Black Trans Woman T.T. Murdered In Chicago, Is At Least the 20th Trans Person Murdered In 2016
As if playing some kind of gross cosmic joke, exactly one month after the last article I wrote like this, another Black trans woman, this one named T.T., has been murdered. She was found dead on Sunday night in Garfield Park in Chicago. While we don’t know the exact number and almost certainly never will, we know that she is at least the 20th trans person murdered this year, most of them being Black and Brown trans women. My heart, and the hearts of all of us at Autostraddle, are broken. We are crying for T.T. and we are crying for her friends and family. This never gets easier, as Angelica Ross said in the Emmy-Nominated Her Story; we do get stronger, though. But sometimes, like right now, it seems like we’re not getting strong enough fast enough. It seems like we never will.
There’s not a lot of information about who T.T. was, but her friend Jaliyah, who organized a vigil for her, said she was 26 or 27 and described her as “a lovely person” who was “laughing all the time.”
“You could be going through a bad day, but once you saw T.T., she was such a happy cheerful person all that changed,” she said of her friend. She also said that the two of them had been incarcerated together and that T.T. had helped her make it through that ordeal. According to Jaliyah, T.T. wanted to be a hair stylist.
The details, the few that we have right now, are grim and make this case even more horrifying. I don’t want to go into details about how she was murdered, you can read those details elsewhere. Trans women, and in particular, trans women of color and specifically Black Trans women face disgusting rates of violence, and it’s often disgustingly brutal. Those rates grow even more when these women live at the intersections of poverty, sex work or even just sleeping with men.
T.T.’s friend Jaliyah told the Windy City Times that “people don’t know what we go though out here. They don’t see the struggle being transgender on the West Side. It’s crazy. I just want justice for my friend. Trans lives matter. She is the third person killed around here and there is nothing done about it.”
The other two people she’s referring to are Paige Clay and Tiffany Gooden, two other Black trans women who were murdered in this area in 2012. Jaliyah says she fears that her friend’s case will be ignored, just like those women’s were. T.T. has already been misgendered by local police and media. So often the murders of trans women, especially Black and Brown trans women, go unsolved. It’s exhausting to live as a trans woman and it’s exhausting to die as one. We never get to rest. We’re always fighting to be seen, be recognized and be respected. But it’s a battle many of us lose.
This week has been exceedingly hard for trans women. Trans comedian Jordan Wieleba, absolute legend Lady Chablis and actress Alexis Arquette have all died in a very short span, and now there’s this murder. It’s a horrible period to end the horrible sentence that has been this week. Rest in peace and power, Jordan, Lady Chablis, Alexis and T.T.
This list of murdered trans people, just in America, just in 2016 is already far, far too long, and now we’re adding T.T. to it. Who knows who will be next.
Monica Loera, 43
Jasmine Sierra, 52
Kayden Clarke, 24
Veronica Banks Cano, 40
Maya Young, 25
Demarkis Stansberry, 30
Kedarie/Kandicee Johnson, 16
Kourtney Yochum, 32
Shante Thompson, 34
Keyonna Blakeney, 22
Reecey Walker, 32
Mercedes Successful, 32
Amos Beede, 38
Goddess Diamond, 20
Dee Dee Dodds, 22
Dee Whigham, 25
Skye Mockabee, 26
Erykah Tijerina, 36
Rae’Lynn Thomas, 28
T.T., 26 or 27