The community came together Sunday to support two transgender women who say they were attacked near a light rail station in Minneapolis.
The incident happened Nov. 10 at Hennepin Avenue and Fifth Street in downtown Minneapolis. It’s where community members gathered for a rally Sunday afternoon, one week since the attack.
Amber Muhm, a community leader with Trans Movement for Liberation, said the two trans women were attacked by a group of men at the light rail station after one of the men used transphobic slurs.
“No one came to help them. In fact, they said people were cheering the attackers on while they were getting beaten,” Muhm said.
I’m not trans, and am fairly fem-presenting, but I’ve been accused of being a man several times since this whole bigotry thing really took off… mostly because I don’t perform femininity particularly well (deep natural voice, no makeup, comfortable clothes, never interested in men hitting on me and not afraid to say so), because it’s all bullshit I don’t care about.
As a result, I’ve more or less stopped going out since I live in a very red area (of an otherwise purple state)… I’m a small woman with disabilities, I’m not confident of my ability to protect myself against large bigoted men (who are thus far the only problem I’ve had).
Now that it’s further ramping up, I’ll just stay home at all times. That surely won’t have consequences. I can only imagine what trans people are dealing with with this stuff. My heart goes out to you.
Minneapolis is a transgender haven though in a state with some of the best pro trans laws on the books.
They were bold enough to do it there. They’re bold enough to do it anywhere.
This specific transit spot along with one on lake street is known to get pretty chaotic. There was another attack on a trans individual a year ago I believe at one of the lake street stops.
It doesn’t really have anything with being bold to do this in Minneapolis, this is known to be a light rail stop/intersection to avoid if possible.