Red is still undead

Two years after the brutal murder of Gisberta, a transsexual woman has again been murdered in Portugal. And once again, the media coverage strenghtens transphobia.

The Panteras Rosa launched an international call for action, which I relay hereby.

Portugal, Transphobia kills again: international call for action!

Two years after the brutal murder of Gisberta, in Oporto, another transsexual woman was murdered and her body placed in a rubble dumpster in the Lisbon area last month.

Other crimes followed, shocking the country. However, the surge of violence cannot hide neither the victims nor the nature of these crimes. This is the case of Luna, 42, partially deaf, of Brazilian origin, for many years resident and worker in Portugal, prostitute at Conde de Redondo area (in Lisbon).

Two years after Gisberta, transsexual people are still targets for hatred and violence based on prejudice and ignorance. The crime is under investigation and under justice secret, so we know very few about its circumstances or about its motivation; we hope the investigation undertaken by the Police can provide answers.

Nevertheless, we know that transphobia kills and that trans people are more prone to suffer violence than the majority. We know prostitution is often a job for those who have no other way of earning a living, and that it is hard to have a gender different from the one your body suggests. We know prejudice and discrimination are pervasive, that ignorance feeds hatred and generates violence. We know the State, society, all of us, have responsibilities towards the deadly victims, and mainly towards all those other people in whose life the fight for survival coexists with fear and the risks that cause it.

Luna was born a woman although her body suggested otherwise; her body, masculine, didn't fit her identity. She was being followed at Hospital de Santa Maria by the multidisciplinary team in charge of helping trans people change their bodies; she had projects, wishes and frustrations just like anyone else. She was dear to some people and maybe wished to go back to Brazil, where her family lives. Luna was a woman who fought against many obstacles and, according to newspapers, died victim of great violence, possibly fed by hatred, prejudice and ignorance. Her body was left in a dumpster, hidden by rubble and dust, as if it was garbage, as if her life had not been worth living.

Like all potential victims, trans people need forms of protection that guarantee equality of opportunities and the possibility of a dignified life. They need, like everyone else, of being able to exercise their rights to the development of personality and to self determination – of being able to freely choose their name; they don't need (nobody does!) identification documents that insist on the use of criteria so voided of real content such as "sex" (even if disguised only as "name" and "justify", e.g., placing a trans woman in a detention cell with men. Trans people need being seen as people with rights and duties, no more and no less than all other people. Trans people in Portugal need the pedagogy of visibility, way beyond the prostitution or night shows circles. And Portugal needs to see these people without prejudice and fear.

Gender identity is subject the State should have already legislated about; this delay aggravates many trans people's living (or survival) conditions. When will the legal amendments that allow the actual exercise of civil rights by transsexual and transgendered people come? When will we have legislation that overcomes many politicians’' retrograding and conservatism and stops to impose petty restrictions? When will we have legislation that stops feeding the daily psychological violence against these people? When will we have legislation that clearly considers that transphobia constitutes aggravating grounds for discrimination, harassment and violence? When will we have a serious commitment towards stopping cases like those of Gisberta and Luna, murdered out of transphobic hatred? When will police forces be provided with more human resources and more and better civic and technical training? When will cooperative approaches substitute the aggressive attitudes lingering among members of the various police forces?

Panteras Rosa – Frente de combate à GayLesBiTransfobia (Pink Panthers – Combat front against GayLesBiTransphobia) reaffirm their commitment towards fighting against transphobia in all of its forms and pay tribute to Luna, prostitute in our city, woman just because!

Lisbon, March 13 2008

Proposal for International Action: on the 24th, 25th or 26th March

That vigils are held, with candles, in special memory of Luna and all of the trans people victim of transphobia.

To be developed by numerous small and big groups in the most (small to big) cities possible.

With banners, just in front of Portuguese embassies or consulates in the cities where they may exist or, for other cities, in squares in front of European ministries, in front of psychiatric hospitals or whichever places contribute to transphobia.

