I saw the video on Bilrico…
The attack is a horrible Hate Crime. I hope the video leads to the capture and successful prosecution of the perpetrators of this horrible attack and I further hope they are sentenced to many years within the Prison Industrial Complex and get to spend the rest of their lives regretting having committed this hate crime.
And it is a hate crime on several levels. It is an anti-transsexual/transgender hate crime. There is a racist element to the attack. There is a gang element to it as well.
The “Thug Culture” promoted by so much of rap music and popular culture is almost like an indoctrination program that encourages black kids to commit violent acts that will result in long prison sentences. Pop culture aimed at the youth demographic encourages both violence and a psychopathic disregard for the well-being of others.
That goes hand in hand with the higher classes embrace of Ayn Rand inspired sociopathology.
That said I feel that many in the transgender community are acting like freaking vultures ready to exploit the horrible attack on this woman for the promotion of their own particular goal of including public accommodations in the ENDA bill they walked away from rather than tackle in separate parts.
It might be better to use this to promote Hate Crimes Laws which are also lacking in Maryland.
I know it would show a hell of a lot more concern for the victim of this brutal attack if people were to reach out to her with both financial and emotional support. As well as legal support in filing a major lawsuit against not only the perpetrators but the punk who thought it would be cute to You Tube the video instead of helping the victim.
If a cup of hot coffee that caused burns was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mickey D then failure to protect their customers from a brutal, brutal assault such as the one in the video should result in a million dollar judgment against them.
Women Born Transsexual 
April 23, 2011 at 5:55 pm
Suzan — I commented on Box Turtle Bulletin that I’m not a violent person… but had I had been there with a baseball bat in hand, cracking skulls and breaking bones.
I hope that after the victim recovers, she sues the hell of not only the franchaisee, but the so-called security firm, and each and every individual who stood by and laughed or did nothing to stop it.
If a 14-year-old started assaulting me, I’d back-slap her so hard her skanky hair weave would be flying off her head!
April 23, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Notice I will permit discussion of the possible role of race in this attack. I will not tolerate racist language.
Posts that use racist language will be removed.
April 23, 2011 at 6:45 pm
How exactly is it that you can ascribe the actions of these two teenagers to “hip hop” music and “thug culture”? As if just by virtue of them being black they obviously MUST have been influenced but all the “gangsta” rap music that “black” people listen to.
The only apparent and obvious motives for this attack are transphobia and cissexism. The fact that the victim is (apparently) white may or may not have influenced the attack.. but only in so much as the victim’s (apparent) trans status marked her as wide open for a beating to begin with.
Excuse me while I get graphic and very personal here:
Make no mistake…. in the very earliest days of my transition I too was attacked in public on several occasions and with varying degrees of injury. I am black by the way. And I began transition at 16-17 and wasn’t deemed “passable” until I was 20. During this period I suffered extreme levels of harassment and violence that I’m still trying to recover from to this day. And my harassers varied in age, race, and class, you name it.
The very first time I was attacked in public, I was chased out of a Denny’s at 3am by a group of 5 black men and women, all college aged. They managed to rip out a couple of dreds before I jumped in my car and drove to safety.
The second time I was attacked in a mall by a mixed group of 6 black, white and hispanic men also colleged aged. They had a disposable camera they had procured for the occasion while following me and took turns holding my arms while they posed me with in the pictures and forced me to simulate sex acts for said photos. Mall security did not intervene for 20 minutes.
The third time it happened I was pushed off of a moving metro bus by three black teenaged girls because I wouldn’t answer them as to whether I was a man, a woman or “some kind of dyke.”
In all three of the above instances, it was clear they were doing this because they thought I was a “man trying to be a woman” or because I refused to clarify my gender to their satisfaction. Transphobia. Cissexism.
In all three instances, bystanders stood by and watched it happen and even cheered my attack on.
The only constant in those three examples was the youth of my attackers and the fact that I was readable as trans to my attackers.
The racism that IS driving this Baltimore story is the racist public backlash against black youth who OBVIOUSLY must be brainwashed by all their rap music to the point that they DARE to do violence to a white person.
