Honouring those lost to anti-transgender violence
November 20, 2018 3:59 PM   Subscribe

November 20, 2018 is the nineteenth annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance.

369 trans people were killed in the year since November 20, 2017. (Gaystar News)

Translifeline

The Trevor Project

Links to support outside the USA
posted by Pong74LS (38 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thank you for posting this. My local Trans Day of Remembrance vigil is being held tonight, but I'm teaching until 9 so I'll miss it. I think I'll start my class off with a mention.
posted by arcticwoman at 4:26 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Memorializing 2018
posted by treepour at 4:58 PM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


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posted by Etrigan at 5:03 PM on November 20, 2018 [8 favorites]


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posted by michswiss at 5:20 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by Tabitha Someday at 5:32 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Thank you for posting this.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:42 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


I stopped in at The 519 community centre in Toronto for a little while this evening during their TDOR event and wrote down these little vignettes:

Extremely packed room and hallway
So many beautiful people looking so sad
And yet also very very happy
Dancing, people dancing in wheelchairs
Singing Out choir excerpt doing Born This Way
Sign Language interpreter of singing is like DANCING
"I don't believe it's suicide, it's homicide by society"
Heading out into Barbara Hall park for the candle ceremony
"The only Transgender memorial in North America is here, and it's in chalk. We rewrite the names every year."
6 year old speaker at the open mic after remembering a lost (I think, ? couldn't hear)
A few occasional snow flakes
"Okay, it's cold out here, come inside, the food is ready, we'll have a DJ and do some dancing"

. for our lost ones
; for those who made it back from the brink
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:47 PM on November 20, 2018 [16 favorites]


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posted by bile and syntax at 5:56 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


I’m so sick of humans treating other humans like they are not humans.

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posted by valkane at 6:10 PM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]




I am keeping my lost trans siblings in my mind and heart.

They chose to be true to themselves, and they died for it. They were killed for it.

I couldn't attend the local vigil this evening, so I'm lighting a candle for them, the ones who were taken. A candle to mourn and honor them. The candle will go out, but it can't change the past. I'll still mourn their loss.

I wish they were the last to be taken, but I know they won't be. We're not there yet.

But I see the kids coming out in high school now. Even middle school. So many of them being allowed to live their lives. Not all of them, sure. But more than I could have imagined when I was their age, decades ago. It gives me hope.

Hope that some day people like me can just be themselves without fearing other people's fear and hatred. That won't happen by itself. We have to work for it. We must support trans kids. Listen to them when they tell us who they are. Protect them. We must help the world see them and, eventually, know their truths. For them, and for the ones who are gone.

So tomorrow I'll light a candle for that hope. It won't change the past, any more than tonight's will. It will burn out, too. And It won't change the future.

But we will.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 6:30 PM on November 20, 2018 [12 favorites]


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posted by mordax at 6:30 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by Emmy Rae at 6:59 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by camyram at 7:00 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


For fans of The Expanse, I recorded this TDOR greeting in Belter last year.

The translation.

_/|\_
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 7:27 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


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posted by Secret Sparrow at 7:44 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


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Another segment to remember is those still living but unable to come out whether it's personal, political, or cultural.
posted by loquacious at 8:28 PM on November 20, 2018 [7 favorites]


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posted by Halloween Jack at 8:29 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:48 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by Rush-That-Speaks at 9:43 PM on November 20, 2018


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posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:13 PM on November 20, 2018


....................

For all the lives lost.
posted by daybeforetheday at 12:26 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by evilDoug at 12:36 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 1:08 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by ellieBOA at 1:53 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by kinnakeet at 2:01 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by Kattullus at 2:19 AM on November 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


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posted by kokaku at 2:22 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by allium cepa at 5:05 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


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posted by GenderNullPointerException at 5:16 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


I went to my local vigil last night, and fuck, was the list of trans people (almost entirely trans women) murdered in the past year worldwide ever long.

