Video made in Slovenia, on the basis of the following story:
I AM A WOMAN
I was born in 1993 in Şanlıurfa, Turkey. My journey was both the same and different with other women. I have struggled with my gender identity all my life. Although I have been labeled as a man since I was born, I did not consider myself a man. I had to keep my own identity over the years. When I was 15, I quarreled with my family and left. No matter what happens, a person cannot leave his child, right? It is not like that. The happiest moments of my childhood were working as a clown because I could only pretend to be myself while clowning. In my elementary school years, people made fun of me for being like a girl. I dropped out of school because of these bullying. Whenever I tried to be like myself, the bullying I went through got more severe. People questioned my life against my face. They thought they could harass me.
I was stuck leaving the places where I worked constantly. People just ascribed me to sex work because I am transgender woman. My transgender friends, who are doctors, lawyers and teachers, have become unable to do their jobs. I could not do either. I couldn’t because people wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t work, I wanted to do something, I couldn’t. Do you understand? They prevented me a lot. They victimized me a lot. I was just left alone.
I was a good target for people to manipulate their hatred. Because I was a woman that society does not accept. I was a trans woman, not just a woman. Because after all, I am ignored in this country. I was never spoken about. My right has never been sought. I was never allowed to exist.
I earned my living by doing sex work. You will never know if this was my choice or something that society deserved me, something I had to do. Because I no longer live, I was killed. I was violent, raped, beaten. Then I was brutally killed. They found my cremated body on 8 August 2016. But nobody knew about this stuff I had experienced. My murderers were not found because of the hypocritical morality of the society. Some people are happy that I died. I was only 23 years old.
Nobody called my rights.
Nobody spoke about me.
Hande Kader (1993 – August 2016) was a politically active Turkish transgender woman. Kader was familiar to millions of Turks as a figurehead for the LGBT community after being photographed at the forefront of the resistance against police forces suppressing the 2015 Gay Pride event in Istanbul. In August 2016, she was reported missing by her flatmate when she failed to return home the following week. Her body was found raped, mutilated, and burnt by the roadside in the Zekeriyaköy up-market on 12 August 2016. Despite being badly mutilated, Kader’s body was identified by prosthetics at the city morgue by Dengiler. *