“A lot of transwomen have gone back to presenting as male, as a form of protection”, Channyn Lynn Parker, the intake coordinator at Chicago House’s Trans Life Center (TLC) told me recently. “And that within itself is causing mental health concerns, a lot of depression, some suicide ideation – things like that.”

Transgender people already often live in fear: fear of being outed against their will, of being hurt by strangers or people they love because of their identity, even of just never being accepted. But many transwomen now believe that they have more to fear than ever: this year looks to possibly be one of the most violent on record towards transgender women in North America, as there are already eight confirmed homicides of transgender women – a majority identifying as women of color – and it’s only March.

At places like TLC, which offers support to transgender people of Chicago, employees are concerned about the impact this violence is having.

“What I have noticed directly – with this rash of homicides towards trans identified women – is that a lot of people are becoming afraid to present as their authentic self”, Parker told me at the TLC offices. We had met the day after Sumaya Sol, a transgender woman, was found dead in Toronto.

The TLC, which has a weekly drop-in program for housing, legal and health services, has noticed a recent drop in people coming in for services at their program, specifically transgender women.

Fear is also severely restricting mobility for some transwomen. “We’ve heard [that there are] transwomen of color who will not go out during daylight hours”, Josie Paul, the director of TLC told me, “and some [other women] not under the cover of darkness out of fear”.

“We will hear women talk about just the harassment on the [Chicago Transit Authority], but I think we have to keep in mind that broader context,” Paul told me. “That a tiny bit of verbal violence ... nobody knows where that goes to when there are so many women ending up dead.”

“I get it”, Danielle Love, the peer-lead coordinator for TLC, chimed in. “I have people literally come up to me and say: ‘You’re a fucking fag.’ And I am just sitting on the train going to work and someone feels they can say that.”



And it happens so much so that many have stopped reporting this type of violence among many other forms.

“You don’t get much of a positive response from police”, Love said, adding that police will not show up many times when they are called to respond to a crime against transgender women. “And if they do come then somehow they insinuate you’re soliciting or they will look up your record and maybe see a solicitation, something they can use to turn it around on you”.

“For most trans-women [the police] are the last people to call”, Paul said. “They will complicate life instead of stopping the violence”.

While some trans people see the act of “passing” – presenting to the public as cisgender male or female and even obtaining documentation that reflects one’s gender presentation – as a primary way to prevent violence, others like Parker worry that this simply reinforces the gender binary that harms trans people.

And it doesn’t allow us to work towards a world that embraces who they truly are, and stop the violence that transgender people are facing.

“My qualms with them,” Parker said, referring to some of the recent laws that allow transgender people to obtain identity documents that match their gender presentation, “is that they actually do not say, ‘Hey, we accept you. We accept your trans-ness’”.

“These things do not embrace us for being trans”, she added. “Instead, these things push us into disappearing into a hetero-cis-normative society and, because of this, that’s why there is this mad dash to pass-ability, because pass-ability is protection, more than anything.”

But, she told me: “If your only protection is a gender marker, is a name change, is a rhinoplasty, then you are in fact not free.”

The apparent uptick in violence against trans people comes after the mainstream media declared a “tipping point” for transgender issues, with the rise of people like actress Laverne Cox and writer Janet Mock in mainstream culture. These two women work nonstop to tell their own stories as transgender women, in the hope of bringing positive change.

But can storytelling lead to change?

“I believe it helps”, Parker said. “I would like to believe that with the visibility of one’s humanity it is much harder to destroy someone. When we see an individual’s personhood, when we see their humanity, it’s hard to deny that person. It’s hard to block a person’s access to thrive”.

Maria Pahl, a cisgender women who is the staff attorney for TLC, finds storytelling can be a tactic for change, but it’s only one side of the coin.

“I think as a broader society we need to do a better job not just listening to stories that are palatable”, she said, referring to Mock and Cox.

She thinks that it’s the unsavory stories of the most oppressed people’s everyday lives, not just the few representative of that group in the public eye, that need to be heard and embraced, like, for instance, stories of needing to engage in survival sex work to make ends meet like we see many transgender women having to do.

Stories that many people initially judge without seeking to understand the systemic reasons behind them that help increase empathy for people not like ourselves.

“We need to be better at understanding and recognizing that just because [a story] is unpalatable to us it doesn’t make that person any less than a person. Just because they made choices,” Pahl told me, referring things like survival sex and drug work, “doesn’t mean they are less worthy of the basic human dignity and respect that every single person should have”.

All the women I spoke to at TLC agreed with this statement, all of them transgender women besides Pahl. And they all felt this is what has been missing with this “tipping point” for their community.

For them, stories are not only important because of who is telling them, but also who is listening to them. And that is what is needed now, more than ever, for transgender women: that all of us finally listen to their stories.

Not just the few who we’ve allowed to become the symbols of a global community, but also those who fear they could die any day just for being themselves.