Transgender Day of Remembrance

[Content Note: Transphobia; violence; neglect; self-harm.]


A candle burns at Shakes Manor.
Today marks the 17th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is "set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the 'Remembering Our Dead' web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester's murder—like most anti-transgender murder cases—has yet to be solved."

The official TDOR website has documented the killing of 79 trans people this year. Transgender Europe's Trans Murder Monitoring project has documented "271 cases of reported killings of trans people from October 1st 2014 to September 30th 2015." Additional information available here.

Two hundred and seventy-one people known to have been killed as a result of hatred and ignorance.

Every year I quote this and this year will be no different, because it is so important: Julia Serano, a trans activist and author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, has noted that transphobia kills not just by violent action, but apathetic inaction.

Trans people are often targeted for violence because their gender presentation, appearance and/or anatomy falls outside the norms of what is considered acceptable for a woman or man. A large percentage of trans people who are killed [work in the sex trade], and their murders often go unreported or underreported due to the public presumption that those engaged in sex work are not deserving of attention or somehow had it coming to them.

Some trans people are killed as the result of being denied medical services specifically because of their trans status, for example, Tyra Hunter, a transsexual woman who died in 1995 after being in a car accident. EMTs who arrived on the scene stopped providing her with medical care—and instead laughed and made slurs at her—upon discovering that she had male genitals.

The 2001 documentary Southern Comfort details the last year in the life of Robert Eads, who died of ovarian cancer after two dozen doctors refused him treatment.

That's the kind of hate crime that doesn't make headlines. Or even federal hate crimes statistics.

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Just this morning, Shaker CaitieCat sent me a heads-up about the death of Vicky Thompson, a 21-year-old trans woman who was found dead last week at a men's prison in the UK, where she had been sent after being found in violation of a suspended sentence. An investigation into Thompson's death is underway, but she had told friends she would kill herself if sent there. The day before she was found dead, she spoke to her boyfriend, telling him that she was being harassed for being a woman.

Thompson's case is, unfortunately, hardly unique. Trans women are routinely, and perilously, incarcerated in men's facilities: In prisons, in military prisons, in immigration detention centers. Some of them lose, or take, their lives as a result of this systemic hostility.

We remember all the victims of violence and apathy and institutional transphobia today.

A day that I wish, that we all wish, didn't have to exist at all.

I hate that there are trans people who die because of hatred and neglect and ostracization, and I hate there are people who have to document the most violent of these deaths, committed to an important project the best possible result of which would be that it ends because we don't need it anymore. Because there are no more deaths to document.

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At Colorlines, Miriam Zoila Pérez suggest three ways to observe the TDOR. In many places—including Baltimore, New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans—there will be Trans Marches of Resilience; I haven't been able to find a source that's compiled in one place all the locations where marches are scheduled, but you should be able to find out if there's one near you with some Googling.

Here is a collection of some terrific artwork by eight trans and gender-nonconforming artists, a project coordinated by trans visual artist Micah Bazant, who is "really excited about getting these posters into the streets for some of the trans marches of resilience."

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Last year, Gwendolyn Ann Smith, the founder of TDOR, wrote movingly here about the history and import of the day. About why we need it still.

No oppression has ever been eradicated by a careful, polite, diligent deference to pretending it doesn't exist. That is the importance of a day of remembrance.

No oppression has ever been eradicated without meaningful inclusion and visibility, either, which slowly chips away at the privilege that underwrites marginalization. That is the importance of vigilance in community every day of the year.

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I recognize that trans people have all kinds of different feelings about the Day of Remembrance, and if you're someone who needs to express distress about it, please know you have a space to do that here.