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It's a symbol of our constant struggle against Roman oppression! |
Posted on 05/27/2004 1:58:55 PM PDT by adam_az
FREMONT, Calif. - The name on the birth certificate was Edward Araujo Jr., but the teenager preferred the first name Gwen. At age 17, before getting a chance to make the name change official, Araujo was beaten and strangled after the people she thought were her friends found out she was biologically male.
This week, Araujo's family asked a court for a posthumous name change to Gwen Amber Rose Araujo.
"She's Gwen to me, and I'm her mother," Sylvia Guerrero said outside the courthouse. "This is who she was. She's transgender and she's Gwen."
Superior Court Commissioner Thomas Surh called the request "a novel situation" and said he would let Guerrero know his decision in about a month.
Araujo's family said she had used the name Gwen for years, convinced from an early age that her sexual and biological identities conflicted.
In October 2002, police found her body in a shallow grave 150 miles east of her home in the San Francisco suburb of Newark.
The man who took police to the site, 21-year-old Jaron Nabors, later said Araujo was viciously beaten and strangled following the revelation of her gender.
Nabors pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Three other men, including two who were sexually active with Araujo, are on trial in a case expected to go to a jury next week.
Officially recognizing Araujo as Gwen has symbolic importance, said Christopher Daley of the San Francisco-based Transgender Law Center, which helped the family request the name change.
"The courts serve as a voice for the people of California," Daley said. "By filing this petition, we gave the people an opportunity to explicitly recognize Gwen as Gwen."
Araujo picked the name Gwen after the singer Gwen Stefani, Guerrero said. Guerrero added Amber Rose because those were names she picked in pregnancy, believing she was carrying a girl.
"I lost Eddie a long time ago, and I had to say goodbye to Eddie," Guerrero said. "Unfortunately, to Gwen, too."
Nabors pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Three other men, including two who were sexually active with Araujo, are on trial in a case expected to go to a jury next week.
More from Globe & Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040327/GENDER27/TPComment/TopStories
(excerpts)
Three years later, on Oct. 3, 2002, she was savagely beaten and strangled at a house party after a girl followed her to the bathroom, reached under her skirt and discovered her male genitalia.
"She's got a penis," the girl yelled to the young men now on trial for murder. Two of the four accused -- who are all in their early 20s -- had prior sexual relations with Gwen and been suspicious of her gender.
At first, the news that she had male anatomy brought laughter and derision, but the mood soon soured. For the next two hours, it's alleged that the men beat Gwen so savagely that police described her eventual death as "overkill."
Police said one young man hit her in the head with a soup can, then a skillet. She sank to the floor and was kicked so hard in the head she dented the wall when she hit it. The men allegedly wrapped her in a blanket to prevent blood from staining the couch and floor. Prosecutors said she was dragged to the garage, where they strangled her, then tossed her in the back of a pickup. Another man hit her in the head with a shovel to ensure that she was dead.
(snip)
But Gwen's killing has also sparked an intense debate over legal definitions of hate, with some experts arguing that her death was the result of bruised feelings -- not hatred against a transsexual.
Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston and the author of several books on hate crime, said the case is brutal and disturbing, but he is not convinced the alleged attackers were motivated by hatred toward transgendered people.
(snip)
Mr. Levin thinks Gwen Araujo's killing was prompted by intense feelings of betrayal -- not hatred against transsexuals. The men accused of killing Gwen had known her for a couple of weeks and two had been sexually intimate with her. He compared her slaying to a man who kills his wife after learning she has been unfaithful.
"He feels betrayed and he kills her," Mr. Levin said. "Gender is involved -- she's a woman -- but gender is not the motivation. I think people feel betrayed for lots of personal reasons and this is just one of many."
Defining all murders of transgendered people as hate crimes is dangerous, Mr. Levin said, because it trivializes real crimes of hate. "I get a little concerned when we go out of our way to look at a case that just doesn't seem to fit, and I want us to use the hate-crime label, but use it appropriately. I'm not sure this one is."
(snip)
The men she hooked up with attended the same high school Gwen once did, but did not know her past as a male. On the night of the fatal party, all four confronted her about her gender, before sending a girl into the bathroom to find out.
I hear Hillary hates it when that happens.
Three other men, including two who were sexually active with Araujo, are on trial in a case expected to go to a jury next week.I can certainly understand their disgust, but it still sounds like pre-meditated murder to me. Do the crime, pay the time.
No one deserves such a fate, but, damn...do friends mislead friends about ones gender? Playing russian roulette would be safer.
I agree... I just dislike the designation of "hate crimes," as if every premediated murder isn't a "hate crime!"
Reminds me more of a THOUGHT crime.
I follow stories on the "hate crime" topic, this is an interesting one.
Not trying to make a joke here, but instead of going through a legal process to change the name of the deceased, why not just put the name "Gwen" on the headstone?
The "hate crime" designation is so far off the map for me, it didn't even register that that's what this case involved.
The penalty for this brutal crime should be death. Shouldn't need any silly "hate crime" classification to boost the penalty.
When a parent has lost a child in such a horrifying manner, anything that helps ease the parent's pain even a little bit is warranted.
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It's a symbol of our constant struggle against Roman oppression! |
Now I'm really confused.
The first article uses the term "transgender."
The second article uses the term "transsexual."
If he/she still had male genitalia then I would think that "transgender" would be the appropriate phrase as I understand the definitions because I thought that "transsexual" referred to a whacko who has already had the surgery.
I'm sorry but I still say that people like this have bad miswirings in their brains.
LOL!
"Not trying to make a joke here, but instead of going through a legal process to change the name of the deceased, why not just put the name "Gwen" on the headstone?"
Most cemetaries won't let you put any name on a stone that doesn't jibe with the legal name of the person buried in the grave. Sometimes nicknames are not allowed if they are not obvious, usual and/or accompanied by the actual name.
In fact if you have the names of your deceased on the monument base (a very common thing)and want them on the headstone itself, in addition to putting them on the headstone you HAVE to have them removed from the base.
The names on a monument MUST reflect WHO is buried beneath it.
That had to be a bit of a shock.
I don't see how dragging things through a lengthy legal proceeding is going to ease their pain. Rather, I would think that it would prolong it.
A graveside service, installing the headstone with 'Gwen' on it would go a lot further, IMHO.
cc: GovernmentShrinker,
Thanks. That then would justify the legal proceeding and I would then have no objection to what the parents are doing. Neither would any fair minded Judge, I would hope.
Why not simply pretend the other way? Pretend the he saw the light at the end and reverted to his natural born status. Don't bury him as a freak but as a male who lost his way. The lad was diseased. It is better to pretend that he was cured than it is to pretend that a state document will cure the freak's disease.
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