the quick and the dead
EDITED TO ADD--IMPORTANT: It has come further to my attention that HRC is not in fact doing any of the planning for Portland's Trans Day of Remembrance, which is, of course, a glaring error. I am retaining the current text to preserve my inaccuracy rather than pretend it never happened.
Having checked with one of this year's organizers--someone who did work I admired a great deal for last year's event--I had it confirmed to me that while HRC lobbied hard to have involvement and control over Portland's Trans Day of Remembrance and in fact announced to their listserv and on their website that they were so involved, the organizers from Portland State University took a stand and chose to limit HRC's involvement to a display table.
I find this news both heartening and reassuring. At the same time, I also think it remains important and disturbing that HRC tried to run the Day of Remembrance, and is doing so in many other cities and towns across the country. Additionally, I think it remains important that HRC continues to claim their heavy involvement in Portland's commemoration even though they were not invited to do so--they are supposedly presenting the commemoration "in conjunction" with the people who have actually put it together.
This information indicates that while my point regarding Portland specifically can be set in part aside, to my great comfort, it still stands in all the places where organizers were not able to stand up to HRC as Portland's did. I commend PSU's organizers and chosen speakers, and again apologize for repeating HRC's inaccurate publicity in this piece.
It has come to my attention that the Human Rights Campaign has got its hands on Portland's Trans Day of Remembrance.
Yes, that Human Rights Campaign.
It's being touted, along with many events across the U.S. this year, as a change of emphasis from "Trans Day of Remembrance" to "Trans Awareness Day," something much more upbeat, much more focused on feel-good celebration of the community, something much more acceptable to upper-class, culturally-normative assimilationists you can put in the newspaper without making anyone feel threatened.
Last year's Day of Remembrance in Portland featured a young, poor, politically-radical trans woman of color (hi!) as an invited speaker and was organized, grassroots, by a multiracial, cross-class, cross-generational group of locals, largely students. This year it's HRC, a Democratic Party flack, a local therapist, and the executive director of an advocacy organization, two of the three white, all binary-identified, middle-class, and middle-aged--all acceptably-photogenic Spokespeople For The Community. This is not to disparage those speakers, some of whom I've worked alongside personally--I just find the choices telling. They may all be good people who do good work, but the diversity seems to have gone away in who we're presenting as our community's face, at the same time that we're supposed to be de-emphasizing commemoration of the dead and trying to re-focus on the sunshiny bits. I cannot imagine that has nothing to do with our inviting a national GLb organization in, one whose goals have largely been assimilationist, white, middle-class, and yes, anti-trans--to "present" us.
The Day of Remembrance is not about being photogenic. It is not about fundraising or lobbying or recruitment. It does not need the HRC.
The Day of Remembrance is ours, and it is sacred. It is the one day we set aside to honor those in our community, overwhelmingly poor trans women of color, who were killed due to bigotry and hatred. It is a single day in the year where we make certain that the names of the murdered are heard and held up, so we can all remember that these people mattered, were real, were loved, and are missed. It's a day to gather the community together and call attention to the violence directed against us and the caring we have for each other. It came from us. It was built by us. It was never supposed to be flashy or glitzy. It is a solemn mourning for the dead, a place to hold hands, and a promise to those who violence took away from us that we who are still living will hold together, take care of each other, and push forward together into a world where that violence is only a painful memory.
We can do better than this, for our sacred dead. We can do better for ourselves.
We need better than this.
Our community is constantly looking down a gun-barrel, and organizations that don't honor or support us continually ask for more of our money, our time, our hope, and now, even our events so they can push their own agenda--one that often leaves us behind. It doesn't just leave us behind deliberately, as in the ENDA fiasco. It also leaves us behind by prioritizing goals that many of us simply don't have on the radar because we're too busy surviving. An inclusive ENDA would have helped guarantee jobs and homes for the most marginalized in the queer community, a bare chance to just have a table to put food on, let alone the food. Instead, we're focusing all of the queer community's resources on what, marriage equality? That's a worthy goal. It's just not on the docket for many of us--working-class queers, queer people of color, trans people--who're often more worried about keeping our families alive than having full legal equality for those families. That equality would be wonderful, as would the public affirmation of us as full citizens. But those of us who aren't even considered citizens--those of us who aren't even considered human, or important enough for an organization that purports to speak for us to advocate for--those of us who are denied votes, livelihoods, and more--we have a much more basic agenda. Make it till tomorrow. Make it till next week. We're dying out here, this year at a rate of more-than-twice monthly, and we are not such a large community we can afford that. This month alone, as many as six trans people--again, almost exclusively poor trans women of color--were reported murdered, and the month isn't even over.
