Transgender Day of Remembrance

 

I wanted to take a moment on this year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance and talk a little about this. This post is going to be geared a little less towards the community and more towards our allies and those who are just hearing about it. First off, let’s stop calling this day a holiday. Its not. It is not marked on any official calendars by any government. There are no unified sanctioned events for this day. We don’t close the banks or postal services in honor of those we mourn on this day. Transgender Day of Remembrance is about mourning those we have lost in the transgender community.

Its not secret that transgender people have faced more anger and hatred in recent memory than ever before. Many even feel left out in the cold by those we thought were our allies in the LGBTQ+ community and by many left leaning politicians. Republican controlled states spent the past few legislative sessions discussing our validity and debating our rights to things such as health care, sports, and even restrooms. The transgender community has watched as bill after bill passed through these legislative sessions with only a whimper of opposition to become laws legislating what we can and can’t do simply to exist.

Transgender Day of Remembrance is the day we both mourn and honor those whose lives were lost because of these actions and the continual spreading of discriminatory and derogatory rhetoric about our community. Transgender people have recently had major increases in violence and suicide. Dangerous rhetoric, such as calling transgender people pedophiles and predators against women and children, have significantly increased the rate of violent crime against them by others. Murder rates have increased over the past year with many defendants attempting to use the “panic defense” to not be held accountable for their actions. Suicide rates are also on the rise. It has been reported that 3 out of 5 transgender youth have contemplated suicide because of the constant abuse and hatred projected towards them.

I’m not going to sit here and give you all the statistics on these rates. Why? Because first, you can Google this information and find a lot on the subject and second, that isn’t what this post is about. So then why, you ask, as well you should, did I even bring it up in the first place? Simple, to help underscore the reason for this day of mourning and honoring.

There have been so many people lost to the violence and rhetoric. We have all been impacted by someone who has killed or was thinking about killing themselves. I know I have. More than once, I went down that path. More than once, there was someone who pulled me from the edge. More than once did I watch my best friend walk that same path. More than once, I did everything I could to pull her from that edge. As she is very fond of saying, we helped each other see the daylight, a reference to a song by Shinedown by the same name.

So, on this Transgender Day of Remembrance, that is what we do. We remember. We mourn the ones we couldn’t pull back from the edge. The ones who will never see the daylight. We remember those who’s lives were cut short simply because they were transgender. We remember.

It’s not a party. We don’t have large gatherings where we laugh and have a drink to celebrate. We don’t have pizza parties and show movies about trans people being visible. We mourn. We honor. We remember. In some case we do gather. But it’s less of a party and more like a funeral. We do tell stories of those we lost. Not as a celebration, but so we know that they live on in our hearts.

On this Transgender Day of Remembrance, I want to do something I don’t usually do. I want to challenge our allies and our community to think about those memorials you put on. I want you to consider how you would feel about these events if they were about your community. I want you to consider before you put on any sort of event, talk to members of the community. Especially those who have lost someone. Especially those who were on the edge of being lost themselves. We all know many of our allies want to be supportive and show us they are our allies. Just take a moment to think about these things. We want to recognize and remember those we lost, not dishonor and tarnish their memory.

-Robin Alura