We suggest the following phrases:

Luna trans 42 years old Brazilian, prostitute murdered in Lisbon.

Statistically, how many times more is a trans person in risk of being victim of violence compared to you? And murdered?

According to the context of each country we suggest the phrase:

Stop transphobic laws. How much longer for a law against transphobia?

Or for countries that still haven’t turned transphobia into law:

How much longer for a law against transphobia?

This case is not Portugal specific, it is international and the fight efforts should be done together.

(In practical terms, it should be simpler to organize small groups in different places instead of asking people to mobilize to the Portuguese embassies that are concentrated on the capital cities)

We ask you to publicize this action, to participate in big numbers and to forward testimonials, photos, articles, etc. to panteras.lisboa@gmail.com

The media strengthen transphobia

After the recent murder of one more transexual woman, Luna, occurred in the area of Lisbon, the media focus on the physical aspect of the victims in the most sensationalist manner - thus making it more important than the murder itself. A few words about the murder follow, as if this is was a clear and natural explanation of the cause of such murder - lingering in the detaileded description of the unusual physical aspect of the victim. At the hands of the media the most important becomes the victim's unusual body, placing the murder on the background.

Speaking - depending on the attempt (or not) not to seem transphobic - of a transsexual with a man's body (a pruddish way to say "with penis", of a man dressed in women's clothes, or of a transvestite with breasts. Some even speak of homophobia.

The picture emerging of such articles is that the victim is a monstrosity displayed to feed the public curiosity, without any respect neither for her gender nor for the intimacy of her body, and giving the impression that it is almost (or even absolutely) normal that these people be murdered.

The other image conveyed in this way is that being trans is wanting to mislead "the world" by using a disguise particularly well arranged to give a misleading appearance of men and women... And if they deceive the world is of course natural that the deceived people react.

This kind of speech from the media is, unfortunately, far from applying only to murder -- it is used in almost all broadcasts, articles, and interviews on trans subjects.

The Portuguese media, with no exception, satisfy also with the description of the trans person’s precarity situation – wether it is on prostitution, drugs, having HIV, no papers, no house – as if these lives were a choice of the victims, describing them hiding that it is transphobia that generates this precarity, and presenting as scandalous not only the “choice” of being trans, but also the choice of the life style, turning the victims into immoral and chocking persons and continuing in this way to promote transphobia, the precarity of the trans lives, and the fact that they are among the persons most likely to suffer agression. The presence of the trans person in the Mental Diseases List, to frequently legitimates the media, when they concede expression to the trans, to credit or discredit it trough persons of the medical corps, reinforcing the idea that the word of a trans has no value for itself.

(Version française ici)

If, globally, the revendications for the rights of trans people start so spread slowly, there is some question which often comes back : "why ?". Why are there trans people ? Why are people unhappy with their biological sex ?

I can't answer to that. Some people do. I don't think they do it well. Usually they are psychiatrists who aren't trans themselves but pretend to know us better than we do, which seems logical since they also say we are mentally sick.

If I had to answer to this global question, I would probably come up with something like "it depends" or "because there are genders", and it wouldn't really be a helpful answer (though I actually like the second one).

However, I am not a psychiatrist but a blogger, which means I only have to talk about my egocentric self.

So the question will rather be "Me, in particular, why am I transgender ?".

It doesn't of course mean that it is a good answer for other people. It doesn't event mean that it will be a good answer for me in some years, since it is my opinion at this time.

So, why am I transgender ?

The reason can be summed in some words : "because I was raised to be a man".

It is not "because I was raised to be a man while I feeled a woman in the inside". While I can tell this sort of thing to a psychiatrist, it doesn't make it true^[1]. I wasn't born with some female "soul". The answer is just "because I was raised to be a man".

