It’s been over ten years since Brandon Teena was murdered in Falls City, Nebraska by John Lotter and Tom Nissen, who were enraged to discover that Brandon—who had been dating their friend Lana Tisdel—was biologically female. The vicious shooting and stabbing of Brandon Teena was documented in the Emmy-nominated film The Brandon Teena Story (1998) and later fictionalized in the critically-acclaimed movie Boys Don’t Cry (1999), starring Hilary Swank in her Oscar-winning role as Brandon.

So much time has passed since then, and so many reviews of both films have been written, that it may seem like old news. But recent events show that what happened to Brandon Teena is not something that was limited to the rural community of Falls City, Nebraska.

This past month in Hayward, California, a city of 140,000 people only 26 miles from San Francisco, the trial of three young men charged with killing transgendered teen Gwen Araujo began. In 2002, seventeen-year-old Araujo was beaten with a shovel and strangled to death at a party where it was discovered that she was biologically male. Two of the men accused of killing Araujo, Michael Magidson and Jose Merel, had previously had sex with her, later speculating together about whether she was a man.

When they discovered that Araujo was male, their homophobia resulted in a brutal act of hatred and violence.

Although Gwen Araujo’s story is not the same as Brandon Teena’s, sitting down with both the documentary and the film about Brandon’s life provides an opportunity to revisit the issues surrounding violence against transgenders, and to consider the enormously negative impact of homophobia.

The documentary The Brandon Teena Story was filmed over the course of three years in the mid-1990s, during which filmmakers Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir spent many months in Nebraska getting to know the people who knew Brandon as well as those who killed him. Their painstaking research resulted in a deeply thought-provoking documentary that includes powerful interviews with Lana Tisdel and both Tom Nissen and John Lotter in prison.

The documentary also includes the voice of Brandon Teena himself in a chilling, taped interview with the Falls City Sheriff John Laux following Brandon’s rape by Nissen and Lotter. Hearing Brandon’s hurt, angry, yet horribly resigned voice during the verbally abusive and unethical interview was incredibly moving and painful, and truly brings home the fact that this is a human being who was killed—not merely a character played by Hilary Swank.

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