Tag: anti-transgender violence

Stephen E. Thompson is a 45 year-old man who was working as a DJ at a party thrown at Down Under Lounge in Omaha.  His attire for the evening consisted of what has been called priestly garb: (a black Catholic shirt with priest collar and skinny skeleton jeans.

Kara Jeslyn Barone, 27, and a friend, both transgender women, needed to use the women’s restroom that night.  It turned out that Thompson’s girlfriend, Dahlia Strange, needed to use the restroom at the same time.

These things happen…especially at bars.

Thompson went berserk.  He began kicking at the door and tried to force his way in.  Barone pushed him out and locked the door in order to keep him out. Strange finished her business and opened the door to leave.  Thompson took the opportunity to punch Barone in the face…while calling her a “faggot” and other anti-gay slurs.

Saturday is IDAHOT, the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.  It’s a little annoying that there is only one day for this…rather than it being a year-round concern.

To kick off the event, I’ve got some data for you.  The Transgender Violence Tracking Portal is a new project, started in March of this year…so their data is a bit limited by the fact that only 14 countries have submitted data to them so far.

the TVTP project was created to allow public access and grassroots reporting of incidents of violence, and any registered user to easily query the TVTP database at any time to see the anti-transgender violence that has been reported.  Researchers will be drawing from standard sources (news media, law enforcement, GLBT groups and many other sources) for additional and corroborative data.