Where are our priorities? Where are the priorities of our so-called allies? You were all out on the street, in the hundreds of thousands, protesting Proposition 8. Where will you be on Thursday night?
HRC just recently put out a new line of designer wear. (Hey, look, it's Christian Siriano, who made his fame spitting on trans people and encouraging the public to use bigoted slurs!) As a young, queer trans woman of color with a white-collar education and a blue-collar job, I can't afford new shoes, and I'm one of the more privileged in my community. Do you get it yet? Do you get why this is such an obscenity?
I am all for marriage equality, believe me. I proudly wear the ring that displays my engagement to my partner, another queer woman, and I look forward to our wedding, whether or not it's legalized. I want those legal protections for my family, and I want the security of knowing that my society places equal responsibility, honor, obligation, and sacred meaning on my marriage as anyone else's. As the law currently stands--and until we achieve marriage equality in the United States--as a trans person with mismatched government ID, I can't legally marry anyone.
But I have to live long enough to get married, and I have to know that my partner won't come to harm for loving me, and I would like to no longer have to carry the knowledge that as marriage is for people, until my society considers me fully human, it will never consider me "marriage material."
Listen, I know marriage is important, but it is not the only issue, here, okay? Because, per the studies even HRC cites, as a trans woman I have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered. 1 in 12. To put that in perspective, as a member of the general population I have an approximately 1 in 100 chance of dying in a car crash. I am almost ten times likelier to die of murder than a car crash! How many people do you know who've been in traffic accidents? How many of you know someone who's lost someone to a car wreck? Because they're extraordinarily common. And they're accidents. Murder is not. A population ten times likelier to be victim to violent crime as the general population, with a more than fifty percent sexual assault rate and a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered, is not an accident. It is a pattern. It is an epidemic. It is an all-out war. And marriage won't protect us from that. Neither will cocktail-party fundraisers.
You know what else won't protect us from that? Mainstream queer organizations. Not "GLBTQ" newspapers that purport to serve a whole community but list themselves, when not being called out, as "Gay and Lesbian News"--and give the Trans Day of Remembrance an almost two-inch blurb, a whole page to a gay men's drag show, and half a page to a gardening column. Not the Human Rights Campaign with its consistent pattern of taking trans people's money, time, and hope only to cut the legs out from under us when they think it'll make them a buck, who're keen on replacing our in-community, vital Day of Remembrance with an upbeat "Trans Awareness Day" that's easier for cissexual and straight people to swallow without feeling guilty about that long, long list of names, easier to organize parties with keynote speakers around, easier to pass the collection plate during. We need more of that, after all; the greater community only has Pride Festivals and a couple of TV channels to work with, right? All those dead people are such a downer. We should focus on our accomplishments and what makes us feel good, not dwell so much on the overwhelming epidemic of violence directed at our community and what to do about it, not take a whole two hours of a whole day in the autumn to solemnly commemorate the passing of hundreds of people who often never even got a decent funeral, to honor those so disparaged and degraded as sacred, missed, and important--
Where's the champagne in that?
You know what else won't keep you and you and me off that crack-of-doom, heartbreaking list? Hiding the freaks, sweeping the genderqueers under the rug, putting only our most privileged out front, bowing and scraping, and constantly apologizing for existing in a way that might make someone uncomfortable. That won't save my life. That won't save the lives of my friends. Trusting cissexual organizations to represent us and choose who represent us because they have money--that won't save our lives. Considering ourselves less than the cissexual people around us--that won't save our lives.
This isn't a matter of "reasonable people can disagree" or "it's just politics."
This is life and death.
This is whether or not you and I find a world where my fiancée has a 1 in 12 chance of being a widow due to murder alone acceptable, and whether or not watering down the one chance to honor those our community has lost to violent crime, the one chance to call attention to the constant violence aimed at my trans family and especially young, poor trans women of color, is the way to change such a world.
This is a matter of "allies" who turn out in the hundreds of thousands to protest for civil marriage equality staying home and dead silent, a week later, when it comes to advocating for and honoring murdered trans people and the great loss to all of us now that those beautiful people are gone. You want us on the street for your "Day Without Gays" or cheering for a group screening of "Milk"? Show up. Just once. For us. We're not just getting made fun of out here, and it's not just our relationships being invalidated--it's our basic humanity and right to live another day. Hundreds of thousands were in the street for marriage equality last week. Last year, at the Day of Remembrance in Portland, I saw fewer than forty attendees.
