Article
Review 3
In
this article Rebecca L. Stotzer tries to bring to light the abuse of other
gender identities besides men and women, namely, the transgender group. This is
a challenge because it is a rather obscure demographic and not all people of
this nature disclose sensitive information about themselves. Also, we are
talking about abuse here. It is already hard to deal with and come forward from
abuse and prejudice when a person is a regular male or female, but this adds a
new dimension to it. There have been efforts before this article to improve
documentation of violence based on perception of gender identity but overall
the information is still limited.
Some
of the work that has been done regarding the prejudice against transgender
individuals was to dig into the legislature of hate crimes. “The Hate Crimes
Statistics act of 1990 the only national system in the United States for
reporting hate-based violence, mandates that he Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) track hate crimes based on race and ethnicity, religion, sexual
orientation, and disability. In addition to the lack of consistency by states
in reporting these data, another factor limiting the amount of information
available concerning hate crimes involving transgender people is that gender
identity is not included in the list of federally protected statuses.” (43) Basically,
if you identify a gender based crime in court or any other judicial setting,
you are out of luck.
Active
attendances of the issues at hand are making progress also. Since this is an issue
that is under the metaphorical radar, some studies have been enacted to bring
to light an estimate of how many transgender people are afflicted by these hate
crimes. “In their in-depth study of types of violence experienced among a
national sample of 402 transgender persons, Lombardi, Wilchins, Priesing and
Malouf reported that 59.5% of respondents experienced some type of gender
identity-based violence in their lifetime.” (44) Also, 29.6% of those 402
individuals have been physically assaulted in some way, weapon or not. (44)
Recognition is the first step to remedy. Although 402 individuals is not that
many and a lot more are going to be needed to gain enough attention.
Likewise, as there is a lack of
information to transgendered individuals’ favor, there are people opposed to
that and are creating programs and groups to raise awareness and get these
people prominent voices. The Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations
(LACCHR) has been doing just that. They have thoroughly analyzed data from every
public aspect of Los Angeles County, including law enforcement agencies, school
districts, fair-housing councils, ethnic and religious organizations, and other
relevant groups (45). It may be small, but gender is making its way to
notoriety in the U.S. hopefully people will be ready to help this matter and
get genders on the U.S.’ list of protected statuses. We need to recognize these
people as human.
Works Cited:
Stotzer, Rebecca L. "Gender Identity and Hate
Crimes: Violence Against Transgender People in Los Angeles County." Sexuality
Research & Social Policy (2008): 43-52.
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