Say Her Name: Courtney “Eshay” Key

Courtney “Eshay” Key, a trans woman, was found murdered on Christmas Day  in Southside Chicago, Illinois.

Her death was initially reported as a car accident … except for the gunshot wounds to her head. I guess the police thought it was like COVID; if you have cancer and get COVID and die, the cause of death is COVID. So, if Courtney “Eshay” Key was driving a car and got shot in the head, the cause of death is car accident.

Fuck the police. For that, and for the fact that, after she was discovered murdered Chicago police classified her as a John Doe, the standard name for an unidentified male victim. Even after being told by family and the media that Key was transgender, officers intentionally referred to her as a male.

How the fuck do you find the murderer of a woman when you say you are looking for the murderer of a man.

Call.Her.By.Her.Name.

She deserved that little bit of respect in life and deserves it even more so in death.

Even more disgusting … detectives assigned to the case are now treating it as a homicide but haven’t committed to investigating it as an anti-transgender hate crime. 

Seriously? With so many of our trans brothers and sisters being murdered they’re just calling it another homicide; just like it was just another traffic death until you noticed the bullet holes in her body? And when contacted by the media, the detectives still refused to acknowledge that Key was a woman. How can you find a killer when you can’t even bring yourselves to say a woman, not  a man, was murdered?

I am so over this misgendering of people; a trans woman is woman, so call her by her name; talk about her as a woman; use female pronouns. What the fuck does it hurt?

Courtney “Eshay” Key’s death is the 43rd death of a transgender or gender non-conforming person in 2020; nearly one a week.

And still, they are being misgendered in their death. If you don’t care about them in life, how can you be bothered to care about them when they’ve been murdered.

Say her name: Courtney “Eshay” Key. She deserves that much.

Gay City News

Turning Their Backs On A Fellow Human Being

You know how when you're sick, all you really want is for someone to make you feel better. Whether it's your mother, father, spouse, doctor. You just want to feel good, and be treated kindly.

Well, that's all Erin Vaught wanted.

Vaught, a transsexual woman, said she was ridiculed by Ball Memorial Hospital staff and eventually denied treatment when she went to a Muncie, Indiana emergency room coughing up blood.

Coughing up blood.

Vaught is a transsexual, transitioning from from male to female, and when she, her wife, and her son, went to the ER last month, she was entered into the hospital computer system as male despite having an ID that stated she was female.

"I pointed out that my ID says female," Vaught said. "There were two ladies there, and one of them snickered a little bit and covered her mouth. The other got a very annoyed look on her face."

Nice. They're hired to help make people better and they act like children. But it only got worse.

When Erin Vaught entered an examination room, she was met with stares and insults; she was referred to as a "he-she," an "it," and a "transvestite."

She is, in fact, a human being who was coughing up blood and wanted someone to make her feel better.

Vaught said she was kept waiting for two hours without treatment before a doctor saw her and said she couldn't treat her because of her condition.

Her condition?

Erin Vaught: "I was confused. I told them I didn't know my condition, that's why I was there. [But the doctor] said 'No, the transvestite thing.' She said I couldn't see a doctor until I came back with test orders from my doctor in Indy."

A human being, coughing up blood. Imagine how scary that would be. Then imagine being laughed at and called names and ultimately denied treatment.

I understand that some people have a fear of the unknown. What is transgender? Transvestite? Transsexual? But what I don't understand is denying aid to a fellow human being while you point and snicker and act like you have the intelligence and good sense God gave a doorknob.

You're confused about transgender and transvestite and transsexual? Well, that wasn't the issue. The issue is a patient, a human being, coughing up blood and asking for help.

And being denied.

Ball Memorial Hospital and it's entire staff ought to be ashamed of themselves.