With Friends Like These…

 In the newest issue of The Advocate, Neal Broverman examines the murder of Lawrence King in Oxnard California, and asks who is to blame for his death.  He writes:

In the months leading up to that morning, King had undergone a metamorphosis. Guided by a welcoming support system at the group home where he lived, the teenager was encouraged to dress as he pleased and live as the person he wanted to be. What King and others didn’t recognize was that this encouragement—and his response to it—placed him on a collision course with a culture that found him repulsive.

Broverman proceeds to point the finger at the foster care facility where he lived, his caregivers, and activists, including those who passed on a “Know Your Rights Guide” entitled “Queer and Trans Youth in California Foster Care Have Rights!” provided by the NCLR to LGBT youth at that and other care centres.  He continues:

As wonderful as this encouragement sounds, did it put Larry in harm’s way by sending him out in a world not ready for him? It may be beyond the capacity of kids to reconcile a tolerant atmosphere like Casa Pacifica with the xenophobic, conformist nature of school. Children like Brandon McInerney are products of their society, one that simply does not know what to do with a boy in heels.

Following classic blame-the-victim logic, Broverman quite clearly asserts that Lawrence King’s gender-defiant and openly gay behaviour is primarily responsible for his own death, as is anyone who had encouraged him to be himself.  Only in the last paragraph does he address the societal perspective fed to McInerney that violence somehow solves everything, in token regard.  I wonder if Broverman would apply the same logic to the murders of many others who we commemorate at the Transgender Day of Remembrance, or likewise feel that folks like Matthew Shepard should have simply lived more in secret than choosing to be themselves?  Perhaps we should be telling transsexuals to satisfy themselves with crossdressing in secret (assuming they can suffocate themselves like that without being driven to suicide) and not bother trying to change their lives into something they find tolerable, for the sake of the society “that simply does not know what to do with a boy in heels?”

One would think that an advocate who was really speaking for us with any form of concern and understanding might consider the possibility that the more we live in secret, the more those who would intimidate and harass us are emboldened and entrenched in the belief that their view (and hate) is “right.”  It’s puzzling that a magazine that advocates one community’s right to come out of the closet is suggesting that another community (trans youth) would be best served by staying in theirs.

Needless to say, more than a few people are upset.  TransYouth Family Allies have started a communal letter, introduced at The Bilerico Project, and already several have emailed them to join the signatories.

I have to wonder who Broverman considers himself an ”Advocate” for.

~ by dentedbluemercedes on March 26, 2008.