trans day of remembrance for LGBT persons murdered by other LGBT persons

Just watched Maria MacLachlan’s YouTube entitled Handmaid's tale #3: Scott McLaughlin and noticed two comments:

• Jen Woo: I wonder if his name will be swelling the ranks for 'trans day of remembrance'
• dragonfox 2.0: will he be in the trans day of remembrance? god knows no trans "woman" should ever die

This sparked an idea, which is based on Counting Dead Women, the annual list published by Karen Ingala Smith, and which I’d like to outline here and ask: what do people think?

By way of context, if you haven’t watched Maria’s report, Amber/Scott McLaughlin, is set to become the first transgender prisoner to be executed in Missouri, USA. McLaughlin began transitioning while on death row for the horrific rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, Beverly Guenther, in 2003.

First off, I’m opposed to the death penalty on principle and I abhor its use in Missouri and other US states. That aside, I am astounded by the historical revisionism – I won’t say ‘lies’ because that might get me in trouble for defamation – of the tweeters quoted by Maria as saying that McLaughlin should not be executed because he committed no crime and/or was not convicted of a crime!

Here is my proposal. Next time there is a trans awareness or remembrance day, I’d like to stand there and calmly read out Maria’s 'remembrance' of Amber/Scott McLaughlin.

Two questions for gentle readers. Would you join me? Who else should be on the list of ‘remembrance’?

Trans day of remembrance and trans awareness week

A 'trans day of remembrance' (Tdor) is held annually on 30 November and 'trans awareness week' takes place in the week leading up to it. See: www.stonewall.org.uk and tdor.tgeu.org and www.glaad.org/transweek for details.

Other people who could be on the list of ‘remembrance’?

Dana Rivers

I see parallels between Scott McLaughlin and the case of trans-identified male, Dana Rivers, born David Chester Warfield in 1955: see www.karadansky.com/state-v-dana-rivers-updates. Rivers is not facing a death penalty as California seems to have ceased capital punishment; he is probably facing a life in prison, and the remembrance would be more about the three people he brutally murdered: Patricia Wright and Charlotte Reed, a married lesbian couple, and Toto Diambu (known as Benny Diambu-Wright), their 19-year-old son.

LGBT ‘hero’ Amy Griffiths brutally murdered in 2019

One of the names already on the Tdor list is Amy Griffiths who was brutally murdered at the age of 51 in her flat in Droitwich, Worcestershire, in January 2019 by Martin Saberi. Griffiths was remembered as a 'hero' in the local LGBT community. But there seems to be more to her murder than plain and simple transphobia.

The killer was aged 53 and of Wallington in south London and was on licence after serving 16 years for robbery. He had met Griffiths on a transgender dating website in the previous year. Only days before he killed Griffiths with "extreme violence", he had stabbed a 59-year-old woman in the neck outside a shop in London. Saberi was convicted on 11 March 2021 for murder. Sending him to jail for life, the Judge commented: “I accept that your mental illness was a factor in the killing. Whether it was a significant factor is difficult to determine.” See www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9351791... and www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/11... for details.

Comment

This is a ghastly case. The reason why it’s on the Tdor list is because the victim was a male-to-constructed female. There are, I suggest, three other significant points.

Firstly, the perpetrator was a serially violent man, a symbol, if you like, of male-pattern violence, and the sort of man who needs to be locked up permanently for the safety of everyone else, whatever their gender.

Secondly, the killer was someone who seems to be under the trans umbrella himself. I can’t find any details apart from the one about meeting the victim on a transgender dating website. To the extent that Sabieri was under the trans umbrella himself, this is a case of one trans person being murdered by another trans person. Obviously, I might be wrong: maybe Sabieri saw himself as a vigilante with a mission to deceive trans people and dispose of them for the greater good, a true “transphobe” in other words. (This is like another vigilante, the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, who seems to have thought he was cleaning up the streets by killing prostitutes and loose women.)  

Or maybe Sabieri was deranged: the Judge did say his mental illness was a factor. That is the third point that I believe is significant because it comes up in other cases.

Club Q massacre in Colorado on 19 November 2022

If Amy Griffiths’ murder was a crime of trans person upon trans person, it would not be the first. Nor would it be the first time that there was a cover-up of the fact that a murder of trans persons was committed by another trans person. I refer to the massacre at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs just before midnight on 19 November 2022. Jumping to conclusions before the evidence was in, Guardian journalist Arwa Mahdawi (commentisfree, 23 Nov 2022) blamed this on an “escalation in dangerously dehumanising anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric”.  She wrote:

“On the eve of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a gunman opened fire in an LGBTQ+ nightclub, killing five people and injuring at least 25 in what is widely thought to have been a hate crime.”

Other reports say 17 people were injured, by the way: so much for ‘comment is free and facts are sacred’, as someone at the Guardian once said, and the Guardian, to its credit, did correct the fact later.

Once again, this was a ghastly crime and seems to bear the same three hallmarks as the case of Amy Griffiths. Firstly, the accused, one Anderson Lee Aldrich, then aged 22, was a violent man, having been arrested over a year beforehand for threatening their own family with a homemade bomb, ammunition and multiple weapons and being booked into jail on suspicion of felony menacing and kidnapping. Secondly, the accused seems to be under the trans umbrella. Their defence lawyers say Aldrich identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. Thirdly, they (Aldrich, that is, not the defence lawyers!) say that they suffered repeated abuse as a young child by their father and they struggle with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder.

Mahdawi may be right or wrong that the murderer was motivated by hate. It’s a nice legal distinction. But the murderer was, as far as we know, not a Proud Boy or any of the other revolting people that Mahdawi is talking about when she refers to an “escalation in dangerously dehumanising anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric”. It is not the first time the Guardian has got the wrong end of the stick. Their report on the Wi-Spa flasher was also famously back to front.

If there are other people who you think could be on my list of ‘remembrance’ please say in the Comments below.