Transgender Day of Remembrance Links

Elizabeth McClung of Screw Bronze posts about the sheer violence trans people suffer.

So here is what I wish people would remember; that in the western world, no other group has a higher murder rate than transgender individuals. And t-women usually aren’t murdered, they are lynched. We don’t like to think that lynching goes on in Canada, the USA, and the UK but it does. You could put up a scaffold in front of the Capitol, and hang a transitioning woman on it and tell the police, “I had a sex with………it, I didn’t know what I was doing” and you have a 50% chance of getting off, and at least some sort of reduced sentence.

Julia Serano posts There’s Something About Deception at Feministing.

Much of the violence that is directed at trans people is predicated on the myth of deception. For example, straight men who become attracted to trans women sometimes erupt into homophobic/transphobic rage and violence upon discovering that the woman in question was born male.

Monica Roberts posts In Memory of Rita Hester and Rita’s Story.

Some of you may be wondering why and how the TDOR which is happening in venues all over the world today got started. To know the present situation, we’re going to go back to the past, specifically November 1998.

The Boston transgender community had already been reeling over the brutal deaths of three other local transwomen, 23 year old Chanelle Pickett in November 1995, Deborah Forte (the aunt of TDOR co-coordinator and radio podcast host Ethan St. Pierre) and the September 11, 1998 one of Monique Thomas.

 Monica also posts Gwen Smith and the TDOR Story.

Gwen Smith never set out to be a transgender activist, but now she embraces the term. “I really take pride in being called a transgender activist because I’m trying to really create activism, create advocacy around the issue and around transgender issues,” she said.

Smith is the founder of Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day that is observed worldwide in nearly 100 different locations to remember the large number of transgender people who are murdered every year as a result of anti-trans bias.

And finally, Monica tells the HRC to keep their moneygrubbing mitts off of TDOR. Fortunately, they cancelled their DC event, but they still host others. If they’re unwilling to support an inclusive ENDA, they have no business using our dead to raise funds for their activism.