Recovery for Victims of Hate Crime, 4 Trans Women of Color

Only 4 days after City Council declared Sacramento a “sanctuary city for transgender people” and ironically on the eve of Trans Day of Visibility (March 31st), my friends (3 Black trans women) and I (Filipino trans woman) were physically assaulted in a transphobic attack at The Golden Bear, a bar in Sacramento, CA. We went there to celebrate our friend’s birthday and the entire night went without incident until closing.

As we were exiting the crowded bar, a tall man (allegedly named Michael) shoved Ayotunde (one of the Black trans women) and when I confronted him about it, he started loudly misgendering us in front of everyone, saying we don’t belong there because we’re “boys not girls.” I asked what he wanted to do about it. A cis woman (presumably his girlfriend; I’ll use the alias “Ash”) then jumped in between us and told me to chill, to which I replied “tell your man to chill and keep his hands to himself.” Ash became hostile and started yelling “and I did!” repeatedly while pushing and swinging at my face. I tried my best to defend myself by holding her back by her wrists, but she kept swinging like a wild animal. Another cis woman (presumably her friend) jumped in and also started swinging on me. Ayotunde then reached out trying to deescalate and separate us, and that’s when Michael reached over Kimora (another Black trans woman) to punch Ayotunde, knocking her down to the slippery wet floor. Kimora immediately punched him back.

At this point, bar security jumped in only to kick Kimora out (along with S’Vonn, another Black trans woman, by association) because they saw her beating him back. Michael and the other assailants from his party exited the building on their own accord. When Kimora and S’Vonn tried to come back inside to rejoin our group, security refused to let them in and barricaded the door, preventing Ayotunde and I from exiting as well. Their justification was trying to separate anyone involved in the fight, but all they did effectively was separate our group of trans women from each other, leaving Kimora and S’Vonn to fend for themselves outside with the assailants and the crowd. Ayotunde and I managed to exit through the back of the building when security wasn’t looking, and by the time we got to the street corner where a crowd had formed, Michael had brought in more friends and were fighting Kimora and S’Vonn.

While we were separated, the girls had run into Michael and his friends threatening them on the street. A masculine cis woman (Kimora’s cousin) and her girlfriend stepped in to back us up, but Ash called out “Michael, come here!” He stepped forward, punched the girlfriend, causing Kimora’s cousin to step in between and turn her back to them to shield her girlfriend from more hits, and that’s when Ash shoved her from the back. One of their male friends (I’ll use the alias “Mario”) attacked S’Vonn, ripping her wig in half and then pulling her actual hair from the scalp as she dragged him on the ground. I stepped in to separate and let them get up, but Mario would not release his grip on her hair. So I got on the ground and put him in a headlock until he did, causing his friends to jump in and yell at me to “get off of him!” His friends helped him get up and as I was getting myself up off the ground, he turned back to me and started throwing punches, so I started swinging back. That’s when Michael jumped in to sneak attack from behind and began wildly punching my face. Luckily, Ayotunde, S’Vonn, and Kimora all saw it and jumped in to handle him until he backed off. The crowd started dispersing as police began showing up, but Michael still kept trying to fight and intimidate us, to the point where his own girlfriend started holding him back. At one point, Michael even pushed her to the ground.

It’s clear that Michael is a danger to the community, given how quick he is to assault queer people and women, transgender or cisgender, just for being out in public. His girlfriend “Ash” is just as complicit, from the moment she escalated the situation inside the bar to when she accidentally struck her own friend (a cis woman) at the end of the fight and kept calling us tr*nnies (a transphobic slur). Both of them need to be identified and on community watch.

Though we handled the altercation accordingly, standing solid as trans women of color and protecting each other, where was the solidarity and protection from the greater community? When Ayotunde and I were initially assaulted inside that crowded bar and everyone saw, at no point did anyone outside of our group step in to intervene. Only when Kimora stepped in to our defense did security jump in to kick HER out and separate all of us, putting us in an even more dangerous predicament. (Security personnel on K Street, where The Golden Bear is located, is notorious for banning and antagonizing queer people when we defend ourselves.) Bystanders, especially those who consider themselves allies, need to realize how much power there is in numbers when intervening in a hate crime. We had no idea whether the surrounding crowd was in support of us or our attackers until the video came out and we heard those recording express disapproval of their transphobia. It would have been actually effective if they had directly projected that disapproval to Michael and his friends. You don’t have to physically fight, but even using your voice or standing in between an attacker and their target will make them less likely to follow through. Had we not done everything on point to defend ourselves and each other, that situation could have ended up fatal.

Each trans woman targeted in the hate crime had sustained minor injuries, but the damages go beyond just physical. All of us woke up the next day sore. Michael’s punches blackened one of mine and Ayótunde’s eyes and ruptured a blood vessel in my sclera. That, along with various scrapes, cuts, and bruises, caused me to miss a few days of work. S’Vonn’s $500 wig was torn in half when those men attacked her. This also occurred only a few months after another violent incident in which S’Vonn and Kimora were brutally jumped and pepper sprayed by a group of men after a ball in Oakland, CA. The Golden Bear is located a few blocks down from Sacramento’s Lavender Heights, a known LGBTQ+ district decorated in Pride flags and full of drag shows. What good is any of that visibility if our own people don’t feel safe there? It certainly doesn’t help that both security and patrons who frequent the area are typically anti-Black, transphobic, homophobic, and misogynistic. We need to do better.

These girls really need our support as a community. Each one of us is an artist or performer in the visual art, music/dance, ballroom and drag scenes and we all have folks who love to see and celebrate us at community events—but we need to show up just as much, if not more, when we’re under attack just for being visibly trans. Four months into the year 2024 alone, there have been 25 known transgender or gender-expansive lives taken through violent and tragic means (information taken from @the_yvesdropper on Instagram and the Human Rights Campaign; by no means is this a comprehensive list):

Emma Garcia (25), Meraxes Medina (24), Alex Taylor Franco (21), Diamond Brigman (26), Righteous TK “Chevy” Hill (35), Nex Benedict (16), Kitty Monroe (43), Pepper Doe, Elliot Ganiel (32), Basil Brown (21), Tee Arnold (36), Tara Fable (11), James Moen (23), Codii Lawrence (25), Shandon Floyd (20), Bernardo Pantaleon (30), Marilyn Augustine (51), LaKendra Andrews (26), Gaby Ortiz, Miriam Rios (38), Samantha Gomes Fonseca (37), Amber Minor (40), Sasha ‘Fierce’ Washington (28), Meghan Lewis (57), Lexus Walker (43).