Brandon Teena

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Brandon Teena (December 12, 1972 - December 31, 1993), born Teena Renae Brandon in Lincoln, Nebraska and known simply as Brandon, was a transgender man who was raped and murdered in an infamous American hate crime of the 1990s. Brandon is the subject of the Academy Award-winning 1999 film Boys Don't Cry, which was itself based on the documentary film The Brandon Teena Story.

In 1993 Brandon, being a female-to-male transexual, identified and lived as a man. He was dating a local woman named Lana Tisdel. On Christmas Day, two acquaintances - John Lotter and Marvin Thomas Nissen - discovered that Brandon was biologically female and raped him in Falls City, Nebraska. Brandon reported the rape to the local sheriff, Charles B. Laux, who dismissed the allegations despite overwhelming medical evidence. When Lotter and Nissen discovered that Brandon had gone to the police, they murdered Brandon and two other people residing at the same address: Lisa Lambert, the woman with whom he was staying, and her friend, a black disabled man named Philip DeVine, on December 31, 1993.

Laux was criticised after the murder for his lack of action and his attitude toward Brandon — at one point Laux referred to Brandon as "it" (see Trial details link). Nissen testified against Lotter and was given a life sentence; Lotter was sentenced to death and is currently on Death Row.

At the time of his death Brandon had neither commenced hormone therapy nor had sex reassignment surgery. However, some note that Brandon had planned to have sex reassignment surgery. As with many other female-bodied persons who live as men, it has occasionally been claimed that Brandon was a lesbian. However, there was no compelling evidence that this was true in Brandon's case (compare homosexuality and transgender).

In 2006, the British duo Pet Shop Boys released a song called "Girls Don't Cry" (a bonus track on UK issue of I'm with Stupid) about Brandon Teena.