Transgender Day of Remembrance
November 20 calls attention to the need for understanding and acceptance
It has become trendy in recent years to speak of society’s increasing acceptance of the transgender (trans) community. Names like Janet Mock, LaVerne Cox, and Caitlyn Jenner are, if not quite household names, at least increasingly familiar in mainstream media. No less than Time Magazine declared a “transgender tipping point” nearly three years ago. Most people would therefore assume that to be transgender in today’s society carries less stigma than in the past, and that such people have easier lives as a result of this acceptance. Unfortunately, this is not entirely the case.
In most places, transgender people continue to be discriminated against to the point of violence, with few or no legal protections in the areas of housing, employment and health care. In many places, including Canada, laws have been introduced (and in some cases passed) which specifically target transgender people for discrimination, denying them access to public facilities that other people take for granted. North Carolina, for example, passed the infamous HB2 law earlier this year, which specifically requires transgender people to use the public facilities corresponding to their sex assigned at birth, without regard to their lived reality. This law requires transgender women, for example, to use the men’s restroom in public facilities, which places them at risk of physical violence. In recent weeks, Professor Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto created controversy by claiming freespeech rights in refusing to honour gender pronouns with which he was unfamiliar, and posting YouTube videos in which he defends his actions as a protest against what he calls rampant political correctness. In Hamilton this year, a scare campaign was mounted by Jim Enos, who caused posters to be mounted on Hamilton bus shelters attempting to raise alarm at the prospect of transgender women making proper and legal use of public washroom facilities. The fact that a Human Rights tribunal case against Hamilton over an incident in which a transgender woman was unjustly denied access to such a facility made this incident particularly unnerving for Hamilton’s transgender community. Literature and film often portray transgender individuals as either predators, pathetic victims or mentally ill. The overall effect of this is to create an undercurrent of messages that paint transgender people in an unfavourable light and encourage people to think of us as confused, mentally ill or worse.
In 2016, at least 23 transgender people were brutally murdered in the United States alone. The number of such deaths in Canada for 2016 is unknown. If that doesn’t seem like a particularly large number, consider that the most reliable current estimate puts the transgender population at about 0.6 per cent of the total, or about 1.4 million in a total U.S. population of more than 300 million, and that many such deaths go uncounted and under-reported. Although there are several organizations attempting to track such deaths, they depend for the most part on news reports, obituaries and social media, and some of these methods are notoriously unreliable for this purpose. Both news reports and obituaries often misreport important details such as name and gender, using the deceased’s birth name (known as “dead name” in the trans community) and their gender assigned at birth, which makes it difficult for those in the community who knew them to identify them. Many families who did not support the deceased’s transition will thus erase their identity in death, burying them as the person they no longer were. So while the number may seem small, it’s impossible at present to know what the real number is. Particularly disturbing, however, is that as unreliable as this count is, it has been increasing each year for the past several years. Each year, more trans people are killed than the year before, and many of these crimes are never solved.
Each year, the transgender community and our allies come together on or near Nov. 20 to commemorate and pay respect to those who, during the previous year, have lost their lives because of anti-transgender violence. This event is known as International Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). It was started in 1999 by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, a transgender graphic designer, columnist, and activist. By 2010, TDOR was being observed in over 185 cities throughout more than 20 countries, and participation continues to grow. TDOR serves not only to allow the transgender community to commemorate those who have lost their lives, but also to call attention to the need for understanding and acceptance. This year, Transgender Day of Remembrance will be observed in Hamilton on Sunday, Nov. 20, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the NGEN Youth Centre, 24 Main St. W., near the MacNab bus terminal. Colleen McTigue lives in the Niagara area, and dedicates much of her time to activism in support of the transgender community. She sees education as a vital tool in generating respect and acceptance.
Each year, more trans people are killed than the year before, and many of these crimes are never solved.