Transgender Day of Rememberance

[Dumbledore]

Next Tuesday is Transgender Day of Remembrance. There are many vigils happening over the weekend. Here is the complete list:

http://transfm.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=69&MMN_position=127:127

If you want to learn more about the Transgender Day of Remembrance, please visit Remembering Our Dead (http://www.rememberingourdead.org/day/).

I'm going to the Chicago vigil on Sunday at the LGBT community center. If anyone else is going, PM me.

[Dumbledore]

Drew Phoenix, pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Baltimore, MD

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[Dumbledore]

Presbyterian minister Rev. Erin Swenson

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[Gennee]

I will be attending a vigil and march on Tuesday night.


Gennee

[antonyh]

I wanted to briefly share about the Chicago Transgender Day of Rememberance. We all met at the new Chicago LGBT community center on the roof garden with it's view of the Chicago skyline. There were about 200 people there to remember the transgender people killed in 2007.

There were a lot of people in attendance wearing "Shame on HRC" buttons for their complicity in dropping the "T" from ENDA. One of the speakers offered a definition of Transphobia:


Transphobia (or less commonly, transprejudice) refers to discrimination against transsexuality and transsexual or transgender people, based on the expression of their internal gender identity. Many transpeople also experience homophobia from people who incorrectly associate the medically recognised condition of gender identity as a form of homosexuality.

Like other forms of discrimination such as homophobia, the discriminatory or intolerant behaviour can be direct (such as harassment, assault, or murder) or indirect (such as refusing to take steps to ensure that transgender people are treated in the same way as non-transgendered people.)


By this definition, what HRC did with ENDA was an indirect form of transphobia. And yes, shame on them. The videos post above by the HRC are nice, but don't get me wrong, people understand what they did.

The other thing that stuck me was the absolute vulnerability of our transgender sisters and brothers. As they read the names of the people murdered in 2007 and rang a bell to remember each one, it was the unidentified victims that really touched my heart. Is it possible to be so marginalized in death that you remain unidentified? The other thing that stuck me was that so many crimes against transgender people are never solved.