An Alternative View - Remembering the forgotten
By: Jason Evans, Staff Columnist
Imagine driving home one night when you're suddenly involved in an
auto accident. Your injuries will prove fatal without proper
medical treatment. Thankfully, EMT's arrive on the scene as you
regain consciousness. They approach you, begin to administer
treatment... but then suddenly stop! You're horrified as they back
away.
A gathering crowd is pleading with them to "get to work," but
instead the EMT's ridicule and taunt you. A supervisor finally
arrives to find you crawling away from your harassers. The EMT's
are at last ordered to "get to work or lose their jobs." But their
efforts are reluctant, negligible, delayed. You later die in the
Emergency Room as a result. All of this simply because the EMT's
didn't like how you were dressed.
Is such a scenario absurd? Unfortunately not. It happened to Tyra
Hunter in Washington D.C. on Aug. 7, 1995. Tyra was a pre-op
transsexual female, and the EMT's, upon removing her clothing,
found that she had a penis. They felt that gave them the right to
refuse treating her, and so they harassed her even as she lay
dying.
Dozens of scenarios like this occur annually in America. In August
of 2001, Willie Houston was beaten to death after standing outside
of a restroom waiting for his wife. His crime? He'd been holding
his wife's purse when he decided to assist a blind gentleman into
the men's room. On July 5, 1999, PFC Barry Winchell was bludgeoned
to death with a baseball bat by another soldier in his platoon. His
crime? He was dating a transgender female. In January of 1999,
Robert Eads died of cancer after 20 doctors refused to treat him.
Why? He was a transgender male.