I would love to get married. As a trans woman, especially a queer trans woman in a same-sex relationship, I have just as much hurt and yearning about marriage equality as anyone. I plan on living that long, and I plan on living long enough to grow old with my partner and, heaven willing, children. Whether or not that happens may just be up to you.
My right to stay alive is more of a priority than my right to get legally married. And right now, as this society and its culture and its legal system stand, I'm one of many people who don't have either right. You want to fight for my right to marry? Wonderful. Thank you. But those hours protesting, those donations, all that outrage and community support and work--I'd prefer they went, for a start, to keeping me alive out here. And I think the "GLBTQ" community in the United States, such as it is, needs to take a long, hard look at why they have money and time to fight Measure 8, but nothing to give but silence, co-opting, and more requests for us to pipe down and lighten up when it comes to the more than monthly murder of trans people. Show us our lives and deaths matter to you. Show us you acknowledge that the violence against us is worth paying attention to, that our dead were real people who deserved far better, and that our living shouldn't have to live in fear.
See you in the street.
Having checked with one of this year's organizers--someone who did work I admired a great deal for last year's event--I had it confirmed to me that while HRC lobbied hard to have involvement and control over Portland's Trans Day of Remembrance and in fact announced to their listserv and on their website that they were so involved, the organizers from Portland State University took a stand and chose to limit HRC's involvement to a display table.
I find this news both heartening and reassuring. At the same time, I also think it remains important and disturbing that HRC tried to run the Day of Remembrance, and is doing so in many other cities and towns across the country. Additionally, I think it remains important that HRC continues to claim their heavy involvement in Portland's commemoration even though they were not invited to do so--they are supposedly presenting the commemoration "in conjunction" with the people who have actually put it together.
This information indicates that while my point regarding Portland specifically can be set in part aside, to my great comfort, it still stands in all the places where organizers were not able to stand up to HRC as Portland's did. I commend PSU's organizers and chosen speakers, and again apologize for repeating HRC's inaccurate publicity in this piece.
It has come to my attention that the Human Rights Campaign has got its hands on Portland's Trans Day of Remembrance.
Yes, that Human Rights Campaign.
It's being touted, along with many events across the U.S. this year, as a change of emphasis from "Trans Day of Remembrance" to "Trans Awareness Day," something much more upbeat, much more focused on feel-good celebration of the community, something much more acceptable to upper-class, culturally-normative assimilationists you can put in the newspaper without making anyone feel threatened.
Last year's Day of Remembrance in Portland featured a young, poor, politically-radical trans woman of color (hi!) as an invited speaker and was organized, grassroots, by a multiracial, cross-class, cross-generational group of locals, largely students. This year it's HRC, a Democratic Party flack, a local therapist, and the executive director of an advocacy organization, two of the three white, all binary-identified, middle-class, and middle-aged--all acceptably-photogenic Spokespeople For The Community. This is not to disparage those speakers, some of whom I've worked alongside personally--I just find the choices telling. They may all be good people who do good work, but the diversity seems to have gone away in who we're presenting as our community's face, at the same time that we're supposed to be de-emphasizing commemoration of the dead and trying to re-focus on the sunshiny bits. I cannot imagine that has nothing to do with our inviting a national GLb organization in, one whose goals have largely been assimilationist, white, middle-class, and yes, anti-trans--to "present" us.
The Day of Remembrance is not about being photogenic. It is not about fundraising or lobbying or recruitment. It does not need the HRC.
The Day of Remembrance is ours, and it is sacred. It is the one day we set aside to honor those in our community, overwhelmingly poor trans women of color, who were killed due to bigotry and hatred. It is a single day in the year where we make certain that the names of the murdered are heard and held up, so we can all remember that these people mattered, were real, were loved, and are missed. It's a day to gather the community together and call attention to the violence directed against us and the caring we have for each other. It came from us. It was built by us. It was never supposed to be flashy or glitzy. It is a solemn mourning for the dead, a place to hold hands, and a promise to those who violence took away from us that we who are still living will hold together, take care of each other, and push forward together into a world where that violence is only a painful memory.
We can do better than this, for our sacred dead. We can do better for ourselves.
We need better than this.
