Back In San Francisco For A Gathering Remembering Gwen Araujo
I made it back to San Francisco for the first time in over 8 years. My life didn't take a very good turn, and I ended up in Oregon for 6 years to keep a roof over my head.
This is part of the reality of trans existence, being underemployed and barely getting by with little money. We end up slipping through the cracks and being homeless, but I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to at least keep a roof over my head.
The last time I was in San Francisco, I was at the transgender nightclub Divas bringing in the New Year heading into 2014. I remember it being a happy time. I felt a little bit connected with my trans sisters.
I was a work in progress then, and I am surely I work in progress now. I'm doing more to claim my ground than I was back then. Back then, I was still grieving the death of my father and didn't leave the house very much.
One of the biggest inspirations to me coming out as trans was Gwen Araujo. I can recount the story of how I finally took those steps, but the girl had been living inside my head since I was a kid.
There was a lot of fear, shame and I just didn't think becoming was possibile for me. In 2008, as I was getting a better understanding of myself, I learned more about Gwen. I was able to take a deeper dive into her story.
When it happened, it was all over the news. I remember thinking how wrong it was. I think had some good conversations with my sister about her. At that point, people were still getting away with murder against the LGBT community and using the panic defense.
They claimed they were tricked or what have you. As a result of what had happened with the first trial, Trans March became a thing. The trans community was tired of being treated as disposable humans.
I was probably a few weeks from actually coming out and just beginning to dress as I saw fit in public. It was Trans March 2008, and I just learned about the event maybe a month before at Divas.
When I got there, there was a trans woman with a banner for Gwen and a trans pride flag. She was going to carry the flag, and she and her friend were going to carry the banner. I asked her if she would mind if I carried it with her friend, and she let me.
I felt so happy that I could bring Gwen's name to attention at this parade. It still hurts to know that she was taken away from us. I wouldn't even know who she was if she hadn't been murdered, and that's a weird sort of feeling.
I love this person I never met, and I wouldn't know her if she wasn't murdered. I even wrote a story I was blessed enough to give to her aunt recently. It talks about me going back in time and saving her. I'm not sure if her family liked it or not, because I've heard nothing back.
Because of certain things that have happened in my life this year, I'm actually okay if I don't hear anything. I'm afraid that if there's a negative reaction in any way, it will impact the way I view things. I felt weird after I told them I wrote the story. Her aunt asked if she could see it.
I started wondering, how they were going to feel when they read this story. Was it insensitive of me to bring it up? But, I wanted to follow through on what I said and send her the story. I even explained a little bit about what I was thinking when I wrote it.
20 years ago on October 4th, Gwen Araujo was violently murdered. They can say what they want, but these guys knew that when they found out what they suspected of her, they were going to beat her. I don't know how they couldn't think they would beat her to death.
How many guys were there? She's one trans woman, and surely she's going to get beaten to death. She pleaded for her life, but the bad part is what her mother Sylvia Guerrero revealed when she spoke at the end of the gathering.
Sylvia had learned a few years after the fact that her daughter wasn't dead at that point. Even when she begged them, saying, "Please don't, I have a family," they kept at it. She did not stop breathing when she fell to the ground.
They buried her under the ground, still alive. Her final moments on Earth were buried underground alive. I don't even want to think about her coming to consciousness buried under the ground.
In my return to California and my interactions with another person who impacted my coming out, I came back to God again. As a kid, my parents made me go to church, so I know I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart then. He's been at the door, at arm's length for many years.
I welcomed Him back into my heart, because I feel very strongly that I need my relationship with Him. So, when I think about what I really think about the people who murdered Gwen, I have to catch myself and ask for forgiveness from God.
I don't know when she came out exactly, but probably a few years before she was murdered. She was living as a hormonal cisgender female would live. That is to say, she had the desires of a straight female. There were other factors going on, sure.
In her mind, she was just being a young woman doing what women do. Sure, she was 17 years old, but let's not kid ourselves. Teens at that age are engaging in sex. In the moment the guys were in, they were having fun. It was only when they suspected her being trans when their hateful thoughts became reality.
