, as she lay on the ground, shot her twice in the back. The manner in which Jenkins was killed reflects the unimaginable brutality of this crime: She wasn’t fighting back, wasn’t even facing her attackers and they shot her anyway. Her death suggests a sheer disregard for human life, or perhaps just one type of human life, on the part of her killers.
Just one of the men pulled the trigger, but each of them is responsible. Whether they threw a punch, a kick or even stood by and did nothing, each played a role in devaluing and denigrating this victim to the point that one person felt compelled and comfortable aiming and pulling the trigger.
While detectives have not yet disclosed what prompted the men to act, they have said they don’t believe Jenkins knew her attackers, which — coupled with the sheer brutality of the incident — could suggest they set upon her because she was transgender.
The epidemic of violence against trans women has reached a fevered pitch that can no longer be ignored, within or outside our community. Jenkins is at least the 20th transgender woman in the nation to lose her life to violence this year alone, and the second in our city. Members of our community are being gunned down, stabbed or brutalized solely for living as their true selves — and that is a truth that demands meaningful action.
The progress that has been made toward trans visibility in recent years needs to be celebrated, but cannot overshadow the deep-seated societal ills that continue to threaten the transgender members of our community. When Caitlyn Jenner comes out as trans, she gets a television show, but when Kiesha Jenkins walks outside as trans, she is beaten and shot to death; there is a dichotomy there that needs to be addressed head-on before the gap between perceptions and reality widens even further.
This weekend marks the fifth-annual Trans* March, the fifth anniversary of the still-unsolved murder of trans woman Stacey Blahnik and the 25th-anniversary of OutFest, which celebrates the visibility of LGBT people. That Jenkins’ murder happened at this confluence of milestones should be telling: We’ve come a long way from five years ago, and certainly from 25 years ago, but our community is not free until we’re all free.