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At 28, Ray moves through Falls Church with confidence sharpened by caution. She watches her surroundings closely, aware that reading a street can be an act of survival.

That vigilance is part of why she shares only her first name. Ray, who once went by Renee, describes her former name as an identity she has outgrown.

“Renee was who I had to be,” she says. “Ray is who I am.”

She also guards other personal details, including her last name. “Privacy is armor,” Ray says. “And I need all the armor I can get.”

Her concerns reflect a broader pattern of violence. The Human Rights Campaign has recorded hundreds of killings of transgender and gender-nonconforming people since 2013, with Black transgender women comprising most of the victims. Data from the Justice Department, CDC and FBI also show elevated rates of violent victimization, sexual and intimate-partner violence, and anti-transgender assaults affecting transgender people and Black LGBTQ+ women.

For Ray, the danger became personal during a late-night walk home after her bus fell behind schedule.

As she crossed a street, a car slowed beside her with its windows open. A man leaned out and demanded to know whether she was a woman. Ray continued walking, hoping that refusing to engage would keep the situation from escalating.

Instead, the man got out of the car and rushed toward her. He grabbed her arm hard enough to leave finger-shaped bruises. Ray twisted away, fell and scraped her palms against the pavement.

Someone nearby shouted. The interruption made the attacker hesitate, giving Ray enough time to escape.

She ran until she reached a gas station, where she stood beneath the fluorescent lights with bleeding hands and uneven breath.

“I wasn’t scared of dying,” Ray says. “I was scared of becoming a headline.”

Ray did not report the attack to police. Instead, she called her partner, Tasha, who arrived about 10 minutes later while still wearing her medical scrubs. Tasha embraced her inside the gas station and assured her that she was safe.

Ray says that moment helped her decide she would no longer let fear dictate how openly she lived.

During Pride Month, she and Tasha now hold hands in public, laugh freely and refuse to make themselves smaller. Ray remains cautious and carries pepper spray, but she is determined not to surrender her identity.

“I’m a whole person,” she says. “And I’m still here.”

For Ray, that continued presence carries its own message.

“Being here?” she says. “That’s my protest.”