Lil Duval’s “Joke” Isn’t Funny — It’s a Symptom of a Bigger Problem
Last Friday, comedian Lil Duval appeared on “The Breakfast Club,” a radio program on New York’s Power 105.1, during which he “joked” that if he began dating a woman and she later shared with him that she was transgender, he would murder her. Mere days later, in the early hours of Monday morning, 32 year old TeeTee Dangerfield was fatally shot multiple times outside her apartment in College Park, Georgia, becoming the 15th transgender woman of color (of 16 transgender people overall) to be murdered thus far in 2017.
Though we don’t yet know the circumstances surrounding Dangerfield’s death, we do know the circumstances that surround many deaths like hers: men who, like Lil Duval, believe that trans women are not women, that trans women’s gender identities are acts of deception, and that their own desire for trans women makes them “gay,” react with extreme violence after becoming intimate.
