A trans woman was beaten and stripped during a horrifying assault outside a bar in Palm Springs, California.
The victim, Skyy Perez, says the incident, which was caught on camera, occurred on the evening of July 29, when her phone was reportedly stolen inside The Village, a bar in downtown Palm Springs. Perez approached a nearby woman to check her bag, but security escorted Perez out of the bar.
Perez was then attacked in the alleyway by the woman she had accused of taking her phone.
“She hit me with a sandal in the back of my head, and I fell to the floor, I kind of lost consciousness,” Perez told Palm Springs ABC affiliate KESQ. “And then the other two girls that were with her came and they were like basically jumping me and tore my clothes. I was in disbelief and a rage that I got hit for simply existing.”
Perez, who had been stripped down to her undergarments, spat at the women, only to be sucker-punched by an unidentified man.
The clip of the assault is circulating on social media, with many of those sharing it mocking trans women.
KESQ obtained security video from a nearby business showing multiple people involved in a much longer dispute. During the altercation, one woman can be seen throwing Perez’s wig onto the second story of a parking structure.
Perez’s friend, Daniella Pinea, who was with her that night, claims she’s been traumatized by the experience.
“I haven’t slept, I can’t even eat sometimes. Because it’s very traumatic that we have to go through this,” Pineda said. “Those people were hating because we were trans. And they couldn’t just wrap their brains around us being able to live our lives out authentically.”
Palm Springs police have confirmed the incident and are investigating it as a hate crime. However, no suspects have been identified or arrests made in the case.
David Mariner, the general manager of The Village, lamented the attack.
“For this to happen near our establishment makes us truly upset as we strive to be a leader in forward-thinking,” Mariner said in a statement. “We are all-inclusive. We don’t stand for anything that is hateful.”
Trans people are four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime, according to a 2021 analysis by the Williams Institute and published in the American Journal of Public Health. The analysis collected data on the gender identity and assigned sex at birth of crime victims, which was taken from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017 and 2018 National Crime Victimization Survey.
Despite the brutal attack, Perez is determined to live her life openly as a trans woman.
“It’s gonna make me want to live my truth even more,” she said.
Watch KESQ’s coverage of the videotaped assault below:
A transgender woman has filed a lawsuit against hotel giant Hilton, alleging that she was assaulted by a security guard at the Hilton Dallas Lincoln Centre while she was a registered guest.
According to the complaint, filed in the 192nd Civil District Court in Dallas County, Kimberly Barnett, an Afro-Latina transgender woman from Nebraska, was staying at the hotel in late June while attending Dallas Pride Weekend and other LGBTQ events.
Barnett returned to the Hilton Dallas Lincoln Centre around 3:45 a.m. on June 24 and attempted to "valet her vehicle," according to the lawsuit.
A California man has pleaded not guilty to a brutal attack that left a 57-year-old gay man in a coma after objecting to the victim’s Halloween costume.
Sean Wesley Payton Jr., 24, of Sacramento, is accused of assaulting Alvin Prasad around 1:30 a.m. on November 1.
Prasad had been out at Badlands, an LGBTQ nightclub, with his adult daughter, Andrea, on Halloween night. He was dressed in an 18th-century coat and hat, along with knee-high platform boots, a pink wig, and large white wings strapped to his back.
In late November, the University of Oklahoma placed Mel Curth on administrative leave after the transgender graduate teaching assistant gave a student a zero on an essay about gender roles.
The essay cited the Bible to defend traditional gender roles and described transgender people as "demonic." Curth and the course's instructor, Megan Waldron, said the paper failed to meet basic academic standards due to a lack of empirical evidence. Both noted that the paper cited no scholarly sources and failed to offer an evidence-based critique of the assigned article, which argued that children who do not conform to rigid gender stereotypes are more likely to face bullying and negative mental health outcomes.
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