TDOR is important, but as a trans person, it's a huge kick in the teeth each year to have a whole holiday about remembering how many people you love have and will die young.
posted by ITheCosmos at 7:47 AM on November 21, 2018 [4 favorites]


Assorted thoughts, links

Meredith Talusan points out—
"Given that the U.S. Census doesn’t track trans people, and police departments all over the country don’t classify victims as transgender, there’s no reliable way to know whether the increasing number of reported trans murders is due to an increasing rate of violence against trans people, or if there are simply more trans murders being identified and reported. Regardless, what’s clear is that existing reports already show that Black trans women and femmes are murdered at much higher rates than the general population, even when such murders are certainly underreported."

What the Media Gets Wrong About Trans Murders, Them, March 28, 2018
Talusan wrote that piece on the occasion of GLAAD's March 2018 report “More Than a Number: Shifting the Media Narrative on Transgender Homicides.”

Aaryn Lang's November 20, 2017 essay, "Why I Don't Believe in Transgender Day of Remembrance."

Thomas Page McBee, October 18, 2018, Finding Joy and Power in Being a Trans Person.

Torrey Peters' 2015 essay "Transgender Day of Remembrance: A Found Essay" and her further thoughts in "On “Transgender Day of Remembrance: A Found Essay.”
"When she was twenty she figured out that she was such a mess not because she was trans, but because being trans is so stigmatized."

—Imogen Binnie, Nevada.
"Nicht die Homosexuellen sind pervers, sondern die Situation, in der sie zu leben haben." (It is not the homosexuals who are perverted, but the situation in which they have to live.)

—Rosa von Praunheim, It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:57 AM on November 21, 2018 [8 favorites]


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posted by virago at 8:12 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


From the TVT TDOR 2018 website:

Violence against trans and gender-diverse people frequently overlaps with other axes of oppression prevalent in society, such as racism, sexism, xenophobia, and anti-sex worker sentiment and discrimination. TMM data shows that the victims whose occupations are known are mostly sex workers (62%). In the United States, the majority of the trans people reported murdered are trans women of colour and/or Native American trans women (85%), and in France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, which are the countries to which most trans and gender-diverse people from Africa and Central and South America migrate, 65% of the reported murder victims were migrants.

The sex work thing is real and it is my admittedly biased but entirely personal belief that if you are trans you owe it to yourself to understand some shit about sex work and to understand that sex worker struggles and trans struggles are linked.

Also: as a white person it is an ongoing challenge for me to disentangle a tendency to center whiteness and articulate a sense of existential danger to my own self that may feel emotionally real but contribute to the ongoing racialized immiseration of others. So I remind myself of that.

The TVT website is great and comprehensive and points to tons of orgs doing things worldwide which is also pretty neat to see.
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 10:58 AM on November 21, 2018 [4 favorites]


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posted by spinifex23 at 3:45 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


Twitter Is Now Clamping Down On Anti-Trans Abuse

@lisaquestions: "So Twitter has changed the TOS so that targeted misgendering and deadnaming of trans people is against the rules. If someone does either to you, report them using the targeted harassment or the attacking a protected category and selecting yourself options."
posted by homunculus at 12:32 PM on November 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Trans Woman Was Beaten in ICE Custody Before Death, Autopsy Finds: Roxsana Rodriguez died following lack of medical treatment in a privately run immigration detention center. An autopsy concludes that she was beaten. “She journeyed thousands of miles fleeing persecution and torture at home only to be met with neglect and torture in this country’s for-profit human cages.”
posted by homunculus at 4:20 PM on November 27, 2018


Kate Sosin, Into, 28 Nov 2018, ICE Is Refusing to Release A Legally Mandated Review of Roxsana Hernandez’s Death.
On Monday, ICE attempted to discredit the autopsy by emailing media outlets off-the-record tips that Dr. Sperry resigned from his position as Georgia’s chief medical examiner in disgrace.

Sperry retired in 2015 after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a scathing report on Sperry’s time moonlighting as a paid forensic consultant. Sperry did not face legal action and has continued to practice in Georgia.

INTO was among the outlets to receive the off-the-record tip from ICE on Sperry. INTO is taking the exceedingly rare step of not honoring the off-the-record because the information was sent without prior agreement between INTO and ICE, and the agency has refused to corroborate its assertions.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:48 AM on November 30, 2018


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