Transgender / Transsexual
Killings of Transgender Americans Reach All-time high, Rights Group Says
A 33-year-old Georgia woman has become at least the 31st transgender or gender-nonconforming person to die by violence in the U.S. this year, according to LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.
Felycya Harris was shot and killed Saturday in Meadowbrook Park in Augusta, Georgia. On Monday, the Richmond County coroner classified her death as a homicide.
Human Rights Campaign, which has been tracking transgender deaths since2013, said it has never seen such a high number of deaths at this point in the year, with more additional deaths likely unreported or misreported.
“More accurate reporting may be a factor in the high number of deaths that we have tracked,” Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for HRC’s Transgender Justice Initiative, told NBC News. “But we are also at an extremely vitriolic period, where hate is fueled even from our nation’s highest office.”
The figure is all the more disturbing given the global lockdowns during the pandemic. Trans and gender-nonconforming people experience higher levels of violence from people they know, Cooper added, and may not be able to find refuge.https://dataviz.nbcnews.com/projects/20200714-trans-homicide-annual-barchart/index.html?initialWidth=560&childId=embed-20200714-trans-homicide-annual-barchart&parentTitle=Killings%20of%20transgender%20Americans%20reach%20all-time%20high%2C%20rights%20group%20says&parentUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Ffeature%2Fnbc-out%2Fkillings-transgender-americans-reach-all-time-high-rights-group-says-n1242417
“These are especially dangerous times and resources for help are limited at best,” she said. “We need to ensure that transgender and gender non-conforming people have equal and safe access to any resources they may need to thrive — at all times, but especially during this pandemic.”‘Everybody’s going to remember Felycya’
Harris, an interior decorator, worked in a furniture store and taught dance.
“To know Felycya is to love her smile, her giving spirit,” said friend Sandra Taylor, who launched an online fundraiser to help cover funeral expenses.
“Everybody’s going to remember Felycya,” another friend, Ricola Collier, told local NBC affiliate WRDW-TV. “That laugh. The smile — the smiles. The talks. The arguments. The attitudes. Everybody is going to remember who Felycya Harris is. Nobody would ever forget who that is.”
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On Tuesday, HRC President Alphonso David said Harris’ passing marked a “grim milestone” in a year already full of tragedy. It put 2020 on par with 2017’s count for the highest number of transgender killings, with nearly three months still left to go.
Six transgender women were killed in July alone, as was nonbinary activist Summer Taylor, making it the deadliest month to date.
“This epidemic of violence, which is particularly impacting transgender women of color, must and can be stopped,” David said in a statement. “We must work to address the factors that underpin this culture of violence and openly discuss how the intersection of racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia work to deprive transgender and gender-nonconforming people of equal access to opportunity and necessities like employment, housing and health care.”
Collier said she just wants justice for Harris’ death. Georgia passed a hate-crime law in June, but it does not expressly include gender identity.
“The only thing we got left now is just the memories and the pictures, and the videos,” she told WRDW-TV, which reported that police are still searching for a suspect. “Since the day I found out what happened, I go back and watch the videos every day,”
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Harris is the fourth trans person to die by violence in the U.S. in just the past three weeks, according to HRC. Her murder comes just four days after the shooting death of Michelle Michellyn Ramos Vargas, a transgender woman in Puerto Rico.
Ramos, a nursing school student, was found the morning of Sept. 30 along an isolated road near a farm in San German, a town of about 35,000 on the southwestern part of the island.
She had been shot several times in the head, The Associated Pressreported. Police are not ruling out that the killing was a hate crime.‘Transgender women in Puerto Rico are very scared’
Ramos’ death was the latest in a string of brutal killings of transgender people in Puerto Rico. So far, six have been reported this year, though there may be more.
“Transgender women in Puerto Rico are very scared,” said Arianna Lint, CEO of Arianna’s Center, which works to uplift trans women of color on the island. “We’ve never seen so many deaths happen so fast.”
On April 11, Penélope Díaz Ramírez, a 31-year-old transgender woman, was beaten and hanged at a men’s prison in Bayamon.
