UCLA Center for the Study of Women

In 2004, I heard a story about a Black masculine woman who had been shot in the face at a subway station in New York after telling a man she wasn’t interested in him because she was a lesbian. For years I never knew the name of this woman, I didn’t know if the story I heard was true or not, but I believed it. I feared that one day I might also be victim of this type of hate crime, being a Black masculine woman myself. I am not sure how that story traveled to me back in my dorm in Williamstown, but once I knew it, I held on to it.