Our community is constantly looking down a gun-barrel, and organizations that don't honor or support us continually ask for more of our money, our time, our hope, and now, even our events so they can push their own agenda--one that often leaves us behind. It doesn't just leave us behind deliberately, as in the ENDA fiasco. It also leaves us behind by prioritizing goals that many of us simply don't have on the radar because we're too busy surviving. An inclusive ENDA would have helped guarantee jobs and homes for the most marginalized in the queer community, a bare chance to just have a table to put food on, let alone the food. Instead, we're focusing all of the queer community's resources on what, marriage equality? That's a worthy goal. It's just not on the docket for many of us--working-class queers, queer people of color, trans people--who're often more worried about keeping our families alive than having full legal equality for those families. That equality would be wonderful, as would the public affirmation of us as full citizens. But those of us who aren't even considered citizens--those of us who aren't even considered human, or important enough for an organization that purports to speak for us to advocate for--those of us who are denied votes, livelihoods, and more--we have a much more basic agenda. Make it till tomorrow. Make it till next week. We're dying out here, this year at a rate of more-than-twice monthly, and we are not such a large community we can afford that. This month alone, as many as six trans people--again, almost exclusively poor trans women of color--were reported murdered, and the month isn't even over.
Where are our priorities? Where are the priorities of our so-called allies? You were all out on the street, in the hundreds of thousands, protesting Proposition 8. Where will you be on Thursday night?
HRC just recently put out a new line of designer wear. (Hey, look, it's Christian Siriano, who made his fame spitting on trans people and encouraging the public to use bigoted slurs!) As a young, queer trans woman of color with a white-collar education and a blue-collar job, I can't afford new shoes, and I'm one of the more privileged in my community. Do you get it yet? Do you get why this is such an obscenity?
I am all for marriage equality, believe me. I proudly wear the ring that displays my engagement to my partner, another queer woman, and I look forward to our wedding, whether or not it's legalized. I want those legal protections for my family, and I want the security of knowing that my society places equal responsibility, honor, obligation, and sacred meaning on my marriage as anyone else's. As the law currently stands--and until we achieve marriage equality in the United States--as a trans person with mismatched government ID, I can't legally marry anyone.
But I have to live long enough to get married, and I have to know that my partner won't come to harm for loving me, and I would like to no longer have to carry the knowledge that as marriage is for people, until my society considers me fully human, it will never consider me "marriage material."
Listen, I know marriage is important, but it is not the only issue, here, okay? Because, per the studies even HRC cites, as a trans woman I have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered. 1 in 12. To put that in perspective, as a member of the general population I have an approximately 1 in 100 chance of dying in a car crash. I am almost ten times likelier to die of murder than a car crash! How many people do you know who've been in traffic accidents? How many of you know someone who's lost someone to a car wreck? Because they're extraordinarily common. And they're accidents. Murder is not. A population ten times likelier to be victim to violent crime as the general population, with a more than fifty percent sexual assault rate and a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered, is not an accident. It is a pattern. It is an epidemic. It is an all-out war. And marriage won't protect us from that. Neither will cocktail-party fundraisers.
You know what else won't protect us from that? Mainstream queer organizations. Not "GLBTQ" newspapers that purport to serve a whole community but list themselves, when not being called out, as "Gay and Lesbian News"--and give the Trans Day of Remembrance an almost two-inch blurb, a whole page to a gay men's drag show, and half a page to a gardening column. Not the Human Rights Campaign with its consistent pattern of taking trans people's money, time, and hope only to cut the legs out from under us when they think it'll make them a buck, who're keen on replacing our in-community, vital Day of Remembrance with an upbeat "Trans Awareness Day" that's easier for cissexual and straight people to swallow without feeling guilty about that long, long list of names, easier to organize parties with keynote speakers around, easier to pass the collection plate during. We need more of that, after all; the greater community only has Pride Festivals and a couple of TV channels to work with, right? All those dead people are such a downer. We should focus on our accomplishments and what makes us feel good, not dwell so much on the overwhelming epidemic of violence directed at our community and what to do about it, not take a whole two hours of a whole day in the autumn to solemnly commemorate the passing of hundreds of people who often never even got a decent funeral, to honor those so disparaged and degraded as sacred, missed, and important--
Where's the champagne in that?
You know what else won't keep you and you and me off that crack-of-doom, heartbreaking list? Hiding the freaks, sweeping the genderqueers under the rug, putting only our most privileged out front, bowing and scraping, and constantly apologizing for existing in a way that might make someone uncomfortable. That won't save my life. That won't save the lives of my friends. Trusting cissexual organizations to represent us and choose who represent us because they have money--that won't save our lives. Considering ourselves less than the cissexual people around us--that won't save our lives.