Nevermind the fact that cissexist infrastructures will strip even the whitest body of all its privilege when that white body can be read as trans. No, let’s look to tired stereotypes about black culture and rap music to explain this horrible event.. let’s look everywhere but society’s accountability to the hierarchy of bodies that it has created.
April 23, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Exactly how do I ascribe…?
First of all I also attributed popular culture wit its violence porn as well.
Rap music is at its very core misogynistic, violent and homophobic. The celebration of “thug” is so negative that if the prison industrial complex isn’t behind the peddling of rap and the surrounding lifestyle then it should be.
Further I have been around long enough and seen enough other group directed violence to know that racism is a sin that every group is guilty of.
I have also issued a warning that racist language isn’t going to be permitted on this thread.
Do you see rap as a positive thing or are you willing to ponder the idea that it might be part of the corporate spectacle being used to drive both a new Apartheid Nation and the Prison Industrial Complex?
April 23, 2011 at 6:57 pm
And for the record, just because the story broke on worldstarhiphop.com does not mean that the people in the video are in anyway affiliated with hip hop culture. I was really struggling to understand how you leapt to associate hip hop with this attack… but now it makes more sense.
Stereotypes thrive on implicit association.
April 23, 2011 at 7:36 pm
I am not going to disagree that rap music is a huge purveyor of misogyny homophobia and violence. A discussion about how racism intersects with Rap’s misognyistic and homophobic cultural products is certainly a discussion worth having on another day. But I am not going to get into a discussion about Rap with you. It is IRRELEVANT to the attack on the Baltimore woman.
The headlines were not “Baltimore Transgender Woman is attacked at Rap Concert.” Enough about rap. Enough about hip hop.
It was not these girls’ exposure to rap music and/or pornography that attacked this woman. It was the girls’ cissexist training by mainstream culture that deems all bodies readable as trans as fair game for violence.
While the violence promoted by hip hop and porn certainly doesn’t HELP the situation, you have no evidence that those things played any part in this attack. You DO have plenty of evidence that transphobia was to blame tho.
Also I can see that it’s pointless to have a discussion about racism here since, after some digging on your blog, you appear to define racism as any prejudice by any person against another racial group, rather than defining it as an institutional structure of white supremacy at the expense of all bodies marked as brown and black.
So I think I’ve said my piece here. Thanks for the discussion, and I’ll be taking any further commentary to my own blog, where I may continue to exploit this woman’s tragedy to further my own political agenda.
Peace out.
Jane
April 23, 2011 at 7:55 pm
You are right I don’t play the identity politics game of racism being exclusive to whites. I’ve seen too much racism on the part of all different groups to buy that fiction. White people can be racist so can black people. Some Asian people are viciously racist, the same is true of some Latinos I’m not into the post-modern word game that lets people skate on their racism just because they have anointed themselves as exempt.
I consider that game to be highly dishonest and a game that permits an honest dialogue.
April 24, 2011 at 1:31 pm
This is nothing to do with music, culture or anything else.
This is purely about sociopaths attacking an innocent woman.
I assume that WPATH, Dreger, Bailey, Blanchard, etc will write up a defence of the attackers at some point.
April 24, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Actually for about a year now there has been a rumor of a TS/TG groupie making it with various Hip Hop stars. the homophobic responses to this rumor including the general suggestion that if they are true this group deserves a cap busted in “his” punk ass are chilling.
And yeah it is about culture. What we are calling culture is propaganda of the same sort used to dehumanize the Jews in Nazi Germany or for that matter in every single war fought since modern communications have existed.
There has been an anti LGBT/T, anti-woman, anti hippie, anti left war that has been waged since the the 1960s and probably since the 30s.
Culture is a tool of education and indoctrination. Mass/pop culture indoctrinates the masses. Alternative culture indoctrinates those who gravitate to sub-cultures or alternative cultures.
Identity politics indoctrinate those who claim the identity, hence the Borg like sameness of messages from those who are part of TG Inc.
Listening to a constant message of dehumanizing hate encourages hatred, no matter if it is the KKK or some rapper talking about slapping around his bitches and whores.