FROM LONDON CORRESPONDENTS She may have been killed for choosing to be a girl: This is the tragic fate of Brianna Ghey, a sixteen-year-old trans girl who was stabbed to death in a park in Culchet, a wealthy Cheshire village, on Saturday afternoon Liverpool and Manchester in England. Police arrested two 15-year-olds (a boy and a girl) and spoke of a “targeted attack” after Brianna had been bullied and harassed at school for a long time.
The young woman was born a boy but always appeared very feminine and a few months ago she had started her transition and started living as a girl: acquaintances of the family describe her as a “very quiet” person, probably “because of what crossed her “. But the father of a school friend revealed that Brianna was bullied “relentlessly” because of her gender identity and accused the school board and police of not directing the attacks against “anyone who is different or stands out”: “I was always afraid that something could happen to a girl like Brianna,” the man added. A playlist posted on YouTube by the young woman, who had multiple social profiles and thousands of followers, was titled “Songs to heal from my trauma.”
Police said there was no direct evidence that a hate crime was involved, but investigators are keeping open the possibility that the motivation was related to Brianna’s transgender status.
The issue of gender identity is particularly thorny in Britain, where the issue of trans rights has become a terrain of political disputes and so-called “culture wars”. Recently passed by the Scottish Parliament allowing legal gender reassignment with a simple self-certification has sparked controversy: Rishi Sunak’s government resorted to a prerogative never before used and vetoed the law, because she feared that she might be violating the rights of women security at risk. It’s a clash in which figures like frontline writer JK Rowling, leader of the feminist camp who fears the erosion of female spaces, have been sacrificed on the altar of gender identity.
But now a tragic case like Brianna’s brings the question back to the terrain of individual suffering, to which politics must provide answers.