Hoax

[pandora_parrot]

Wow. It looks like this story is a hoax, and a decent one at that.

So it appears that someone named "Raychel Roo" has been playing people in the transgender community. I'm not really sure what the full story is, yet, but Fake LJ Deaths has done some research and come up with a few things that smell funny about the story.

The person that originally posted the story has posted a retraction. The person that posted the youtube video indicates that he got his information from mods at Laura's playground, that apparently were in contact with Roo's mother.

From what I can tell so far, Roo has been on the forum for approximately a year. She has acted as a friend to people on there and everything. Apparently, some people have even talked to her and her "aunt" over the phone.

The fact that she's post op at 17 seems unusual. The fact that her recent history reads like a Lifetime tragedy is also unusual. Abused and assaulted by family. Losing her father to a car accident. It seems too intense to be real. Although, I do know people that have experienced that level of insanity.

But even still, I find it an unlikely series of events.

From what I can see, this looks like someone has created a fake persona and history that has existed for a year. She has spread fake stories about herself to garner fake sympathy for her tragic life. This even includes her eventual "death".

Details are still appearing, but we should have more data soon. The fact that someone would go to this extent to create a hoax is awful.

EDIT: Now I'm hearing that this was a plotline from a Nip/Tuck episode. Wow.

EDIT: I suppose there may be some surprise that this spread so far and so fast without there being much fact checking going on. Thing is.. Roo was someone that people have known online for a year now. Roo was a friend to many people. A mentor. A forum mod. There are people that I only know online, and frankly, if something were to happen to them, I likely wouldn't doubt it. I certainly wouldn't doubt that their entire story was a fabrication, and that the person never existed. It's just.. unbelievable that anyone would do this.

Frankly, Roo's story, as extreme as it sounds, wasn't really that different than that of some trans people. Hell, MY story seems implausible. When I came out as trans, my mother had breast cancer, and my father-in-law died of diabetes just a few months later. Then my family disowned me, my mother and others hacked into my private LJ entries and spread them around to the entire family as "emails." My mother encouraged my sister's husband to try to get my fired from my job. And then my mother did the two-faced, "I love you" to me while mocking me to others thing. Then, when she died, my step-father hired a police officer to keep me out of the funeral.

Really? It sounds completely absurd and ridiculous. How could this NOT be made up?

Yet for me, and others like me, it's more common than we'd like.

And thus a story like Roo's doesn't sound that implausible on the surface.

Comments

Case in point.

[gtonizuka.livejournal.com]

I think the question becomes, at this point, "What sort of sick person would make light of a transgendered person being murdered"?This joke is the type that people love to brush off as, "Well, y'know, they weren't being serious, so we should all laugh it off/LULZ/I'm sure some of the person's best friends are transgendered, so that makes it okay"-I call bullshit.

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

There were some odd things in the story. Post-op at 17 -- unusual, as you say; attacked "on a bike ride" / "on her way to the store" -- which was it?; buried alive -- that's a lot of trouble for attackers to go to, and if she was on her way to the store presumably it would be hard to find a place to do that without witnesses; digs herself out, crawls 3 miles on broken knees, and only then dies; and no press reports, for a case so lurid no paper would pass it up -- yeah, it had a whiff of the Tawana Brawley case about it. But it was first report, fragmentary and unclear, so I was withholding judgment. Thanks for de-hoaxing it.

[forest-rose.livejournal.com]

I had my suspicions about the case from a medical standpoint; it would be unlikely (possible, but unlikely) that someone with that degree of injury could crawl so far unassisted. It's awful that whoever this is has made it up, but I'm just glad it isn't real.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a lame hoax from the very start. Anonymous in New York (http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/06/im-getting-really-fed-up-of-things-like.html?showComment=1245458993298#c9214094396151728052) expressed it well; far too elaborate and implausible a tale, and far too sensational to be 'kept quiet' if it were true.

I know quite a few people who have been abused and assaulted, and who have had terrible car wrecks, etc. in the family. It's not tactful to say so, but alcohol/drug abuse is frequently the common factor.

