Evening event at Norfolk church to honor victims in trans community
Transgender Day of Remembrance recognizes those lost to violence
Ariyanna Mitchell would have turned 18 in September. Instead, the transgender teen was shot to death April 2 in Hampton by a man who asked her, “Are you a boy or a girl?” before opening fire, court documents say.
The trans community didn’t find out about her death for days because it was reported under the gender and name assigned to her at birth, said Nyonna Byers, the director of Empowering Transgender Services Inc. in Hampton. The trans community calls this misgendering and deadnaming.
“To me, that was disturbing because a lot of trans-related deaths and incidents go under the radar. So we’re not able to really keep up with what’s going on with our community,” Byers said. “So much that has been going on in the Hampton area is getting overlooked.”
The International Transgender Day of Remembrance will be observed tonight at New Life Metropolitan Church in Norfolk to honor people like Ariyanna.
The Human Rights Campaign has tracked these killings since 2013 and counts 32 victims so far in 2022, but the real number likely is much higher.
Byer learned that Ariyanna did not have updated legal documents, leading to police reports identifying her as male, though her social media and public identity were consistently female.
“When these things happen, when a life is lost and nobody does anything, it says to our community we don’t matter,” said Dexter Davis, a transgender man who works as a community health navigator at the LGBT Life Center in Norfolk. The center organized tonight’s event with the Transgender Assistance Program of Virginia and Minority AIDS Support Services.
Building a strong community is one of the most important ways transgender people can support each other and raise awareness, Davis said, but there’s another matter-of-fact way to help: arranging assistance in making living wills.
“Unfortunately, this is just the cost of doing business, as they say. There’s always a possibility that something could happen to you,” Davis said. “I don’t want to argue with your family at your grave.”
The day of remembrance recognizes the violence and trauma that are a part of life for transgender people, Davis said. He also feels the event is a reminder of resilience.
“How do I get up in a world that hates me because it doesn’t know me?” Davis said. “I was meant to be here. My friends, this was not a mistake. … That is what my existence tells you. You don’t have to be a slave to destiny.”