Testimony Of Transgender Woman Who Says Her Boyfriend Beat Her Up Goes "From Weepy To Sassy," Reports NY Daily News

At first I thought it was the word "sassy" that pissed me off here. You don't often read that word in newspaper accounts where a woman says her boyfriend hit her, slammed her into a phone booth, and dragged her around by her hair. Nope, there aren't that many tales of accused assaults where the victim is described like the maid from The Jeffersons. You half expect the woman here to snap back to the attorneys like, "I done chopped off my balls, so how come y'all keeps bustin' 'em?"

There's a story in last Tuesday's paper where a young girl accuses an older man of repeated sexual assault. She's not described as sassy or weepy. No, she had a "tortuous journey." On the stand she "recounted her trauma." At no point do you think she's going to snap, "Buddy, you can kiss my grits!"

Here's what the victim does to merit the "sassy" label:

After lunch, [victim Claudia] Charriez rejected [Defense attorney Jason] Berland’s suggestions that some bruises might predate the incident.

“This is why girls like me don’t want to come forward when guys like this do this,” she said over her shoulder to the judge, flicking the edge of her black wool cape with its fur pompoms.

Gosh. Yes, that's sassy. Girlfriend's saying assault victims may be reluctant to testify because the prosecution will malign their reputations. Can a sistah get two snaps up for that? Or maybe it was the pompom-flicking that did it. I'll bet Mother Teresa wouldn't be a saint today if she'd owned a poncho.

But no, eventually I decided it was "weepy" that pissed me off. Not "sad" or "tearful" -- "weepy." See, you use the word "weepy" when you don't think words like "sad" or "tearful" fit, which seems odd in a case where a woman was choked her so hard a contact lens popped out. It seems like the reporter didn't taking this assault very seriously.

I know a lot of people will say we should write angry letters, or boycott the Daily News. Me, I think we should be understanding. I'm sure the writer has feelings like the rest of us: he just expressed himself wrong. I'm 100% positive that if, God forbid, his wife got crushed by a catering truck or his three-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia, he'd be all, like, wah wah wah.