A little more than a week later, on April 22, the charred bodies of two other trans women — Layla Peláez, 21, and Serena Angelique Velázquez, 32 — were found in Humacao inside the remains of a car that had been set on fire.
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Two arrested in ‘hate crime’ killing of trans women in Puerto Rico
After seeing images of them with the victims on social media, the U.S. Justice Department arrested two men, Juan Carlos Pagán Bonilla, 21, and Sean Díaz de León, 19. Bonilla confessed to the killings, El Nuevo Dia reported, and the two men have become the first people in Puerto Rico to face federal hate crime charges.
In February, Neulisa Luciano Ruiz, also known as Alexa, was fatally shot after using the women’s restroom in a McDonald’s in Toa Alta. Her assailants reportedly posted video of the shooting on social media.
In March, Yampi Méndez Arocho, a 19-year-old transgender man, was shot and killed in Moca, just hours after being assaulted by an unknown woman. Arocho’s mother reportedly called the police about the assault, but it’s not clear if there was an investigation.
Transgender people in Puerto Rico have become more visible in the past year or two, making them more of a target, according to Lint. Trans women tend to avoid the police, she added, going to each other for help instead. She said the government isn’t particularly supportive and neither are gay groups.
“They created an LGBT committee to advise the government, but there’s no one transgender on it. The life of a lesbian in Puerto Rico is very different of a transgender woman of color,” Lint explained.
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Pedro Julio Serrano, an LGBTQ activist in Puerto Rico, said not enough is being done to stop anti-transgender violence on the island.
“A state of emergency for gender violence has not been decreed — there is nothing,” he said in a statement on his website.
Puerto Ricans are voting for a new governor on Nov. 3, but Serrano said most of the candidates just use LGBTQ people “as a political ball to get votes from people who hate us.” Only one candidate, Alexandra Lúgaro, has said she would support LGBTQ individuals if elected, according to Serrano.
“She’s also been the only one to speak about sex workers, which is very important,” Lint says. “Because, in Puerto Rico, one of the primary financial outlets for transgender women is sex work.”
Half of Trans and Non-binary People Want to Abolish Legal Gender Categories
Half of trans and non-binary people want to abolish legal gender categories altogether, new research has found.
A University of Exeter study into potential reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, which comes after the long-delayed results of a 2018 public consultation on gender recognition were finally published on 22 September, found that half of trans and non-binary respondents wanted to abolish legal gender categories by ending the practice of recording sex at birth.
×Exeter researchers exploring the potential GRA reforms by surveying trans and non-binary people found that 88 per cent were in favour of a third additional gender option for a Gender Recognition Certificate, followed by a multi-gender system (59.4 per cent) and removing the system entirely by ceasing to record sex at birth (49.6 per cent).
Introducing an additional third option was particularly popular with non-binary people, with zero non-binary people opposed to this proposal.
The 2018 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) consultation attracted more than 108,000 responses, with 80 per cent of respondents in favour of de-medicalising the process of obtaining a GRC, and three-quarters in favour of dropping a requirement for trans people to provide “evidence” of living in their chosen gender.ADVERTISING
In a ministerial statement published alongside the consultation, equalities minister Liz Truss said that she would digitise the GRA process and reduce the fee to a “nominal” amount but signalled that broader reforms to the GRA will not go ahead.
Mollie Gascoigne, a PhD Candidate at Exeter Law School who is leading the research, said: “The government’s proposals to reduce the application fee is welcome as the current cost has posed a significant barrier to many people hoping to access legal gender recognition.
“However, to substantively increase the number of people applying for legal gender recognition and to make the system more accessible particularly for non-binary people, these findings suggest that further reform is still needed to address the current lack of non-binary gender recognition and the requirement of gender dysphoria.”
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A total of 276 transgender and non-binary people completed a survey about the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and 21 non-binary people were also interviewed for the research, which is part of the Gender Recognition and Reform (GRR) Project at the University of Exeter Law School.
The research found that trans and non-binary people would be more likely to use the GRA if the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria was removed.
