Talking Back Thinking Black Analysis

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In Talking Back, Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, bell hooks describes the perceived experience of women’s abuse in intimate relationships through the lens of a patriarchal society. Survivors of sexual violence are often seen as responsible or deserving of this violence. Her outlook sheds light on this same experience as undergone by transgender women. Trans victims are often killed by intimate partners. However, the most known narrative is the trans person not disclosing their status to a potential partner and receiving ‘justified’ or ‘deserved’ violence in response. This violence does not exist in a vacuum; legal institutions and public services have worked to exclude trans women instead on insuring their safety and justice. Media have …show more content…

All these systems act together in perpetuating this violence. Addressing transmisogynistic violence is complex, layered and sometimes more insidious than how it is shown. As a trans woman of color, it is evident to me that transphobic violence is rooted in colonialism and racism. For the sake of cohesion, I will discuss transmisogyny and focus on the role of media and its propagation of the concept of deceit. The murder of Gwen Araujo, a 17 year-old transgender girl (I insist on not referring to her as an adult, as she was a minor) is probably the most documented and scrutinized case. It brings up the concept of ‘trans panic’: where forcibly revealed transness is thought of as a catalyst for physical violence. I will avoid the gruesome details as they are unnecessary and traumatizing, and instead focus on what happened after her murderers - both her sexual partners - were arrested. Their defense lawyers, along with journalists, reported that Araujo had deserved her murder and was portrayed as a sexual offender for allegedly not disclosing that she was trans. In direct contradiction, the fact that she was stripped by force

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