In honor of Transgender Day of Remembrance, the Syracuse University LGBT Resource Center hosted activist Jennicet Gutiérrez, who spoke at Maxwell Auditorium on Wednesday night.

Gutiérrez, a transgender woman and undocumented immigrant from Mexico, is the community organizer for Familia Trans Queer Liberation Movement, a national organization that supports the Latinx LGBT community. Gutiérrez’s speech touched on a multitude of issues, chiefly those affecting transgender people of color.  

“I am undocumented and unafraid,” Gutiérrez said. The proclamation, issued at the beginning of her speech, was greeted by a mixture of claps and snaps from the 40-person audience.

She then read the names of a handful of slain transgender women, asking that each name be followed by a reply of “rest in power” from the audience.

“I want to bring into this space our sisters who have been victims of violence,” Gutiérrez said. “It gets really heavy each time. It’s a reminder of how many of our sisters get brutally murdered.”

Within the transgender community, people of color are disproportionately at risk of living in extreme poverty and facing incarceration, according to a 2016 LGBT Movement Advancement Project study. In 2015, there were 16 reported cases of transgender and gender nonconforming people who were murdered in transphobic attacks. Thirteen of the 16 victims were transgender women of color.

One in two black transgender people has been to prison, compared to one in six for transgender Americans, according to Lambda Legal. Once incarcerated, transgender people face a litany of abuses, including misgendering, humiliation and physical and sexual assault.

“Transgender Day of Remembrance is observed annually to honor the memory of those who have lost their lives due to transphobic violence,” said Joanne Wang, the graduate assistant for the LGBT Resource Center.

Gutiérrez said she came from a traditional Catholic family, who initially rejected her desire to rebel against traditional gender norms. She said that inspired a significant degree of self-doubt.

After moving to Los Angeles before high school, she was able to reconcile her gender identity and eventually was able to transition.

In Los Angeles, Gutiérrez became involved in LGBT protests, spurring an interest in activism. She is perhaps best known for a widely publicized interruption of President Obama at a White House reception celebrating LGBT Pride Month.

“No more deportation! ¡No más deportación!” Gutiérrez chanted, disrupting Obama’s speech in June 2015.

Gutiérrez said she was unhappy with the Obama Administration’s inaction regarding issues facing transgender women and was further disenchanted with the administration’s escalation of deportations.

Angela Peoples, the former director of GetEQUAL, an LGBT advocacy organization, invited Gutiérrez to the reception. Gutiérrez said her status as a transgender woman and an undocumented immigrant gave the disruption greater significance.

“It was a very intense, difficult moment, but one that I do not regret, and one that I will not apologize for,” Gutiérrez said.

Gutiérrez’s immigration status is still pending, although she says that once a decision has been made, she plans to expand her work to the rest of world — specifically mentioning Central and South America, places where LGBT rights have been suppressed in many cases.

“Hopefully my work reaches people and plants a seed of resistance,” Gutiérrez said. “I don’t want to put my work into the assimilation of the LGBT community because it’s the people on the grounds and the people in the margins who are the ones doing the work.”

Transgender Day of Remembrance is widely recognized nationally on Nov. 20.

Published on November 9, 2017 at 12:08 am

Contact Ryan: rarozenb@syr.edu