This isn't a matter of "reasonable people can disagree" or "it's just politics."
This is life and death.
This is whether or not you and I find a world where my fiancée has a 1 in 12 chance of being a widow due to murder alone acceptable, and whether or not watering down the one chance to honor those our community has lost to violent crime, the one chance to call attention to the constant violence aimed at my trans family and especially young, poor trans women of color, is the way to change such a world.
This is a matter of "allies" who turn out in the hundreds of thousands to protest for civil marriage equality staying home and dead silent, a week later, when it comes to advocating for and honoring murdered trans people and the great loss to all of us now that those beautiful people are gone. You want us on the street for your "Day Without Gays" or cheering for a group screening of "Milk"? Show up. Just once. For us. We're not just getting made fun of out here, and it's not just our relationships being invalidated--it's our basic humanity and right to live another day. Hundreds of thousands were in the street for marriage equality last week. Last year, at the Day of Remembrance in Portland, I saw fewer than forty attendees.
I would love to get married. As a trans woman, especially a queer trans woman in a same-sex relationship, I have just as much hurt and yearning about marriage equality as anyone. I plan on living that long, and I plan on living long enough to grow old with my partner and, heaven willing, children. Whether or not that happens may just be up to you.
My right to stay alive is more of a priority than my right to get legally married. And right now, as this society and its culture and its legal system stand, I'm one of many people who don't have either right. You want to fight for my right to marry? Wonderful. Thank you. But those hours protesting, those donations, all that outrage and community support and work--I'd prefer they went, for a start, to keeping me alive out here. And I think the "GLBTQ" community in the United States, such as it is, needs to take a long, hard look at why they have money and time to fight Measure 8, but nothing to give but silence, co-opting, and more requests for us to pipe down and lighten up when it comes to the more than monthly murder of trans people. Show us our lives and deaths matter to you. Show us you acknowledge that the violence against us is worth paying attention to, that our dead were real people who deserved far better, and that our living shouldn't have to live in fear.
See you in the street.
Labels: americana, feminism, monstrous, on the pavement, queer, trans
posted by little light | 5:16 PM
28 Comments:
The more I hear about this year's Transgender Day of Remembrance, the way it's being co-opted, and the way the true needs of our trans sisters and brothers are being ignored by those who claim to be our friends, the angrier and angrier I get.
The 1 in 12 number seems a little suspect. Wikipedia tells me that estimates for the percentage of transpeople in the United states range from 1/500 to 1/10000. At 1/500, there would be about 50k transpeople being killed every year -- a number three times as large as the total number of murders in the country. At 1/10000, there would be about 2500, or more than 1 in 7 murders. That seems highly unlikely to me.
Nice math there, Nony, but you might want to read the statistics it's based on one more time. The 1 in 12 figure is the chance a trans person has of being murdered in their lifetime, not the fraction of the trans population murdered every year.
But yeah - I had no idea this year's TDOR was an HRC-sponsored event. It's so incredibly frustrating - the one day out of the year that's definitively ours, and now I feel ambivalent about going. Trans Awareness Day, my ass.
You still going? I'll definitely be there (one of my best friends is speaking, after all), but I think I'm gonna try to cleanse the bad karma by running interference against any HRC staffers asking for donations.
Speck, you'll be comforted to know that, as added above, PSU's organizers in fact did not allow HRC control of Portland's event. While HRC's publicity continues to claim that they are running Portland's Day of Remembrance, the actual organizers would not allow them to do so and have confirmed this with me.
That said, I will be there to see your friend and mine do her thing. HRC staffers will be present and, I believe, doing their thing, but we'll run interference however we have to, yeah?
This comment has been removed by the author.
yeah, you know, it bothers me enough that the HRC even tried, given their stellar record on the rights of trans people. somehow i think you came closer to forecasting what the HRC wanted than anything else.
also every time i see ads for GET THE EXCLUSIVE CHRISTIAN SIRIANO!!!!111 SHIRT from the HRC on Pam's House Blend, i just get a little "grr" inside. not like CS would ever make anything that fit anyone my size anyways.
(apologies, i forgot that my display name was weird, so i deleted and reposted.)
yeah, the gist--HRC kind of blows--remains regardless. They're everywhere around here--main office (I think? some anyway) HQ, the stickers...It'd be nice if they weren't seen so much as the go-to organization, frankly.
Great post. Please share this on queertoday.com!