Half of trans people who took part in a survey opposed the gender dysphoria requirement, as did 80.7 per cent of non-binary people. Non-binary participants were more than two times more likely to report that removing the gender dysphoria requirement would make them more likely to apply for a GRC.
Respondents to the survey also said they had had poor experiences with medical professionals, found the need for a mental diagnosis stigmatising and didn’t agree that legal gender should be defined according to a medical model.
Black Trans Woman’s Killing in Philadelphia Called Part of ‘Epidemic of Violence’
A 29-year-old Black transgender woman was killed in Philadelphiathis week, part of an “epidemic of violence” against the city’s trans community, authorities said.
Officers found Mia Green, a Philadelphia resident, shot in the neck in the passenger’s seat of a car driven by Abdullah lbn El-Amin Jaamia when he was stopped Monday morning for running a stop sign, a police statement said.
During the traffic stop, Jaamia, 28, “exited the front driver’s door and approached Police stating that his passenger was shot.”
Officers then provided a police escort as Jaamia drove Green to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 8:30 a.m.
Upon further investigation, Jaamia was charged with murder and related offenses on Tuesday, police said.
Authorities did not provide details surrounding the investigation, possible motive and arrest, or specify the relationship between the suspect and victim. It was not immediately clear if Jaamia has a lawyer.
The city’s Office of LGBT Affairs said in a statement Tuesday that it extended its “deepest sympathies” to Green’s family.
“We know that the loss of yet another trans community member of color is especially painful, no matter the circumstances,” the city said. “This latest act of violence against a member of our community is a somber reminder of the epidemic of violence against trans individuals.”
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Green’s death shows “there is much work to be done in the pursuit of full equality, respect, and justice for us all,” the statement said.
Across the U.S., there has been “surge of violence against transgender people,” according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.
“In just seven months, the number of transgender people suspected of being murdered in 2020 has surpassed the total for all of 2019,” the center wrote in an August blog post, prior to Green’s death.
There have been at least 29 instances of fatal violence against trans and gender nonconforming people in the U.S. this year, with most of the victims being Black and Latinx transgender women, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney responded to Green’s death on Twitter, saying that “violence against transgender people—especially trans women of color—is a crisis in this country.”
Earlier this year, the remains of Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, a Black transgender woman, were discovered in the city’s Schuylkill River, and police declared her death a murder.
Judge Orders Trump Administration to Turn over Concealed Docs on Trans Military Ban
A federal judge has ruled against the Trump administration in litigation challenging the transgender military ban, ordering the Defense Department to turn over documents it had previously on the policy withheld on the basis they were predecisional and deliberative before the restriction went into effect.
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Washington State, a Clinton appointee, issued an order Friday requiring the Trump administration to hand over documents requested as part of the discovery process for the lawsuit by October 5.
“This matter comes before the court upon defendants’ recent submission of documents for in camera review, filed in response to the court’s recent orders on defendants’ assertion of the deliberative process privilege,” Pechman writes. “After careful examination of each document submitted for in camera review, the court finds that the documents do not fall within the proper scope of the deliberative process privilege and orders defendants to produce the documents by October 5.”
The lawsuit, Karnowski v. Trump, was filed in 2017 by the LGBTQ group Lambda Legal and the group now known as the Modern Military Association of America on behalf of various plaintiffs, including transgender military service members and the Human Rights Campaign, against the ban.
Peter Perkowski, legal and policy director for the Modern Military Association of America, said via email to the Washington Blade the order is a victory in the ongoing lawsuit.
“The Trump-Pence administration has once again lost to legal scrutiny and can no longer hide critical documents related to Trump’s unconstitutional transgender military ban,” Perkowski said. “From the moment Trump recklessly tweeted his ban to the day the Department of Defense implemented it, it has always been crystal clear that this transgender military ban is based on nothing more than blatant discrimination.”
The lawsuit before Pechman in Washington State was filed after President Trump tweeted in 2017 he’d ban transgender people from the military “in any capacity,” but before the Pentagon under former Defense Secretary James Mattis completed his six-month policy and implemented restrictions based on his recommendations.
