Early Monday morning, three transgender influencers were brutally attacked on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles in a transphobic assault by a group of men. Eden the Doll, Jaslene Whiterose, & Joslyn Flawless documented video footage on their Instagram accounts of men chasing, bludgeoning, and robbing them. Both Whiterose and Flawless are Black trans women.
The footage shows the men throwing a scooter at the women, comparing them to the characters from the film White Chicks, and calling them men. They also pulled a knife on them and chased them down in cars when they tried to run away. One of the assailants can be seen attacking Whiterose and hitting her in the head, which Eden says knocked Whiterose unconscious for a time. In the men's footage, they can be heard saying "She's dead" and "Hit her again."
In a statement from the Los Angeles Police Department, they confirmed that a suspect first approached the three women at 2:15 a.m. with an offer to buy them merchandise, returning a few minutes later with a metal bar and demanding one woman hand over her shoes and bracelet. "In fear, the victim compiled, the suspect grabbed her by the hand and they walked together for a short distance before she was able to escape," a report sent to Refinery29 reads. According to the report, this is when Whitehorse was hit over the head. The LAPD said that no arrests have been made yet, but that it is searching for suspects, though at least one of the women has named her attackers.
Flawless's post also included a video filmed by one of the men in the group she accused of attacking her. The posted video by the alleged attacker is captioned: "He mad she was a man."
"More people keep walking past us," wrote Eden, who is shown crying and begging for help in the videos after being robbed. "No one is stopping no matter how much I begged."
The women's story has gained widespread attention due to singer Zhavia Ward and Pose actress Indya Moore signal-boosting the incident on their Instagram page. "Every day time and time again, it is proven that the welfare life peace safety of black and brown trans femmes is betrayed by everyone including the very black and brown people we are and fight for," Moore wrote. "The senseless targeting [sic] of Black and brown trans femmes with violence, and baseless punishment must come to an [sic] end and for so long as Noone centers the intra communal and systemic wide liberation of black trans women none of us Will be free."
This year has shown a surge in anti-trans violence in the United States. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, by August, the number of trans people murdered in 2020 had surpassed the entire number killed in 2019. As of August 7, at least 28 trans people had been killed in the U.S. Twenty-three of those victims were trans women. In 2019, all but one of the 22 trans people who were murdered were Black and nearly all were Black trans women.
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