SXS 400: Violence Against Sexual And Gender Minorities

Philip Chau

4/29/15

SXS 400

Violence Against Sexual and Gender Minorities There is always violence against sexual and gender minorities in the world and it still happening in the present. There are a lot of different type of gender and sexual minority groups. Some examples are Transgender, Gay, Lesbians, and etc. Even though they are still human beings they always get treated badly because of their sexuality. According to Slater(2015), “Sasha Fleichman and 18-year old high school senior taking 57 back home was agender or in other words not identifying as male or female had teenage boys burning the skirt and made Sasha lept up and scream”. When I saw this quote I was really upset because Sasha was being treated poorly just because Sasha didn't

Other than transgender people there are also cross-dressers which are people that like to dress in the opposite gender fashion. In San Francisco during the Mid 1800s there were a lot of people coming from all over the world because of the Gold Rush. According to Sears (2015), she stated that “San Francisco was a town filled with all males and only 2% of the population of the city were females in 1849 and was a gender imbalance”(27). When I saw this quote I was wondering how do people live in the city when there aren't a lot of women in it. So then San Francisco made a cross-dressing law so male can take over female roles. According to Sears (2015), she stated that “San Francisco is where woman dances will be taken over by men”(29). I think this mean that many males will be cross-dressing to take over some female roles because of the lack of partners during a dance for males since women only took up 2% of the population. In San Francisco they weren't any violence with men cross-dressing as females since it was a law that San Francisco have for a while. However, this changed later on. According to Sears(2015), in November 1857, someone named Sophia Sherwood was arrested in San Francisco when she was wearing male clothes”(41). I found this really sad because San Francisco always allowed people to dress in the opposite clothes but during that time they weren't able to which started to become a violence to sexual and gender minority. It did because she was arrested at San Francisco's ground where cross-dressing practices were permitted. Sophia Sherwood started to challenge for her arrest when she was practicing cross-dressing because the law of San Francisco never stated that cross-dressing was band and was able to win against Judge Henry Coon (Sears, 2015, p. 41). Judge Henry Coon afterward said: “You can practice