Two decades ago, the project that became the Transgender Day of Remembrance launched, a way to remember those lost due to anti-transgender violence.
In 1998, while trans people were still gaining prominence, they were still largely unseen by society at large, a community even more on the margins than today. We were little more than fodder for daytime talk shows and the pages of tabloids.
In many ways, the transgender community is not the same one it was back then. Today, you can see transgender people serving in the government, on the country’s favorite television shows, and within society in other ways that were unthinkable back then.
It would be tempting to ask, then, why do we still need a Transgender Day of Remembrance? Certainly, the notion of an awareness campaign for the transgender community becomes less important when everyone already is, well, aware?
Yet even with all the strides, the transgender community had made since the first Transgender Day of Remembrance, people are still dying. This year on average worldwide, more than one person died each day. Nearly two dozen of those deaths took place in the United States alone.
The majority of those killed in the United States are black trans women, and the majority of them are under 35 years in age.
Related: I founded Trans Day of Remembrance 20 years ago. Here’s why.
The majority of those lost were misgendered and “dead named” — reported by a birth or legal name different from the one they used — by the media that reported on their death. Unsupportive family members or others buried many, often in a gender presentation that they had long since moved beyond.
Many of our murders remain unsolved, cold cases that are not treated equally law enforcement, either because of trans status, race, occupation, socioeconomic status, and so on. Usually, it is a combination of the above.
In some cases, transgender people are killed by law enforcement and other government entities. This has become a larger issue than ever in some countries that have chosen to embrace hard-line, anti-LGBTQ governments.
Many may feel that our deaths are what we deserve, deciding that our humanity is somehow less because of who and what we are. The notion of “trans panic” — the idea that a person is entitled to murder a transgender person if they thought they were somehow being tricked into a relationship with one — is still allowed in 47 of 50 states.
What’s more, transgender people need a space to grieve. Some have described Transgender Day of Remembrance as one of our community’s “sacred” days. It is one day of the year when we come together to mourn our losses and rededicate ourselves to an ongoing fight for those of us still here, and still fighting for a better, more just society.
This is why, two decades on, Transgender Day of Remembrance remains crucial for the transgender community — and this is why it continues.
Gwendolyn Smith, a writer living in Oakland, is the founder of Transgender Day of Remembrance
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
I never really gave a lot of thought about whether people genuinely were transitioning because they actually we’re born in the wrong body, or possibly identifying as the opposite gender as a choice possibly to simply try something different.
Then about ten years ago I saw a documentary on a 16 year old kid named Chris Mari. Born female, he at an early age simply refused to be a little girl. His Mother luckily was very accepting and supportive. She arranged for him to start taking hormone meds, which prevented him from undergoing female puberty. What I saw in that documentary was a perfectly normal 16 year old boy. Playing basketball, marveling at the happy trail he was growing. He was a boy well adjusted and hopefully on his way to a normal life.
I only wish vile, noxious, Hell bound mean spirited people would simply mind their own business and let others live their lives…
MarathonBoy
So you concluded that the person in the documentary was a boy because of basketball?
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
MARATHON Dbag:. Did you even bother to read my post? Or do you simply not possess the intelligence to comprehend more than 3 words strung together???
MarathonBoy
You said: “What I saw in that documentary was a perfectly normal 16 year old boy. Playing basketball, marveling at the happy trail he was growing.”
You don’t make clear what it is you saw which caused you to conclude that this person is a boy. The only things you mention seeing are basketball and hair. So I asked if that’s what you think a boy is. Are basketball and a trail of hair the criteria for being a boy? If not, what are the criteria?
SinthiaDoom
As someone who is transitioning later in life, it is a constant boiling inside that you “hate” hiding in plainsite until it reaches the point of change or die because you cannot go on living a lie. TDOR is important to remember those of us who have lost our lives to murder thru ignorance, bigotry, hatred and small minded people. However it does not include those of us who lost our lives to suicide and underreported crime.
MarathonBoy
When is LGB Day of Remembrance?