What I mean is, if I had a vagina and had been raised to be a woman, I think it would be pretty much the same. Not exactly, since I would be ftm (female-to-male) instead of mtf (male-to-female), but I think I woult still be trans.

It is not a question of my soul's gender or nature or whatever.

It's just that gender assignation sucks.

Whether I am forced to wear a dress or forbidden to do so is actually the same thing : I don't have the freedom to choose. Society decides that I have a penis and thus I must be a "he". Society decides that I have a vagina and thus I must be a "she".

Fuck them.

It's political.

It is not only political, because I really dislike being considered as a man, I don't just pretend it in order to be more subversive or something like that. But it is also political. Being trans' is a reaction to the gender coercition.

Of course, that's a theorisation. Sometimes, I just happen to think "ah, if I were a cisgender woman" or simply "ah, if only I didn't have this corpulence and this low 'passability'".

But, I think the real source of this is gender coercition. $$Or even, to be a little provocative, gender totalitarism. Totalitarism sounds extrem, but I heard someone explaining that the difference between a dictature and totalitarism is that dictature imposes its law, while totalitarism goes farther: it requires you to agree with it.

And this is it. The simple fact of not showing love for your assigned gender can cause discrimination, going from some disdaining looks to murder through refusal to hire you.$$ If I sometimes would like to be a "true" woman (instead of wanting to be a transwoman, which is the case most of the time), it isn't because I have a female brain, because my parents forced me to wear dresses when I was a child or because I am some homosexual who doesn't admit it. It is because I am not a man. Oh, yes, I am biologically a male, but all my adolescence and life drove mo to think I was no real man. I don't think there are many who are real men or women. It's just that maybe I was a bit less than others. I wasn't effeminate. I just didn't like this gender. And that was already a problem.

I could have lived with it, I guess. Honestly. I don't live that bad as a man: it justs upsets me, and sometimes a bit more, but I suppose I could cope.

Only, and it is there where it is political, I think I had a choice. Choice between living as a man, not really well but not desperately bad either - I could have compensate with food, movies, video games or prozac - and between living as a trans' with all the problems it can cause be it in the employment or with my family.

The trans' way had two significant advantages: maybe allowing me to feel better, and saying to this damned essentialist, binary system that it could go to hell.

I don't think I would have made the same choice if I hadn't be revolutionnary. It isn't two things I can completely separate.

I acknowledge that there are many trans people who made different choices, or didn't have one. I admit that some people can have felt being of the opposite gender since they were 4 or 5. But I don't think the "reasons" for all transsexuality should be reduced to this. My reasons are a bit different, but I think they are as worthy and legitimate as others.

My first blog post in english :-)

The reason for this post is that I didn't find any information on google when I wanted it. Maybe i didn't search enough, though.

My problem was that I had a library (ASpiReNN - a lib to simulate Artificial Spiking Recurrent Neural Networks) which was coded in C in an object-oriented way^[1]. In order to document this library, I used Doxygen, which is a simple enough tool.

However, while it gave some pretty good results for C++ projects, I found the documentation quite ugly for my C projet. In particular, the notions of classes and inheritance was totally lost.

I dind'nt found any way to tell doxygen to treat the code as object-oriented C, nor did I found other documentation tools that allowed it, at the exception of gtk-doc, but it seemed really painful to parameter for my project.

The way I found to represent the object structure in the documentation is using Doxygen's grouping facility :

In the .h file :

/**
  *  \ingroup Parent_class (optionally)
  *  \defgroup Classname
  * 
  *  A class that does  this, this and that
  * 
  * @{
  **/
... (your code)
/** @} **/

And, in the .c file :

/**
  * \addtogroup Classname
  * 
  * @{
  **/
... (your code)
/** @} **/

Okay, it is a bit more verbose than documenting C++, but it stays reasonable, and it gives :

Which is pretty correct, except it says "modules" instead of "classes" :)

Of course, if you know a better way, I'd gladly hear it :)