Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance. If the Rittenhouse verdict was not a traumatic enough reminder for you that Murrikkka is The Greatest Country in the World™, today we mourn 46 trans or gender non-conforming people who were killed this year. That makes 2021 the deadliest year on record for anti-trans murder.
#SayTheirNames
Tyianna Alexander, Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín, Bianca “Muffin” Bankz, Dominique Jackson, Fifty Bandz, Alexus Braxton, Chyna Carrillo, siblings Jeffrey “JJ” Bright and Jasmine Cannady, Jenna Franks, Diamond Kyree Sanders, Rayanna Pardo, Jaida Peterson, Dominique Lucious, Remy Fennell, Tiara Banks, Natalia Smut, Iris Santos, Tiffany Thomas, Keri Washington, Jahaira DeAlto, Whispering Wind Bear Spirit, Sophie Vásquez, Danika “Danny” Henson, Serenity Hollis, Oliver “Ollie” Taylor, Thomas Hardin, Poe Black, EJ Boykin, Taya Ashton, Shai Vanderpump, Tierramarie Lewis, Miss CoCo, Pooh Johnson, Disaya Monaee, Briana Hamilton, Kiér Laprí Kartier, Mel Groves, Royal Poetical Starz, Zoella “Zoey” Rose Martinez, Jo Acker, Jessi Hart, Rikkey Outumuro, Marquiisha Lawrence, and Jenny De Leon.
I also think about Silvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, and their legacies. If you don’t know who they were, you can start at those links.
My heart breaks. Again.
All the love, Iris. I am happy to hold your hand as that heart struggles to heal.
In the USA (I think that’s what you meant.)
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That we know of. We believe that the majority of murdered of TG & NB people are never reported as such (if at all.) IMHO, one function of TDoR is to combat their erasure by cis straight society.
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transrespect.org (a program of Transgender Europe tgeu.org) has collected 375 names worldwide.
Meanwhile inTasmania, Oz :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-23/transgender-flags-vandalised-at-hobart-town-hall/100643254
Then there’s the rest of our planet.. Some places better, others so much worse.. .
PS. I d othink we’ve made progress and are painfully, too gradually getting better as a society here – in Oz and elsewhere. Mostly. Things aren’t as extreme and awful as they once were despite the haters and deaths and bullying and backlash by fragile toxic heteronormativity. The regressievs are losing; the future will be better, more tolerant, positive, kinder, and we’ll durn well work to make that so. Can’t give up and won’t on that.
@Crip Dyke, thank you – your kind offer to this here cis bitch is simply jawdropping in its generosity, since this is sooo NOT about me! However, if it’s not pressing my luck with your good favor, would it be too much to ask for you to hold my beer, too, while I kick some motherfucking ass?
@Allison, yes, and thank you for the clarification and expansion on the scope. I also wanted to point out in my post that these indisputable undercounts do not touch on the scale of non-lethal violence against trans/NB people. I think it’s safe to say that hose numbers are certainly many more times as staggering, and at least as underreported for all of the reasons you mention.
@StevoR, while I appreciate (and adore you for!) your optimism, 2021 is not even over yet, and is already the deadliest year on record for anti-trans murder. That is not, to put it bluntly, getting better. Overall, the regressives are not losing and progressives are not winning where it counts: on policy, law, the courts, or the so-called culture war. The power center of the Democratic Party drifts ever farther to the right; they may campaign as liberals and progressives but once in power, they dutifully serve the irreparably unjust status quo (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, BARACK OBAMA). That is by definition conservative.
Dear Lard, I’d love nothing more than to share your optimism. And my pessimism – or, as I prefer to call it, realism – does not mean that I will ever give up fighting the good fight. I can’t – even it my only motivation is to piss off all those conservatives in the Democratic Party and at the New York Times. (It’s not.) Still, I’m perpetually struck by the utter fragility of “civilization.”