The case has been percolating through the Ninth Circuit for years. Although Pechman initially issued a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the transgender military ban, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that order, allowing the policy to go into effect as litigation proceeds.
At issue in the order Pechman granted Friday are documents related to the discovery process in the lawsuit, which compels the U.S. government to produce material relevant to the transgender military ban. Those documents are expected to demonstrate whether the Defense Department implemented policy against transgender people as result of Trump’s tweet, or whether the military determined it needed to exclude them as result of an independent review former Defense Secretary James Mattis was conducting at the time.
Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler Wants to Erase Trans Kids from Sports
Republican senator Kelly Loeffler has submitted a bill that attempts to rewrite a key civil rights law to legally erase transgender kids and bar them from taking part in school sports.
The Georgia senator on Tuesday (22 September) submitted a bill in the US Senate that would rewrite parts of Title IX, a civil rights law passed in 1972 that protects people from sex-based discrimination in education programs.×
Republican senator Kelly Loeffler files anti-trans bill.
Loeffler’s planned amendment seeks to define sex as “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth” for the purposes of athletics, and bar trans people from taking part in sporting events in their true gender.
It states that any recipient of federal funds “who operates, sponsors, or facilitates athletic programs or activities… [must not] permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls”.
Per a release, the bill is intended to “make sure schools keep girls’ sports for girls” – although, by defining gender as based solely on reproductive biology and genetics, it would logically compel cisgender teenage girls to compete against transgender boys and non-binary people.
In addition to Loeffler, the bill is co-sponsored by four notoriously anti-LGBT+ Republican senators – ‘freedom to discriminate’ backer Mike Lee, anti-trans JK Rowling megafan James Lankford, Taylor Swift foe Marsha Blackburn and Tom Cotton, whose interns like to rant about “f****ts”.
In a release, Loeffler said: “Title IX established a fair and equal chance for women and girls to compete, and sports should be no exception.
“As someone who learned invaluable life lessons and built confidence playing sports throughout my life, I’m proud to lead this legislation to ensure girls of all ages can enjoy those same opportunities. This common sense bill protects women and girls by safeguarding fairness and levelling the athletic field that Title IX guarantees.”
The bill is backed by a swathe of anti-LGBT+ hate groups including the Family Research Council, run by Trump ally Tony Perkins.
Perkins, whose group has long fought to deny women access to healthcare, claimed the bill would “help ensure that girls are afforded the opportunity to play on a level playing field”.
https://lockerdome.com/lad/13296932562903654?pubid=ld-5883-3439&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinknews.co.uk&rid=www.pinknews.co.uk&width=572Soraya Santiago the First Out Trans Person to Run for US Office Dies at 73
Soraya Santiago, a trans activist, queer icon and the first person in Puerto Rico to receive gender confirmation surgery, has passed away at the age of 73.
According to the Associated Press, Santiago had been battling cancer, and died Tuesday (September 22) at her home in the city of Carolina.
She was a trailblazer in a multitude of ways. Not only was she the first known person in Puerto Rico to have had gender confirmation surgery, she was also the first on the island to successfully change her name and sex on her birth certificate, and the first openly trans person to run for office in the US territory.
In 2019, she told United Explanations: “Those were doors I opened, and I hope to keep opening more doors so that the community can keep establishing itself where it should be and not where people want it to be.”
Santiago featured in multiple documentaries, including the award-winning 2014 film Mala Mala, and wrote a book titled Made by Hand: Gender Dysmorphia. ADVERTISING
She graduated with a BA in political science from the University of Puerto Rico last year at the age of 72.
Congratulations Soraya! Today, she graduates with a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Puerto Rico!”Para un Imposible, Millones de Posibles.” -Soraya
Posted by Mala Mala on Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Soraya Santiago remembered as a ‘heroine’ in the fight for trans rights.
Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of Puerto Rico’s largest city, paid tribute to Santiago on Twitter, writing: “Soraya, our heroine in the fight for the dignity of our compatriots in the trans community, died after a battle against cancer.
