Killing of transgender Filipina becomes an international incident

Selfies of Jennifer Laude.

THERE'S a lo-o-ng, but very interesting article on the Vice website about how the slaying of a transgender Filipina became an international incident affecting relations between the Philippines and the United States. The article, written by another transgender woman, Meredith Talusan, allows us a peek into a world most of us are never exposed to and the problems transgender community faces in the Philippines and the U.S.

"On October 11 of last year, the US Marines stationed aboard the USS Peleliu got their first night of liberty after their Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship docked in Subic Bay, on the Philippine island of Luzon, for joint military exercises. Private First Class Joseph Scott Pemberton, a 19-year-old former professional boxer from New Bedford, Massachusetts, eagerly disembarked with his battle buddies Bennett Dahl, Daniel Pulido, and Jairn Rose. They headed for the Harbor Point mall in nearby Olongapo, part of the former American Subic Bay naval base, which closed, in 1992, after a massive volcanic eruption that coincided with a wave of Philippine nationalist sentiment. The group ate a late lunch and shopped at the mall before heading for the narrow streets and looser rules of Magsaysay Drive, half a mile outside the former base.

"At Ambyanz Night Life, the men found what some of them had been looking for that night. The club was a frequent hangout for sex workers known as Pocahontases—a riff on pok-pok, a Tagalog term for slut, which also alludes to the former colonizers who often patronize them. The most dogged of these women—those who quickly latch on to the arms of the men pouring off the ships—are usually transgender, but the foreign soldiers rarely learn that. 'Filipinos are more used to us, so they can sometimes tell,' one trans Pocahontas told me. 'Sometimes they try to expose us to the foreign men. So we run.'"

Among the Pocahontases was Jennifer Laude. She didn't know that this was the last day of her life. Continue reading here.