Created to mourn and memorialize the lives of transgender people lost between October 1 and September 30 year over year, November 20th is Transgender Day of Remembrance.
This year’s day mourns the lives of 432 people across the globe – 53 in the U.S. alone – lost to violence, medical neglect, or suicide – because, let’s not bullshit here, they made someone uncomfortable.
The bulk of the people subject to violence across the globe because they are transgender are women of color. In the U.S. that means most of them are Black.
The only countries without reports of anti-trans violence are exactly the authoritarian ones you’d expect. Which means it’s happening, we just aren’t being told about it.
The trans community isn’t perfect. In fact, it has a lot of fucking problems. That doesn’t make it right to kill people, or to declare them less than human. I’m looking at you JK Rowling.
We’ve been doing inclusive writing talks at work since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police at the end of May.
As part of that, we’ve started talking about pronouns and how “preferred pronouns” isn’t a thing. The way I’ve been explaining it to meeting full of meeting of slightly stunned heterosexuals is like this: someone’s pronouns are their pronouns.
It’s not a preference just the same way someone’s name isn’t a preference. If someone is named Laura you wouldn’t just randomly start calling her Sue.
They seem to be getting it. And that makes me happy.
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