I know people are going to talk about what should have happened and what shouldn't have. Trans women should wear a badge saying "I am trans" at all times. Therefore, they can't even dare to go out in public feeling like they are female, they have to have an asterisk. I feel female, but approach me with caution.
This is the discussion that people will have. If you're trans, you should blurt it out immediately to anybody you might potentially have a relationship with. This is one of the things about being trans.
At my age and given my appearance, people are going to see me coming. The bigger issue I have is the guys see me and the fact that I'm not exactly passable. Therefore, I must be dressing the way I am because I want to have sex with them.
So, if a guy does approach me and isn't trying to threaten me, he's thinking I might want to do something sexual with him. He's not respecting me as a person.
The good news is nobody's really threatening me these days, but the bad news is I get these guys coming up to me and thinking I want to do sexual things with them more often than I'd like to admit.
I knew I wanted to be at this event, because I wanted to feel somehow closer to Gwen. I wanted to meet her mother, who's carried this pain with her for 20 years.
She lost her baby, and I know a day doesn't go by when she doesn't think of her. She didn't completely understand what being trans was, but she did understand that this was her child and she loved her.
She therefore might not have referred to her as Gwen at first, but eventually she filed for legal name change so that Gwen was not being misgendered. She wanted to stop them referring to her male name. That's what a loving mother does.
In the immediate years after Gwen's murder, Sylvia did seminars, because she wanted to preach about the understanding of trans children. They're not bad people for being trans. They are different. They deserve to be loved and understood, and too many parents disown their trans children.
At a certain point, depression takes hold. Sylvia has battled depression, lost her home, lost the ability to work, lost her belongings and has struggled to even hold on to things that belonged to Gwen. This is the road that she's traveled for the last 20 years.
I can't imagine how she felt as October 4th came each year. It brought it home every year that her daughter had been taken from her this way. 20 years had finally come this year, and Sylvia wasn't going to put together another function.
Bevan Dufty, a politician from San Francisco, was a big instigator in making this gathering at the San Francisco public library happen. He's also somebody who's worked to try to get Sylvia into her own home. He is the sweetest man and shows his heart when he does something like this.
I read that there was going to be a panel talking about legal issues that the transgender community faces, and then there was going to be another panel of trans youth leaders talking about the things being done to help now. This was very informative.
What saddens me is that not even half of the auditorium was full. A lot of people either didn't know or didn't care to show up, and we need to support things like this. I'm glad for the people who were there to pay their respects to Gwen and hear a little bit about what's going on.
It's interesting to see the trans community evolve the way it has. From what I was witnessing when I started to come out in 2008 to now, things have changed. There's a thing called trans youth now where children are identified as being trans at an early enough age that they can bring about the body changes that would make them feel more complete as adults.
Some people think you're forcing a child to become trans, but they pretty much know who they are. If it's a fad, that comes to light very quickly.
While I'm a bit concerned that we're very careful in how we approach this, I want trans health care to happen at as young an age as possible. Those of us who come out later aren't going to get the body changes we'd like to see from HRT, but those who are younger and come into puberty can get the kind of puberty that they really desire.
They'll get the body changes. A trans female, for instance, we'll get the hips of a female, breast development and so on. If they come out at 30, they might still look good, but they won't get all of the changes that they might get if they came out in their teens.
As it was for the trans community when the LGBT rights movement was really gaining steam, it's the transgender youth who are the punching bags. There's more of a focus on extinguishing them. There's more of a focus on taking away their health care so that they can't have the hormones and get those body changes that they desire. There's more of a focus that they don't get addressed as they identify in some states.
So, a trans female, for instance, will still be referred to as a male in some school districts in some states. They'll also be forced to use the male restroom and so on. There's a lot of fear associated with making them use those restrooms and the misnomer that they will somehow harm cisgender females.
The Transgender Law Center and Lambda Legal are doing good things in the fight for transgender rights. They're fighting the states that are putting these anti trans bills to together. They're fighting for our rights, and their winning some of these cases. We were hearing about some of the successes, but also some of the roadblocks ahead.
