THE HIDDEN HATE EPIDEMIC.

VIOLENCE AGAINST THE TRANSGENDERED IS WIDESPREAD, BRUTAL--AND OFTEN UNNOTICED

In November, about a month after 21-year-old Matthew Shepherd was pistol-whipped and lashed to a fence on a rural Wyoming road in subfreezing temperatures, Rita Hester, a 34-year-old transgendered woman in Allston, Mass., was stabbed some 20 times in the chest. Just before New Year's Eve, Vianna Faye Williams, a 36-year-old preoperative transsexual in Jersey City, N.J., was stabbed nine times in her back, neck, and chest. In January, Donald Fuller, an 18-year-old cross-dresser who went by the name Lauryn Paige, was found stabbed with his throat cut in a patch of woods in Austin. In February, Houston police reported that an unknown man wearing women's clothing was shot several times in a motel parking lot. In March, Tracey Thompson, a 33-year-old transgendered woman, was beaten on a Georgia country road.

All died.

Major newspapers and networks across the nation are still reporting what happened to Matthew Shepherd. Thompson did not even make the Atlanta papers.

"Which kinds of bodies count when they are bashed?" asks Riki Wilchins, executive director of GenderPAC, a gender education and advocacy group. "If a man who happens to be gay is beaten to death on a Texas highway, the straight and queer media and the Human Rights Campaign are all over that--unless it turns out that the man was wearing items of women's clothing. That story will not get reported."

Indeed, the recent wave of attention to hate crimes has not included the transgendered. Recently, President Clinton endorsed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a federal bill outlawing offenses based on real or perceived sexual orientation, gender, and disability. But transgender activists fear that without explicit mention transsexuals will not be covered by the legislation.

Activists say that violence against transgendered people goes largely unnoticed, both by authorities and the press. "In general, there is a lack of coverage and a lack of awareness in a lot of people--mainstream media, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people and our straight allies--about violence against the transgendered community," says Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign. "It is a difficult thing to address because, for all communities, hate crimes are traditionally underreported. Certainly for the gay, lesbian, bisexual community that is true. For the transgendered community it is even more true."

According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, the number of attacks reported nationwide in 1998 by transgendered individuals increased 49%. The number of victims who were male-to-female transgendered increased from 98 to 148, and the number of female-to-male victims increased from ten to 13. The total figures represent only a small fraction of all hate crimes reported.

Kerry Lobel, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, says that even though an increasing number of the more horrific hate crimes against transgendered individuals have reached the media over the last year, "countless others are ignored."

Carrie Davis, a counselor at the Gender Identity Project at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York City, offers one reason for the invisibility: The identity of a transgendered victim is often erased when police process the crime. Ignorant of the complex gender identifications and sexual orientations of transsexuals, authorities often say that a man in a dress is gay. They do not realize that the transgendered population includes people who are gay, straight, and bisexual.

"This broad spectrum confuses people both inside and outside of the queer community," says Kim Ribbans, communication director of Trans=Action, a statewide gender education and advocacy group in Georgia. And such confusion makes many transgendered people uncomfortable with organizations--including antiviolence projects--that are supposed to represent them.

"There is a lack of understanding about the concerns and unique needs of the transgendered community," says Stachelberg, "and that unfortunately contributes to a lack of trust on the part of the transgendered community to come forward and tell their stories."

Davis offers another reason for the invisibility. Because many transgendered people have trouble finding employment, they must resort to sex work, and some mainstream and gay media consider prostitutes too unsavory to cover.

That contrasts sharply with the image of victims of high-profile gay bashings. "In many ways Shepherd was the ideal victim," says Dave Shannon, senior advocate in the Violence Recovery Program of the Fenway Community Health Center in Boston. "He was a young, white, privileged gay male--somebody whom many could identify with."

Meanwhile, transgendered people must rely on members of Congress to declare during the debate of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act that the phrase "real or perceived gender" includes them. Lobbyists for the bill believe that if it explicitly mentioned the transgendered, Congress would not pass it. This, Ribbans says, is "because most people don't know about transgendered people"--even if they are victims of a hate crime.

Meyer is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times.