Trans Assault - Routes TV Segment

Video Transcript

(SOT 0:00) Catherine James: Before transition, I never really thought of the risks of sexual assault. I just felt it wasn’t something that necessarily applied to me. I thought “well, no one cares to do that to me”, you know? And now post transition, I realized how wrong I was then and how scary it is to deal with it now.

(VO 0:31): Sexual assault isn’t limited to the straight community. It’s a reality that the LGBT community is statistically more susceptible to, especially in the case of the transgender community.

(SOT 0:42) Catherine James: When it comes to dating for many transgender individuals, we find that some people don’t necessarily take us seriously as humans, as odd as that sounds, right?(0:54) … (0:59) I’ve actually come out to a man as being transgender when we met face-to-face, and he started getting very irritated and visibly just kind of… I don’t want to say hostile, but he started getting really huffy and puffy and left the room. I took that opportunity to leave, ‘cause I did not want to find out what was going to happen when he entered the room again.

(VO 1:27): Between her lives as a parent, an OU student, a producer and recently a documentarian, she has spent the past two years presenting herself in the way that she knows is absolutely essential for her to be. But with that comes the threat of danger, a threat that becomes more palpable every single year.

SOT (1:43) -WGN Chicago transgender murder story

TRT: :03

CHYRON: Courtesy WGN

OUTCUE: Rest in peace.

*VO (1:48)-

Crimes against the trans community are on the rise. Last September in Chicago, a trans woman of color named TT was the seventeenth out of 20 trans people in the United States that were murdered in 2016, according to the Human Rights Campaign. That doesn’t include the amount of trans people who end up taking their own lives as an effect of the pressure.

(SOT 2:06) Catherine James: Statistically one out of two transgender individuals will suffer some form of sexual assault in their lifetime, either pre-transition or post-transition.

(6442 min 8:30)

(SOT 2:17 -WGN story)

TRT: :04

Outcue: It’s like, for a transgender or transsexual, they don’t really care about it. They don’t care.

(VO 2:22): At OU, they’re trying to show that they do care. Staff members who are part of the Advocacy program are trained to respond to reports by the Gender and Equality Center.

(SOT 2:32) Kathy Fahl: We do a lot of education, so through our ally training for one, and uh and lots of different events that students can come to that I think helps to create a sense of community. Coming out day, open mic night, we do a candlelight vigil in the fall (2:48) …

(2:50) So um, on our campus we started doing it after there were a rash of suicides that happened across the country for LGBTQ youth, and then somebody from Norman took his life. And so that was in response to that, to provide support, a visible coming together that shows support for the community but also a place for people to process their feelings. And so since then it’s happened every year; um, we have different guest speakers come and talk, and then individuals can speak out if they want to about their own experiences with discrimination or marginalization or even harassment or bullying.

(SOT 3:30) Catherine James: Almost all of my friends here at OU and student colleagues and professors and everyone, they’ve been outstanding… I don’t associate with people who do not accept me, I don’t have time to worry about petty nonsense about so-and-so doesn’t accept this or that. If you can’t accept me, then I don’t have time for that in my life. (3:51)