Chrissie Bates was stabbed to death in her Minneapolis apartment this week. Then she was murdered again by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune . Their headline proclaimed ‘Man who lived as woman found slain in Minneapolis apartment’.She wasn’t a man living as a woman she was a trans woman. The Star-Tribune decided to ignore the AP stylebook and ungender her in death.
You might wonder why I even bother to write about this since it so regularly happens to trans women in death. That is the very reason I am writing this, because it must stop. For the most part the only coverage trans women and trans men get in the media is in the advent of our all too frequent murders. The media by ungendering and othering us help perpetuate this cycle of violence. After all it really isn’t murder of the person your killing is an it and some sort of freak. So I would ask that the media treat us with respect in death with the hope that those of us still living might be seen as human and allowed to get on with our lives. A probably vain hope but a girl can dream.
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