Living on Borrowed Time: 6 Young Trans Women of Color Have Been Murdered in America This Year

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/living-borrowed-time-6-young-trans-women-color-have-been-murdered-america-year



When Kristina Gomez Reinwald was found dead in her Miami home on February 15, she became the sixth trans woman of color to be murdered in 2015. The average age of the women who have been killed so far is 31 years old, according to an estimate based on news reports of the women’s ages.

LaSaia Wade, an African-American trans woman and activist, is just 27 years old. “I cry every time I hear about it,” Wade, who runs the nonprofit Trans Justice Project in Nashville, Tenn., told AlterNet. “It angers me every time I hear about it. I don’t know who I am going to talk to about it other than my sisters and brothers about the situations that are happening because society sees us as something that should not have been born.”

Two of her trans female friends, Alejandra Leos, a Latina, and Gizzy Fowler, an African American, were killed last year in her home state of Tennessee. Citing a widely quoted statistic, Wade said, “The average age of a trans woman is 35. If I live to be that old, I’m lucky.”