Could You Murder Her? Some Say Yes
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LOS ANGELES, CA - This post is neither for nor against the difficult choice some people face as they attempt to exercise their right to self-determination. We are, however, emphatically for human rights and against injustice.
We encourage everyone who weighs in on this issue to remember the old Native American saying, "Do not judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccassins.'
Life is not easy anywhere, and it is exponentially challenging in countries with stagnant or emerging economies. Female infanticide occurs most often in countries where females are perceived as a drain on finite economic resources, and this burden serves as justification for aborting or killing a girl.
According to Palash Ghosh in a September 2013 article titled "A Deadly Preference For Male Offspring: The Killing Of Baby Girls In India And Pakistan," there is an ancient preference for male offspring in South Asian society and other parts of Asia and the Middle East.
This preference, according to Ghosh, resulted in the horrendous murder of a one-and-a-half year old Pakistani baby girl who was drowned by her father in front of her mother because he wanted a son.
Amazingly, less than a year later, in April 2014, India's supreme court in a landmark ruling declared that "It is the right of every human being to choose their gender," as it granted rights to those who identify themselves as neither male nor female.
According to the Trans Murder Monitoring Project, 2013 marked "the highest number of murders of minors in the five years it has been keeping statistics. Since the beginning of that year, 22 trans people were reported killed. Eleven of these were under the age of 18.
These include a 13-year-old trans girl strangled in Macaiba, Brazil, on June 9; a 14-year-old trans girl strangled in the city of Ibipora, Brazil, on Oct. 15; and 16-year-old trans girl murdered by a mob at a house party in St. James, Jamaica, on July 22.
Since 2008, Transgender Europe has documented 1,374 murders of trans people in 60 countries worldwide. Of these, 108 victims have been under the age of 20." (Source: Buzzfeed)
Given those circumstances, and the fact that men in general enjoy greater economic prowess, freedom to chart their own destinies, and a host of other intangible benefits; it is a wonder that any person born male would opt to live as a female.
Thus, when people learn about the beautiful transgender child pictured above and in the video below, the bias against females is tossed out, but an often less defined, but more visceral response is evoked. Unlike millions of transgender people around the world, the angelic child whose name is Jazz Jennings has the full support and love of her family, which has often been the only thing standing between her and the people who desire to physically harm her.
I Am Jazz: A Family In Transition, aired on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, and presented a transparent view into the life of Jazz and her family; thus transmuting her from the status of "the other" to that of "human." We may not understand. We may even feel from a cultural or religious standpoint that she is anathema. But, at the end of the day, not one human has a heaven or a hell to send someone to, and we would do well to remember that despite our individual struggles we are all God's creatures.
