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