Mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living.
November 20 is the 22nd annual Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR). TDoR began in 1999 to mark the anniversary of the murder of Rita Hester in Allston, Massachusetts, and has since been observed around the world to honor transgender people, known and unknown, who have died by violence, and to call for action. This call has expanded in more recent years to Trans Awareness Week leading up to TDoR. Unfortunately, the killings of these trans sibling, and those still uncounted, are just a fraction of the widespread and grossly disproportionate physical and sexual violence against trans people—not to the mention structural violence that is the ultimate driver of it all. This year on the day before TDoR , headlines about the full acquittal of a young man who killed two men at a Black Lives Matter demonstration last year has sent shockwaves around the country, threatening to embolden threats and violence against marginalized communities and activists.
In 2021 to date, in the US alone, 47 trans and gender nonconforming people that we know about have died by violence. This is not official mortality data—that is simply not available to date—and does not represent a “homicide rate.” These are only the cases community groups have identified from press reports, so it surely an under-count. Nevertheless, it is the largest number of publicly-reported trans homicides in the two decades anyone has trying to count. (See also the related post below about one recent study on this question.) This underscores the importance of better data collection—and more importantly, substantive action.
Trans people are beautiful, resilient, sacred. Trans people are diverse, we are everywhere, and we always have been. Trans people have struggled for generations to carve out spaces for ourselves in our communities and the public square. That work has always been led by trans people who are multiply marginalized, and inextricable from the work of racial, gender, disability, immigrant, economic, climate justice, and democratic self-government.
Today trans people live our lives in the midst of a historic and double-edged “visibility,” of hard-won but unevenly enjoyed progress and mounting backlash, of real and rich possibility and a peril that is bound up in dire threats to democracy and pluralism. Ending anti-trans violence requires making generational investments in economic and racial justice for all, investing in marginalized trans communities in particular, and preserving and bolstering our flawed and endangered democracy—which is the prerequisite for all else. If you want to honor and support our trans communities in the face of this violence, consider your contribution to that mission. If you want to mark the day, by all means respectfully attend a local event—and consider donating to the Trans Justice Funding Project, which supports countless grassroots trans-led organizations each year. (I’m a monthly donor.) If you are trans, remember also that your life and well-being are sacred, and take care of yourself in the way that’s right for you.
So today I light candles, I offer prayers, and I offer the injunction of Mother Jones: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!”