Mother of murdered teen speaks
By: Bernadette DeSalles
Issue date: 4/21/10 Section: News
Last Wednesday in the Event Center, students and faculty listened to guest speaker Sylvia Guerrero, the mother of Gwen Araujo, a transgendered woman who was killed in Newark, California in October 2002.
Ms. Guerrero was here to tell her daughter's story, discuss being the mother of a transgendered woman and how her daughter's gender led to her death at age seventeen.
A transgendered person is someone whose personal idea of gender does not match up with his or her assigned gender role. In Gwen 's situation, she felt from birth, as Edward Araujo Jr., that she was really a girl inside struggling to get out. As Edward struggled through adolescence the problem became so unbearable that he had to come out to his mother about the whole thing. Eddie "hysterically" told his mother, according to Guerrero, "I am a girl, not a boy."
From that moment on, Guerrero pledged to help her son become the girl she later called Gwen Amber Rose. In fact, after Gwen died, her mother officially had her name changed to honor her child's last wish to have the world see her as female.
Guerrero said that the decision to help her son transform into a young girl would turn out to be the most difficult thing she would ever have to do. After Gwen came out to the rest of the world, she and her mother were treated with extreme hostility and shunned from that moment on. There were those who were supportive, the majority were appalled. Occasionally when family and friends would talk to them, it was with such condemnation and disgust that they'd flee just to get away from it.
The accusations were always the same, Guerrero said. "Sylvia, you are a horrible mother to support and allow your son to do this and Gwen will only experience heartache and misery for going against the will of God."
"But what was I to do", exclaimed Guerrero. "This was my child and as a mother I had an obligation to help ease my child's pain and do whatever I had to help. At that point I made my decision , it wasn't about me, it was about the well-being of my child."
Ms. Guerrero was here to tell her daughter's story, discuss being the mother of a transgendered woman and how her daughter's gender led to her death at age seventeen.
A transgendered person is someone whose personal idea of gender does not match up with his or her assigned gender role. In Gwen 's situation, she felt from birth, as Edward Araujo Jr., that she was really a girl inside struggling to get out. As Edward struggled through adolescence the problem became so unbearable that he had to come out to his mother about the whole thing. Eddie "hysterically" told his mother, according to Guerrero, "I am a girl, not a boy."
From that moment on, Guerrero pledged to help her son become the girl she later called Gwen Amber Rose. In fact, after Gwen died, her mother officially had her name changed to honor her child's last wish to have the world see her as female.
Guerrero said that the decision to help her son transform into a young girl would turn out to be the most difficult thing she would ever have to do. After Gwen came out to the rest of the world, she and her mother were treated with extreme hostility and shunned from that moment on. There were those who were supportive, the majority were appalled. Occasionally when family and friends would talk to them, it was with such condemnation and disgust that they'd flee just to get away from it.
The accusations were always the same, Guerrero said. "Sylvia, you are a horrible mother to support and allow your son to do this and Gwen will only experience heartache and misery for going against the will of God."
"But what was I to do", exclaimed Guerrero. "This was my child and as a mother I had an obligation to help ease my child's pain and do whatever I had to help. At that point I made my decision , it wasn't about me, it was about the well-being of my child."
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