Human Rights Campaign Honors Transgender Day of Remembrance 2014

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, joins in today’s commemoration of Transgender Day of Remembrance. The 16th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance is a solemn tribute to those who have lost their lives to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice and also raises awareness of the constant threat of brutality faced by the transgender community. HRC Steering Committees and Project One America staff in almost 35 cities around the country, are partnering with local organizations on community events. Additionally, in the lead-up to November 20th, HRC has presented a blog series featuring a few of the many powerful voices of the transgender community.

"The national crisis of anti-trans violence in this country continues with brutal intensity, and it seems like every day we mourn another tragic loss,” said HRC President Chad Griffin. “On this Transgender Day of Remembrance, all Americans should feel responsible to help bring an end to this violence before it claims even one more innocent soul. The progress of equality has to reach everyone, and we are failing as a movement if we leave anyone behind."

Statistics on anti-transgender violence and harassment remain extremely alarming. A 2013 report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) report found that transgender people were 1.5 times more likely to face threats and intimidation compared to the broader LGBT community, and that 72% of anti-LGBT homicide victims were transgender women, significantly up from 53.8% in the previous year. Sixty-seven percent of the victims were transgender women of color. Furthermore, seventy-eight percent of transgender children in grades K-12 reported being harassed in school, 35 percent physically assaulted, and 12 percent sexually assaulted, according to a 2011 report from the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National LGBTQ Task Force.

The first Transgender Day of Remembrance was held in honor of Rita Hester, whose murder in 1998 led to the “Remembering Our Dead” web project, and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Since then, hundreds of cities around the country and the world, have hosted annual Transgender Day of Remembrance events in solidarity with transgender hate crime victims. For more resources, and a list of cities where HRC is participating in Transgender Day of Remembrance, please visit www.hrc.org/tdor. For a list of vigils and remembrances worldwide, visit www.transgenderdor.org.

Transgender Day Of Remembrance: A Time To Come Together

By Dr Rizi Timane


Every November 20, transgender individuals and their allies around the world commemorate the Transgender Day of Remembrance. But make no mistake: this is not a holiday, and the ceremonies we hold are certainly not celebrations. Rather, the Day of Remembrance is a solemn time when we can come together and reflect upon the battles we have fought and continue to fight and those individuals we have lost—the transgender and other gender nonconforming individuals who were innocent victims of violence because of who they were, because they had the audacity to live as their authentic selves.

I would like to say I’ve never experienced this extreme sort of prejudice before, but like most trans people, I have my stories. While thank God there have never been any attempts on my life, there have been people around me who thought I would be better off—or they would be better off—if I were dead. While I was a university student in London, another young person studying there passed away, and some of my fellow African students (I am from Nigeria) made a point of saying, loudly and closely enough that they knew I would hear, that it should have been me instead.

Besides the defeating personal implications of hearing such a thing, this incident continues to be a sad reminder to me of how deeply many people undervalue transgender lives and how at any moment, someone out there could hate us enough to kill us. That it could easily be our pictures shown at memorial services on the Transgender Day of Remembrance. However, this is part of what the day is for: to remind us that we all share this heavy burden—that we are not alone in our persecution and suffering.

Is this comforting? In some ways, yes; it’s always a comfort to know someone else feels as we do. But it’s also problematic. That we even have to have such a day is, in my opinion, shameful not for those of us who participate or those we remember but for society as a whole—for the culture of conformity and hatred that keeps us hidden within ourselves, afraid to come out for fear of rejection and outright violence. I don’t want a day of remembrance; I want a pride day, like the LGB community has, or no day at all because the murders of transgender individuals have ended in every nation around the world.

How can we make this happen? How can we eradicate the need for a Transgender Day of Remembrance? In general we need more allies, more compassion, more understanding, and more tolerance. We need more safe spaces in which we can raise our voices and share our stories. We need mandatory diversity training in schools and universities, police departments, hospitals, and businesses so everyone will be aware of and understand transgender individuals and issues. We need nationwide laws to ban discrimination based on gender identity and presentation. We need all this for our safety. Most of all, we simply need the deaths to stop. 

Rizi Xavier Timane is a transgender minister, an author, a recording artist, and an outspoken advocate for the LGBT community. In his memoir, An Unspoken Compromise,  he shares his journey to self-acceptance as a trans man of faith; he also writes for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance blog, is a sought-after public speaker on the intersection of religion and LGBT civil rights, and holds a master’s in social work and a PhD in Christian counseling.  

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance - a day to honor transgender victims of violence.

Local author and trans activist Matt Kailey (pictured below left) says that the Transgender Day of Remembrance is important not only to the GLBT community but for the mainstream community as well.

Says Kailey, "Transgender Day of Remembrance is an important day for the trans community because it is the day we remember those of us who have been killed due to anti-trans violence. And it's important for the rest of the population because it is the day that we are able to bring attention to the fact that people continue to die due to the brutality and hatred and violence that our community continues to experience just for being who we are."

For those who would like to attend, three will be a Denver Transgender Day of Remembrance ceremony held tonight from 7-9 p.m. in Golden at the Jefferson Unitarian Church sponsored by the Gender Identity Center of Colorado.

For more ways (five to be exact) to observe Transgender Day of Remembrance check out Matt Kailey's article Five Ways to Observe Transgender Day of Remembrance.