“We love you, we owe you a lot and we will never forget you.
Read Morex“Rest my dear, but keep giving us strength from there. I will miss you.”https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=lilylwakefield&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1308397128323076098&lang=en-gb&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinknews.co.uk%2F2020%2F09%2F23%2Fsoraya-santiago-died-dead-trans-puerto-rico-gender-confirmation-surgery-carmen-yulin-cruz%2F&siteScreenName=PinkNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=219d021%3A1598982042171&width=500px
When Santiago was asked if she had a message for young trans people, she added in the United Explanations interview: “Although much progress has been made on all these issues of acceptance, rights and equality, there is still a long way to go.
“The youngest are already doing it, they are already walking that path. The youth of today is more open.https://lockerdome.com/lad/13296932562903654?pubid=ld-5883-3439&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinknews.co.uk&rid=www.pinknews.co.uk&width=572
“But it occurs to me to tell them to follow their dreams, not to stop dreaming, that if they believe that this is their reality and the truth of their life, they should run after it and not after what society, wrongly, wants to impose on them.”
Trans People Are up to Six Times more Likely to Have Autism; Related Conditions: Study
Transgender and gender-diverse people have higher rates of autism than cisgender people, a landmark study has confirmed.
The research, published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Communications, also found that trans people are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, learning difficulties or OCD than cis people.x
The authors, led by Varun Warrier from Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre, used five large existing datasets to closely examine whether people who have autism are more likely to be trans, and vice versa — something that’s been posited by previous research, but only by studies using small sample sizes.
Their findings, the authors concluded, show that “transgender and gender-diverse individuals have elevated rates of autism diagnosis, related neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, and autistic traits compared to cisgender individuals”.
“This study has clinical implications by highlighting that we need to improve access to care and tailored support for this under-served population,” they wrote.
Roughly one to two per cent of the population is estimated to be autistic while 0.4 to 1.3 per cent is estimated to be trans or gender-diverse.
Previous research into the links between autism and gender identity mostly used data from trans people who had been referred to a gender clinic, and had a typical sample size of “in [the] few hundreds”, the authors noted.
This created bias in terms of the type of trans person included — favouring those who have gender dysphoria, the resources to access a gender clinic and some support from family or friends in doing so — which would be exacerbated by the small sample size.
“It is important to understand what the odds are of being diagnosed as autistic in transgender and gender-diverse individuals at large, not solely in those recruited through GD [gender dysphoria] clinics,” the researchers said.
Trans people up to six times more likely to be autistic than cis people.
The scientist’s findings can be broken down into four key points.
First, across all five datasets used, trans and gender-diverse people are 3.03 to 6.36 times more likely to be autistic than cis people. This is after the researchers controlled for age and educational attainment.
Second, trans and gender-diverse people were significantly more likely to self-report autistics traits, systemising and sensory sensitivity, and scored lower on empathy traits than cis individuals.
Third, in two of the datasets, trans people were significantly more likely to have higher rates of other neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, including OCD, schizophrenia, ADHD, learning difficulties, depression and bipolar disorder.
And finally, an “exploratory analysis” carried out by the researchers found that trans people were more likely to say that they suspected they had undiagnosed autism.
Explaining the overlap between an autism diagnosis and being transgender.
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Making it clear that, for several reasons, their results are unlikely to be false positives, the researchers also stressed the importance of their finding that “this association with gender identity is not specific to autism”.
They also emphasised that more research into this area is needed — specifically, a more comprehensive investigation into the relative rates of each of the neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions in trans people compared to cis people.
In discussing why there might be this overlap between an autism diagnosis and being trans, the researchers considered that “autistic individuals may conform less to societal norms compared to non-autistic individuals, which may partly explain why a greater number of autistic individuals identify outside the stereotypical gender binary”.
Then, there is the role of “prenatal mechanisms” — like hormones that impact sex – which shape brain development and have been shown to contribute to both autism and gender role behaviour. But, the scientists said clearly, it is unclear if prenatal mechanisms also affect gender identity, and this needs further investigation.
