What I Said

My comments at last night’s Transgender Day of Remembrance:

Thank you all for coming.

As far as I know, this is the first Transgender Day of Remembrance for Appleton, and that’s cool. Thank you to all of you who made this happen. I don’t usually go to them myself, because for me, not remembering isn’t even a possibility. Because we know that when we leave the house, or when our loved ones leave the house, there is some chance that some person out there will decide our loved one’s gender is wrong and bad. & We know there are people in the world who think that violence is a way to fix their own fear, and cops who think our lives aren’t important, and courts that think panic is a legitimate reason for murder.

What I’d like instead is a day that I can’t remember the violence committed against people who live their genders despite transphobia, who believe in their own dignity and right to exist. What I’d like is a day when the faces of those who were brutally murdered for being who they are don’t flip through my mind as reminders of the fear I need to live with. What I’d like is a day when no day like this needs to happen.

Most of us gathered here tonight are sheltered by some kind of privilege or another. We may be white, we may be cis, we may be educated; we may have money and health insurance and the possibility of getting a job without questions about our genders. Most of the trans people we are remembering tonight had few of those things, or none of them; too many of the people who are killed every year are people of color, people who do sex work, people who have to decide between work that has sky-high risks and starving. For some trans people, it is just the human desire f0r companionship, that makes them vulnerable to these kinds of attacks.

So while we remember those murdered, I want to celebrate them too. Because I see beautiful, engaged, joyful people in the trans community. I see people in love; I see people with careers and jobs and families and hopes. I see people with aspirations and confidence. What I see when I look around the trans community is a great deal of joy – the kind that people who haven’t known trans people can’t begin to understand, the kind of joy that comes with relief, and with victory not just over the transphobic world we live in, but with the internalized transphobia all of us share, trans and non trans alike.