Brandon Teena

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Brandon Teena (December 12, 1972 - December 31, 1993), born Teena Renae Brandon in Lincoln, Nebraska and known simply as Brandon, was a transgendered man^[1] who was raped and murdered^[2] in an infamous American hate crime of the 1990s. Brandon is the subject of the Academy Award-winning 1999 film Boys Don't Cry^[3], which was itself based on the documentary film The Brandon Teena Story^[4].

In 1993 Brandon, being a female-to-male transexual^[5], identified and lived as a man. He was dating a local woman named Lana Tisdel. On Christmas Day, two acquaintances - John Lotter and Marvin Thomas Nissen - discovered that Brandon was biologically female and raped him in Falls City, Nebraska. Brandon reported the rape to the local sheriff, Charles B. Laux, who dismissed the allegations despite overwhelming medical evidence. When Lotter and Nissen discovered that Brandon had gone to the police, they murdered Brandon and two other people residing at the same address: Lisa Lambert, the woman with whom he was staying, and her friend, a black disabled man named Philip DeVine, on December 31, 1993.

Laux was criticised after the murder for his lack of action and his attitude toward Brandon — at one point Laux referred to Brandon as "it"^[6]. Nissen testified against Lotter and was given a life sentence; Lotter was sentenced to death and is currently on Death Row.

At the time of his death Brandon had neither commenced hormone therapy nor had sex reassignment surgery. However, some note that Brandon had stated that he planned to have sex reassignment surgery^[7]. Teena has sometimes been mistakenly identified as a lesbian woman realizing relationships with women in a way acceptable to the local society, despite his own statements to the contrary^[8] (see also homosexuality and transgender).

In 2006, the British duo Pet Shop Boys released a song called "Girls Don't Cry" (a bonus track on UK issue of I'm with Stupid) about Brandon Teena.

[edit] See also

List of transgender-related topics
Transphobia
Gwen Araujo, another murder victim related to transphobia

[edit] References

^ Matzner, Andrew (31). Brandon Teena. glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Retrieved on 2006-12-07.
^ U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals JoAnn Brandon v Charles B. Laux. FindLaw. Retrieved on 2006-12-07.
^ Boys Don't Cry. IMDB. Retrieved on 2006-12-07.
^ The Brandon Teena Story. IMDB. Retrieved on 2006-12-07.
^ Summers, Chris. "The victims of prejudice", BBC News, 26 December, 2003. Retrieved on 2006-12-07.
^ Gabriel, Davina Anne (15). Activists Protest Violence As Lotter Trial Begins. Retrieved on 2006-12-07. “Laux has also been quoted as saying "you can call it 'it' as far as I'm concerned" when describing Teena.”
^ Griffy, Anna M. (4). The Brandon Teena Story: Chapter 2: Brandon. The Brandon Teena Story 2. ustice Junction. Retrieved on 2006-12-07. “Teena made her decision for good:she was going to live as a man and began to tell people she was having a sex change operation.”
^ Brandon Teena Gets Dunne Wrong. Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (24). Retrieved on 2006-12-07. “A New Yorker writer does not understand Brandon Teena's transgender identity, and describes him as a "predatory" butch lesbian, referring to him as "her" for most of the piece.”