Brandon Teena

Brandon Teena (born December 12, 1972, Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S.—died December 31, 1993, Humboldt, Nebraska) was a biologically female individual who lived his life as a male and was murdered by two former friends after they discovered his biological sex. Teena and his story have been at the center of academic and public debates concerning gender and sexuality rights. While it is unclear whether Teena identified as transgender, transgender advocates and scholars have hotly debated the nuances of his story and claimed his embodied experiences as indicative of the continuing struggles of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities.

Life

Brandon was raised, along with a sister, by a single mother who lived off of disability payments. His father had been killed in an accident before he was born. It was later determined that he and his sister had suffered years of sexual abuse at the hands of an uncle. Brandon rejected traditional female gender roles at an early age, adopting male dress and habits and dating women beginning in adolescence. He was expelled from high school and, from his late teen years, largely supported himself with menial jobs and petty crime, usually presenting as male. He had a number of romantic relationships with biological females, many of whom were not aware of his biological sex due to his use of male aliases and his masculine physical appearance. Following a number of convictions for check fraud that resulted in sentences of probation, Teena moved to Falls City, Nebraska, in November 1993.

There, identifying as a male, he found shelter with a young single mother, Lisa Lambert, with whom, by some accounts, he also had a romantic relationship. He fell in with a group of young people that included John Lotter and Marvin T. Nissen, both of whom had criminal records. Teena also began dating a young woman named Lana Tisdel. However, by December 1993, he had again been arrested for check fraud. A court appearance and subsequent notice in the local newspaper revealed his birth name and thus his biological sex.

This revelation infuriated Lotter and Nissen, who had viewed Teena as biologically male. On the night of December 24, the two men attacked Teena at a Christmas Eve party at Nissen’s home, forcibly disrobing him to reveal his biological sex to guests of the party, including Tisdel. In the early hours of the next morning they kidnapped Teena and raped him before bringing him back to Nissen’s home. Teena reported the rapes to local police and was subjected to a degrading interrogation. Ultimately no charges were filed against the men. However, incensed by Teena’s report of their actions, on December 31, they traveled to Lambert’s house and shot and stabbed Teena to death. They also murdered Lambert and a friend, Phillip Devine, leaving only Lambert’s child unharmed.

Nissen was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1995. Lotter was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996.

Legacy

Teena’s story has been told through a number of media, including documentary and mainstream filmmaking, biography, music (Pet Shop Boys’ “Girls Don’t Cry”), and numerous academic articles and books. Teena was the subject of the film Boys Don’t Cry (1999), directed by Kimberly Peirce and starring Hilary Swank in an Academy Award-winning turn as Teena and Chloë Sevigny as Lana Tisdel.

It has been argued that Brandon’s large archive has created a "new Brandon" that often situates queer life in small-town America in a misleading light. Indeed, as one researches Brandon’s life, the images, stories, and documents share a static quality, and, without thoughtful reflections on the dynamics of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and nation, they seem to make up a superficial analysis of the ways Brandon’s ordeal continues to have an impact on current gender and sexuality debates.

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Institutional gendered and sexualized constraints are inextricably linked to the embodied constraints Teena dealt with on a daily basis. This ongoing conflict resulted in real and tragic consequences: Teena lost the right to embody space and express desire in his own way. Because he was marked as "nonnormative," he lost access to the rights and privileges that "normative" people take for granted and ultimately lost his life.