Another untactful truth is that, tragic and horrifying as her death was, Gwen Araujo put herself in harm's way through her own bad choices, and might have gotten killed even if she hadn't been 'biologically male'. How many straight women get choked or beaten to death every year because they got wasted and had kinky sex with drunken violence-prone guys they barely knew?

There's a huge difference between "person gets killed after being caught in shocking lie at kinky sex party" and "person gets killed while innocently riding bike to store". Not to get on a rant about it, but Safe, Sane and Consensual presupposes telling your sex partners beforehand about anything they might have a problem with, even if (hell, especially if!) they probably won't want to have sex with you after you tell them.

Anyway, fortunately nobody got killed at all this time, and maybe some people will take a lesson from this about honesty and trust. Because I'll bet there are a lot of folk feeling angry now about having been 'played', having had their emotions manipulated by someone lying to them for no reason but ego-gratification, even though it's someone they never even met, but only read about online.

Is it not also 'hate speech' to deliberately foster the notion within a community, that "other people hate us, and will attack us with no provocation"?

[paradox-puree.livejournal.com]

*mouth drops open*

You are so not seriously coming into my LJ and blaming the victim here? It's not the murderer's fault, but Gwen's for not disclosing her trans status?!??!? WTF?!

Gwen made some stupid choices, I'll give you that. But she is NOT TO BLAME for her death. The fault for that lies solely on the people that murdered her. Anything else is really misogynistic and transphobic.

I just can't believe that you're actually saying this here. How can you be so....

*shakes head in disbelief*

[sunlightlotus.livejournal.com]

It isnt even a point of being misogynistic and transphobic, I would say anytime someone is MURDERED its not their fault. Although I am still wrapping my head around the idea of anyone being able to take someone else's life.

[david-feuer.livejournal.com]

I think it's possible, reasonable, and HELPFUL to criticize the behavior of a victim of any sort of crime, if there are things they could reasonably have done to make the crimes less likely. That doesn't mean blaming the victim, or in any way reducing the culpability of the perpetrator. It means having an open discussion about different ways to approach potential dangers so that your own decisions are made with intention. It's one thing to make a principled decision not to disclose that you're trans before initiating sexual activity with a stranger, or to walk around a high-crime neighborhood at night, or to protest in the streets of Tehran, or to participate in a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in the 1960s. Failing to realize the dangers, or ignoring them, is a different story. I don't know anything about Gwen Araujo's personal philosophy, but I do know that what happened to her should be a warning to others that there are evil people who will kill when surprised by anatomy.

[paradox-puree.livejournal.com]

You're talking about learning a lesson about safety from a horrible crime. What elenbarathi was doing was "blaming the victim." There's a big difference.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I read elenbarathi's comment as bringing up a lesson about safety. Misleading one's sex partners about what physical equipment one has == probably not safe, because we live in a society full of people who tend to lash out at things they aren't familiar with, don't understand, or have prejudices about.

This is of course highly non-optimal, but it is unfortunately the world we live in now, so we have to figure out how to change the world.

Gwen's murderers are absolutely the ones at fault for the horrible crime they committed. The blame is entirely theirs, the responsibility is entirely theirs. That said, I don't think Gwen thought her actions through very carefully, and I do think there are lessons to be learned from her lapse in judgment.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

No, I'm not coming in here and blaming the victim. Of course it's the murderer's fault. There is no excuse for anyone doing that to another person, and the whole "trans panic" defense they tried to pull was utterly ridiculous.

That doesn't mean that what Gwen did - lying about her age, going off and having oral and anal sex with several different drunk/stoned older guys she didn't know - wasn't stupidly risky, and would have been almost as risky if she had been a heterosexual female.

The point I was trying to make was simply this: YES, there are phobias and hatreds of all sorts out there. Hell, there are violent psychos who kill people in horrible ways with no provocation whatsoever, and we should all pray to never encounter any of them. But the fact that a [trans] person got killed while engaging in highly risky behavior does not equate to a [trans] person getting killed while NOT engaging in highly-risky behavior.
I put the [trans] in brackets because it's really superfluous to the sentence.