The pendulum was swinging in our favor at one point, but it always swings back. We always get the blow back from people who think we're gaining too many rights, and they want to take away what we have. These lawyers are on the front line in our fight.
One of the panelists spoke of Gavin Newsom trying to make California a sanctuary state for families with transgender children. When their states are trying to keep them from having certain rights in their transition, California is trying to open the gates. Those States might fight to have them moved back to their states, and California is saying they're not getting them.
The lawyer who's following this advises that Newsom will face a challenge in this law. I can't imagine a state so gung ho to force somebody to comply with their belief of how this person should be that they would extradite them from a state when all they're trying to do is become who they truly are meant to be.
There's a lot of ignorance in the anti-trans movement. There are people who walk around thinking you weren't trans, and somehow somebody put a thought into your head to make you become that one day. That's not the case. The transgender community is certainly evolving, but to make the decision to transition is a personal one.
People go into that decision understanding the body changes that are going to come with hormone replacement therapy. They also understand what surgeries they want to have to help them become. Nobody put it into their head to be that way.
However, the idea of what gender identity is has been turned on its head in the last decade or so. We've always had people who will blur the lines and would be considered gender fluid. There are people who have been hiding in the closet of gender expression. There are people who would like to go out sometimes dressed as female, despite the fact that they are male.
They're not necessarily uncomfortable with being male, but they want to express their femininity sometimes. In doing so, sometimes they decide that they really want to become female full time. They wouldn't necessarily be diagnosed as gender dysphoric, but in their minds, they've made the decision to transition anyway. It's a whole other discussion.
For the transgender youth, there are all kinds of different groups out there to help them. Some of the panelists were there to discuss the effort to help get housing, hormone replacement, jobs and whatever is needed for these trans youth. A lot of good things exist now that weren't there 20 or so years ago.
Specific to ethnic groups, there are groups for the Latina trans population, African Americans and so on. The important takeaway here is that there's more help out there than ever before for the trans community, but we're facing blowback and threats against our own existence to this day.
Sylvia closed the whole event with her speech. She's struggled a little bit, but she's kept an amazing, upbeat spirit. There's something really admirable about this woman. I watched her bounce from one group to another with a spring in her step. She posed for pictures, including a picture with me.
She was willing to stop and talk to anybody afterwards and share her experiences, because she hopes that by sharing Gwen's story, a difference will be made in the world. The fact is, her story is making a difference. Gwen's story still resonates with people 20 years later, and that will continue to be the case.
Gwen Araujo was somebody who had been bullied and made to feel like she was wrong to be who she was. In her own household, she had acceptance from her mother and her family. Outside the door, it became so difficult that she didn't graduate high school. Still, she had dreams.
She and her mother had talked about how good Gwen was at doing hair and makeup. She was going to go to beauty school, and it was her ambition to be somebody who went to Hollywood and did the hair and makeup of the stars. This might be who she was now had she been allowed to live, but hate ruled that night.
While I know Sylvia hurts inside when she has to relive these things in telling Gwen's story, I know she feels that it's something she needs to do whenever possible. I've been praying on this for a while this year. I've felt that with what's going on with the trans youth in places like Florida and Texas, Sylvia could tell a story that would resonate.
We weren't talking about parents of trans children too much 20 years ago. Most of the time, it was that a child was trans and got kicked out of their home. Sylvia was a mother who stood by her child, only to see that child get murdered. When she tells her story, she makes a difference.
For me personally, I feel like I know Gwen. I felt like by being at this event and seeing her mother and her aunt and looking over and seeing some of Gwen's friends, I know her a little bit more. She was in that room with us, or so I believe.
Every time I see a picture of her, I get a little bit sad about what we lost the day she was murdered. I start having that discussion with myself. Maybe it would be okay if I didn't know her if it meant that she still lived.
I know some see her as a martyr for the trans community, and she is. However, to Sylvia Guerrero, Gwen was her baby girl. She'll always be that. God Bless Gwen and Sylvia.
