Kellie Telesford was murdered. She happened to be a transwoman. A man who was the last person to see her alive, who left her apartment with her cellphone and her travel card, has walked free.
Wait, wait, wait. I see what you’re thinking: “Oh, fuck, another wanker has called “trans panic” and got off.” Nononononono. Too simple. You see, why admit any kind of culpability at all when your lawyer can pull off a stunning “victim killed self in kinky sex game” defence? Huh?
I mean, sure this defence requires a jury to believe that Kellie Telesford was a) into choke-play, b) decided to do a little coincidentally right after the accused left, and c) covered her own fucking body with a fucking sheet, but hey, it’s worth a go if you can sell them on a few crucial pieces of bullshit:
- Transpeople = weird, and thus probably into weird things.
- Transpeople = ALL ABOUT THE SEX, AMIRITE, and thus almost certainly into naughty things.
- Transpeople = deviant, therefore Not Like Us, and therefore stupid, and thus likely enough to kill themselves stupidly while doing deviant things.
And that’s even ignoring the fact that yet again it’s a woman of colour who’s been murdered, and we all know how much outrage that kind of thing generates, or all the other bullshit trans-myths that they’ve looked at over at Questioning Transphobia.
Oh, and BBC? When you’ve already painstakingly pointed out that Kellie Telesford was “pre-operative transgender female”, adding “who was born a man” is just a tad redundant, n’est-ce pas? Oh, I’m sorry, were you trying to subtly emphasise the “scary deviant” aspect? FAIL.
As angry and upset as I am, your powerful words have made me angrier.
This is just really upsetting, seeing another instance of a defense lawyer discrediting the victim as a human being to get the guilty off the hook. It’s reprehensible.
Posted by Lisa Harney | August 16, 2008, 1:06 pmThanks for writing this. You’ve managed to express all the disgust and outrage this verdict inspires in me.
Posted by Debi Crow | August 16, 2008, 2:34 pmMay I add that THERE IS NO JUSTICE? =/
Nobody would get away with this sort of shit if it wasn’t a transperson who was the victim. Can you imagine people getting off after saying the money just embezzled itself? No, the gun just happened to release the safety and went off by accident when I dropped it, your honour…
Urgh, so ridiculous. There’s just no words that are enough for this kind of ignorant bigoted cruelty and self-interested irresponsible objectification.
Posted by Ari | August 16, 2008, 8:17 pm