This past Friday I attended a seminar where Sylvia Guerrero spoke about her daughter Gwen's brutal murder in 2002. The lifetime movie, "a girl like me" re-tells the tragic story about Gwen Guerrero's death. Born a boy, Eddie, never felt right in his body, as his mother says. Around high school, with the support of his family, he decided to stop deceiving himself and started dressing like a girl and taking hormones. He named himself Gwen and was overall much happier as a female than a male. When Gwen was 17 she went out to a party and was harassed. 4 boys at the party demanded to know if she was a girl or a boy. They took it upon themselves to undress her and witnessed "she" was indeed a "he". After beating her up, the boys tied her up, strangled her and continued to abuse her. After she was dead, the beatings continued and they dragged her outside where she was buried under dirt and boulders. Police reports and witnesses state the boys went to McDonald's for breakfast after the brutal slaying.
The seminar started off with a short clip of pictures of Gwen and news reports of what happened to her. I never thought I would get so emotional after watching the news reports but simply seeing how people could be so horrible to a transgendered individual was a real eye opener. As soon as Sylvia started talking about her daughter I immediately teared up. She spoke not only about her daughter but about the lives saved by people listening to her story. She encouraged everyone to be brave and live their lives how they want to live, like her daughter wanted too. The one thing that struck me the most about listening to Sylvia speak was how she said she forgave the men that took away her daughter. The fact that she was willing to visit 2 of the 4 men who killed her daughter took so much courage and strength and I truly applaud her for that. The seminar ultimately left me with the powerful saying, "hate kills". Its frightening and sad that we live in a world with so much hatred but if people recognize everyone is human like Sylvia is trying to preach, lives will ultimately be saved and hopefully feelings could be changed.
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I did not attend Sylvia Guerrero's seminar "Hate Kills", but I wish I could have. In my English 379 American Women Writers course, we just finished a book and discussion about transgendered people. We watched a movie called "Boys Don't Cry" that was very similar to the movie about Gwen. It was about Brandon, a transgendered young man, who was violently killed because of this. Jillian uses a phrase that is comonly used when things like this happen, "hate kills." While this is very true, I don't think it's only hate that causes people to do these awful things. In the case of the men in the movie, and probably for the boys who murdered Gwen, ignorance and fear of something unknown or that threatens the way you understand life, can cause crazy, awful things to happen. It's tragic and completely unbelievable that transgendered people and their families have to go through things like this.
-Courtney Ziegler
Jillian,
Your post made me so sad. Most of the time, we hear about how families aren't supporting their children's decisions about their sexuality. In this case, though, Gwen's mom was supportive and loving. That makes me so sad, to think that there was really nothing Gwen's mom could do to prevent this. This story is one that should be told to every teacher. Those four boys had to have gone to school somewhere. In their classroom, they clearly didn't learn anything about diversity. That's what makes this course so important. Hopefully we'll all come away with at least a few ways to address diversity. We are responsible for the youth in a way; they become our future.
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