On April 29 at 5:30 a.m., a beautiful young woman was gunned down on a street in Oakland. (See our post about the crime that ran the next day on The Snitch.) On the corner of 13th and Franklin is where Brandy Martell's short life came to a horrifc end. A lot remains unknown, but below is what I've gathered from witnesses and people who knew Brandy.

This part of Oakland is a cab stand. It is also a hangout for transgender people; Brandy was there in her car with three other transgender women. Around 3:30 a.m., a couple of gentlemen walked by them. Judging by their clothes, they'd been at a nightclub. They made catcalls and aggressively hit on the women; one was very interested in Brandy, repeating how fine she was. The men wanted the women to come with them, but the women realized that the men did not "know what their T is" -- "T," or truth, is slang for a woman who is trans.

The ladies then asked, "You know we're trans, right?" When they gave them the information, the pick-up ended. The men went up around a bookstore toward 14th Street. Around 5:30 a.m., the men returned, and the women were still in the car. One man opened fire on Brandy Martell, killing her.

Brandy Martell loved people. She worked for Tri-City Health Center as a peer advocate. She was a woman in every way. As I spend more time in the trans community, I realize we are born who we are, but the genitalia attached to us is another matter entirely. When I moved to San Francisco and I started to write about the sex-positive community, a theme became apparent. Trans people have it really fucking hard. Harder than most, and they pay a very high price for simply being who they are. Trans people are still asked to sit at the back of the bus, as it were. People can be deeply afraid of what they don't understand, and unfortunately a lot of people simply do not understand that genitals are not what makes us human.