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Rita Hester
Location: Boston, Massachusetts |
Remembering RitaThe atmosphere at the club on the night of December 1st, 1998, was filled with tension, fear, and only the most anxious of laughter. Just three days earlier, some of us had learned that one of our compatriots, Rita Hester, had been brutally stabbed to death in her apartment. Informing our sisters and brothers was not the easiest of duties, but one for which we felt much compulsion — not only for the increased alertness required by all, but in sheer shock of Rita’s portrayal by the local and national media. For those of you who haven’t already heard the full story, or have only managed to gather what morbid morsels the rest of the press has doled out, here’s an account combined from various eyewitness and friends’ accounts. Rita Hester was an out transgendered woman who had lived as a full-time woman for over 10 years in the Allston/Brighton community (just west of Boston proper). Comfortable with both herself and the way she was received by all segments of the local communities, Rita was a well-loved patron of both transgender-friendly clubs such as Jacques and straight bars such as Allston’s Model Cafe and The Silhouette. She had just returned from performing abroad, a career path which she thoroughly enjoyed. While the press has chosen to focus on Rita’s transgendered nature, her friends have instead highlighted her vivaciousness. Jessica Piper remembered her particularly well: “Everywhere Rita went, people experienced her as an incredibly vivacious, outgoing woman. The Globe’s quote about her ‘double life’ only makes sense metaphorically: in Boston, she hung out in two different cultures, on opposite sides of town, and she was one of the only links between the two. The other queens wouldn’t go out to Allston from fear. And the straight Allston kids didn’t want to go to downtown queen bars.” Rita was also known as a “large woman who could take care of herself,” a fact which makes her murder only more puzzling. On Saturday November 28th, at about 6:20 pm, a neighbor reported to police a disturbance at Rita’s residence. Upon arrival, they found her in cardiac arrest, having been stabbed multiple times. She was rushed to Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, only to be declared dead after her arrival. Eyewitness reports variously claim that she went home with one or two people after meeting them at Jacques on the prior Tuesday, behavior that struck them as not typical of her style. Rumors abounded in the lay press, at various time suggesting the potential involvement of everything from blackmail (hardly likely, given how out she was to friends, family, and community) to Rohypnol (“Roofies,” or “the date-rape drug”), but nothing has been substantiated at this point. The only suggestion that seems plausible is that she was murdered by people she knew; since she was a 6’2", 6 ’3", 225, maybe 230 pound woman, it seems unlikely that she could have been murdered by someone breaking into her home. But all the conjecture aside, what enrages me (and my friends here at TCNE) is her blatant misrepresentation by the press as he, male, and “Rita,” as if this name was an improper appellation. A transgendered individual who has had breast implants, who has lived in a community for 10 years as a woman, and who is known even by “straight” acquaintances as Rita, is not “Rita.” She is a woman, and whether or not you agree with her chosen lifestyle in any aspect, you owe her the respect to treat her as she wished to be treated. Yet the Boston Globe, an otherwise respectable publication, referred to her repeatedly as male while quoting friends who correctly used female pronouns and her correct first name. Even Boston’s gay/bi/lesbian newspaper, Bay Windows, repeatedly used male pronouns and Rita’s obscure given male first name throughout the article. But to everyone who knew Rita, this was the first they had heard her referred to in this way. |
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Do you have more information on this person that you would like to see here? If so, please write to gwen@gender.org, with a subject line of “remembering our dead.” |
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