The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives

by Dashka Slater

Transgender people are the victims of an astonishing amount of violence. One out of every four trans people has experienced a bias-driven assault, and the numbers are higher for trans women, trans people of color, and people who identify as neither male nor female.

The limbic system is the part of the brain that detects things in the environment that we should pay attention to and sends an emotional signal about what to do in response: Avoid! Investigate! Eat! Fight! Flirt! Starting around puberty, the limbic system becomes more sensitive to stimulus, which is one reason teenagers become both more emotional and more interested in having new and intense experiences.

The very last part of the brain to get myelinated is the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for reason, planning, and deliberation. So while teenage emotions have gone into hyperdrive, reason and logic are still obeying the speed limit. The result is that while teenagers can make decisions that are just as mature, reasoned, and rational as adults’ decisions in normal circumstances, their judgment can be fairly awful when they are feeling intense emotions or stress, conditions that psychologists call hot cognition. In those situations, teens are more likely to make decisions with the limbic system rather than the prefrontal cortex.

“The proponents of hate-crime laws are liberals, and yet they are the ones who are the biggest critics of mass incarceration,” observes James B. Jacobs, director of New York University’s Center for Research in Crime and Justice, and an expert on hate-crime laws. “So there are ironies piled on ironies. The remedy here is imprisonment, and prisons are the ultimate incubators of antisocial attitudes.”

BINARY There are two kinds of people in the world. Male and Female. Gay and Straight. Black and White. Normal and Weird. Cis and Trans. There are two kinds of people in the world. Saints and Sinners. Victims and Villains. Cruel and Kind. Guilty and Innocent. There are two kinds of people in the world. Just two. Just two. Only two.