Has that been clear enough? If I fall down the stairs because I was running in sock feet, it does not mean the stairs are unsafe; it means running down them in sock feet is unsafe.

And now I am done here, because I don't appreciate being called names.

I agree witht this part of the statement.

[gtonizuka.livejournal.com]

I see where Elen was going with this, and I agree-if anything, I think a Gwen\Hoax person comparison is inaccurate, since one involved risky behavior that didn't help the volatile nature of the situation, and the other was a murder specifically due to the person being transgendered. It's like driving without a seatbelt-sure, you're safe, and nothing might happen, but one practice is safer than the other. This isn't to give any justification to the actions of the pieces of shit who murdered Gwen in any regard as much as say that the situation wasn't the most safe; this is to simply say that one, even if fictional, was with no provocation, even if the provocation was invalid and ignorant.

[snakey.livejournal.com]

"Shocking lie"?? What the fuck do you think she was lying about?

Is it not also 'hate speech' to deliberately foster the notion within a community, that "other people hate us, and will attack us with no provocation"?

Get real.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Wow, talk about blaming the victim.

Is it not also 'hate speech' to deliberately foster the notion within a community, that "other people hate us, and will attack us with no provocation"?

Oh geez, people might think that because it's been born out by experience and not hyper-privileged solipsistic wankery.

[snakey.livejournal.com]

Safe, Sane and Consensual presupposes telling your sex partners beforehand about anything they might have a problem with

Dear god, I hope no one I ever had sex with objects to my political views, or my religion, or my habit of eating toast in bed, for example, or I committed rape!

[paradox-puree.livejournal.com]

"Why didn't you tell me you had a mole on the small of your back?! WHY?! You FUCKER!" *kill*

[alicephilippa.livejournal.com]

You eat toast in bed? You, you, you...

[sunlightlotus.livejournal.com]

toast in bed? the horror!

[paradox-puree.livejournal.com]

Because I'll bet there are a lot of folk feeling angry now about having been 'played', having had their emotions manipulated by someone lying to them for no reason but ego-gratification, even though it's someone they never even met, but only read about online.
Wait wait wait.

Are you ACTUALLY saying that we should have sympathy for Gwen's murderer because we can now understand how he felt for being duped by Gwen?!

Because, that's what I'm hearing here, and if that's the case, you have earned my utter contempt.

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

Not to defend the rest of the comment, but that bit seems to be referring to the people fooled by the present hoax.

[paradox-puree.livejournal.com]

Yes, but it seems to be relating it to Gwen's murderer.

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

No, I think the "anyway" that starts that section denotes a shift away from the topic of the previous paragraph, and the rest of that sentance clearly refocuses on the present hoax.

[paradox-puree.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...

Maybe, but I don't think so.

Her entire comment is all about blaming a victim of this crime. My interpretation fits in with her tone, and her content.

Regardless, I'll give her a chance to explain herself before I consider banning her from my LJ.

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

You may be right, I don't claim to be able to see inside the poster's head.

[alicephilippa.livejournal.com]

Victim blaming is so out of order.

"…Is it not also 'hate speech' to deliberately foster the notion within a community, that "other people hate us, and will attack us with no provocation"?…"

No it is not hate speech, because people do attack trans folk just because they exist.

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

Yes, Gwen Araujo was really careless to get born in a place where transgender people are hated, mocked, beaten, and killed just for being transgender. If she'd been at all sensible, she would have been born somewhere else. And she would have worn a big button saying "I'm female but I still have a penis," so she wouldn't get beaten to death by straight guys who found out about it after they'd already had sex with her, because really, is a horny guy really supposed to make sure of things he's concerned about, and can anyone really blame him for beating someone to death when they turn out different than he expected? But people who go to kinky sex parties shouldn't be surprised if they get beaten to death anyway, because we all know how violent those kinky-sex-party people are.

"Safe, sane, and consensual" does indeed entail disclosure beforehand. It also entails not beating people to death for failing to disclose something.