“Finally, an alternative but not mutually exclusive explanation,” the researchers said, “is that transgender and gender-diverse individuals have elevated vulnerabilities for multiple psychiatric challenges related to stressful life experiences in the contexts of unfriendly environments, discrimination, abuse and victimisation, explaining the elevated rates of mental health diagnoses.”
Some caveats applied to their conclusions, the researchers said: in two of the datasets, intersex individuals were excluded, but this was not possible in the other three; in one dataset it was possible that non-binary people who don’t use the word “transgender” to describe themselves were excluded; and it is also possible that “gender-aware” individuals provided their sex, rather than gender.
“It is difficult to disentangle this,” the study concludes. “However, the magnitude of the sample size suggests that the effects of such misclassification will have a minimal effect on the analyses and findings.”
Teen Told She Can Undergo Hormone Therapy by Judge Despite Mother’s Objection
An Australian court has given permission for a 16-year-old trans girl to receive gender-affirming hormone therapy, overruling her mother who opposes her transition.
The girl, given the name Imogen during proceedings, had “expressed a consistent, persistent and insistent view that she wishes to move to… gender affirming hormone treatment”, the judge said in his ruling at the Family Court.
x
Justice Garry Watts said Imogen is legally competent to consent to the treatment, correctly diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and that hormone therapy is in her best interests.
Her father, who supports her transition, said the judge’s decision came as a relief.
“We got the result last night and we had a bit of a cry,” he said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Imogen’s father described the judge as “very fair” in hearing both sides, and invested in finding out what was in his daughter’s best interests.
Imogen, who has described herself as female since she was seven, will now be able to access the feminising hormone oestrogen.
In Australia, any form of medical transition for under-18s – puberty blockers, hormone treatment, or gender-confirming surgery – used to have to be approved by a court.
Since a 2013 ruling, it’s been possible for parents and children to access puberty-blocking drugs without a judges approval.
In 2017, another court ruled that trans youth and their parents could consent to hormone treatment without needing to go to court. But the role of the court in assessing disputes – like in Imogen’s case, where one parent supports her transition and one opposes it – had remained unclear.
This week’s Family Court decision “improves certainty” for families and transgender young people, said the Inner City Legal Centre in Sydney.
In his judgement, Justice Watts said that the court will only intervene in access to hormone treatment for trans youth if a parent or doctor disputes the child’s legal competency to consent, the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, or the proposed treatment.
In Imogen’s case, her mother disputed all three. But Watts said that Imogen was an “adolescent of intelligence and maturity”, legally competent to consent and that hormone treatment is in her best interests.
The Inner City Legal Centre said “the court’s judgment confirms that the existing law is that a medical practitioner seeing a young person under the age of 18 cannot initiate stage one, two or three treatment without establishing parental consent”. If there is a dispute, the court must intervene.
Trans Women Were Humiliated at Miami Jail after Protest Arrest
A Miami-Dade County jail is facing potential legal action after two transgender women said they were mistreated and humiliated at the jail following their arrests at a Black Lives Matter rally.
“Initially I think we can all say it was a very inspiring experience,” Viola, one of the arrested women, said of the rally. “Even through the rain, we were chanting, screaming our lungs out.”
But that empowering experience escalated into something more humiliating and degrading, according to Viola and Gabriela Amaya Cruz, a trans woman who was arrested alongside Viola. The women said officers started using excessive force and alleged Viola was pushed to the ground and tackled by two officers. Dramatic video shows the moment things took at turn at the protest.
More than a dozen people were arrested and all were transported to Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center where the women alleged things got worse.
“They had no idea to where to place me,” Cruz said. “And when they said my legal name, I had to raise my hand, obviously, because it was me. And that’s when it started to get like, ‘That’s not a woman, that’s a man,’ and that’s when things got very transphobic.”
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A spokesperson for the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department released a statement to NBC Miami saying, in part, that the department is “committed to ensuring that all inmates in our custody including transgender persons are treated appropriately throughout our intake, classification and housing placement process.”