Sarcasm aside, I'm still trying to figure out the "huge difference" between murdering someone after a kinky sex party and murdering them on their way to the store.

[snakey.livejournal.com]

"Safe, sane, and consensual" does indeed entail disclosure beforehand.

Why? (I agree with the rest of what you say here)

[david-feuer.livejournal.com]

Because the world is not perfect. There are people who would only consent to sexual activity with someone who has certain sorts of genitals, but who are not wise enough to ask in advance, assuming instinctively that anatomical sex matches gender presentation. When such a person consents to sex with a trans person who has not disclosed they are trans, that consent is given without all the necessary information. When they then discover their sex partner is trans, they may feel violated. If they are sensible, good people, they will chalk one up to experience and be more careful how they approach sex in the future. If they are the vengeful sort, they may decide to inflict their anger on the person who confused them.

[snakey.livejournal.com]

When such a person consents to sex with a trans person who has not disclosed they are trans, that consent is given without all the necessary information.

No.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Why not?

[snakey.livejournal.com]

My medical history is not "necessary information" for anyone I might have sex with unless it affects their health. Is yours?

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

The pieces of my medical history that are likely to affect how the person and I interact with one another fall into that "necessary information" category for me. This includes things like the fact that I have Asperger's, the fact that certain parts of my body are incredibly ticklish, &c, though the specific pieces of information will vary from partner to partner. YMMV, naturally; I personally expect a great deal of candor (http://maradydd.livejournal.com/51676.html) from those I have sex with, but not everyone operates that way.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

It is certainly "necessary information" for anyone you might have sex with if it could affect YOUR health. In other words, if there is a strong possibility that the people you want sex with may become violent if they find out you lied about having a pussy instead of a dick, it would probably be a good idea to tell them the truth before having sex. Or better still, to just not have sex with that sort of person.

[snakey.livejournal.com]

I would be VERY surprised if someone became violent because I "lied about having a pussy rather than a dick" o_O

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

Is it not also 'hate speech' to deliberately foster the notion within a community, that "other people hate us, and will attack us with no provocation"?

No. The phrase "hate speech" assumes a climate of prejudice, and speech perpetuating structures of opression and violence. It is directed at a specific group and plays into common tropes of insult and disempowerment.

To say that there are people in the mainstream that hate transfolk and will attack them simply for being trans isn't hate speech. It's needed survival information.

Another untactful truth is that, tragic and horrifying as her death was, Gwen Araujo put herself in harm's way through her own bad choices, and might have gotten killed even if she hadn't been 'biologically male'.

It is perhaps true that she might have made other, less-risky decisions. That doesn't change the fact that the folks who killed her were responsible for their own decision to kill.

A person -- any person -- can choose higher risk over lower. But harm they recieve from those decisions is only their own fault to the extent that no other people were involved.

Choosing to climb a risky rock wall, falling, and dying is the fault of the climber. Choosing to climb a risky rock wall, falling, and being beaten to death by bashers at the bottom is the fault of the bashers.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Choosing to climb a risky rock wall, falling, and dying is the fault of the climber. Choosing to climb a risky rock wall, falling, and being beaten to death by bashers at the bottom is the fault of the bashers.

Good analogy.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Damn, that's amazingly cruel. Either good or pathetic troll, but very very cruel.

[sunlightlotus.livejournal.com]

Joyce, as for your second edit, I have to say the same thought did cross my mind.

I just pray that nothing ever happens to you or your friends.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

It really felt "off" for me as well and as someone who runs a DOR site, feeling something as being "off" is not a good sign. I wasn't able to do much research into the event (I try to do research on everyone I find for the DoR, although I lean a lot of Ethan), but what I did see was everything came back to one web site, which is damned peculiar. Plus, the story was just...odd.

[paka.livejournal.com]

That's what being a minority is, you know? Any story of purported hate crime should in theory get a healthy dose of skepticism, but because you've seen some pretty intense crap yourself, your first inclination is instead to believe the story whole heartedly... and feel scared, and like you want to beat heads. Which of course you can't do.

It sucks, and I'm truly sorry.