Last year, hrc (they don't deserve caps) tried to assume control and credit for our D.O.R. event here in Chicago.
As chair of Illinois Gender Advocates, I politely told them they could attend, but this has ALWAYS been "our show", and I did not appreciate them telling people anything different.
This year, the weasels on their board didn't even bother to show up. How's that for "true colors"?
That's alright, those over-compensated buffoons can BITE ME! We still had over 200 people to listen to Col. Diane Schroer (LOVE HER!) give the keynote address.
How 'bout dat?
I'm not aware of the specific issues here, of course, and I do not think it is acceptable for an unconnected organization to take over any groups celebrations. But, from reading this I have a few thoughts. Again, without knowing the specifics, and thinking that your complaints here are probably entirely valid, I still would like to suggest that a certain level of mainstreaming may be positive for the trans community.
If the world is frightened of transgendered and queer existance in general, then the only way to lessen that fear is through a "safe-feeling" introduction. I am NOT saying that it is the best way to gain rights denied. History has shown over and over again that for marginalized citizens to earn respect and their deserved rights they must fight loudly and be obtrusive. Ultimately, as you have said before, it is a type of war. However, I feel there is something to be said for the mainstream approach as well.
The more "normative" queer communities seem, the easier it will be for the fearful to accept their existance. Also, it is the best way to reach out to youth. The more transgendered people are seen in mainstream culture, even though it does not represent the full spectrum of diversity within the community, the more young people will learn to see them as people as opposed to monsters.
Mainstream awareness will not ultimately fix that which requires change. But I think it can help change minds and gain allies in the fight for equality.
Those are my thoughts. Do they make sense by your experience, or do you feel I completely off base?
Yes, Cari, but the HRC seems to have this wonderous penchant for wanting to include trans people whenever it is convenient for them (or when they're looking for money) and then, the second that it might be politically inconvenient, y'all end up pitched off the bus. This happens over (ENDA, uh, lord, since the early 90s...) and over (SONDA in New York State in 2003) and over (complete non-support for HB3328 in Hawaii, bare lip service to HB1722 in Massachusetts...) and while it's not my place to say they can't be trusted, it is my place to say i think their record's bloody shameful and their repeated two-facedness just makes me sick. There's no place for the HRC wanting it both ways, and given their repulsive record on anything involving trans people (oh hay everyone remember how they had serious problems with Brandon Teena's name? remember when they were calling Amanda Milan by the wrong pronouns for months?) makes me think i can't be too misguided.
I hear what you're saying, Cari, and while I think it's valid in certain situations, I don't think that the TDOR is a day where we should be 'mainstreaming.' The TDOR is not about education, it's not about outreach, it's about honoring our dead and rededicating ourselves to working for equality and justice for all. Not just binary-identified middle-class white transfolk (such as myself :P ), but everybody. Especially when the list is overwhelmingly filled with people of color and people who didn't fit the definition of 'mainstream.' This is their day, not ours.
HayleySpeck, you're right. That's an annualized rate of ~0.15%, so something like 850/year, or 1 in 20 murders. That still seems rather high.
850 does sound a little high, yes, but that number is based on the 1:500 statistic. If you use the 1:10,000 ratio, you get about 43 murders per year, which is more in line with what we see in DOR. That suggests to me that the 1:12 figure was an estimate based on the numbers of known murders of transfolk combined with an outdated, extremely low prevalence figure for transsexuality. Not having direct access to the study atm, it's hard to say for sure, but it does seem likely that the 1:12 figure is overstated. A figure on the order of 1:250 seems much more appropriate to the actual prevalence of transfolk. It's not quite as bad as 1:12, but compared with the 1:18,000 murder rate of the general population, it's still obscene.
HRC shouldn't even be there.
I'm a young cisgender queer woman, and this year will be my first time attending DOR. I will show up, stand with others, and LISTEN. Because that is what friends do.
HRC doesn't seem to understand that.
All change is at minimum dual.
It was Stonewall that kicked off the modern queer rights movement -- Stonewall with its glorious proliferation of drag queens, transfolks, mostly of colour: all of the unacceptable swept-under-the-rug vulnerable people saying No. Saying We Will Not Take This Anymore.
That's the first spark, the vanguard, the people whose lives are already on the goddamn line and bleeding who start to fight because there is no other way for them to go.
The more assimilative folks, the quieter, more "acceptable" ones, they can do the feet-on-the-ground "Look, we're just people" and *hold* the ground that the vanguard claimed, but they can't take ground on their own.
It's the vanguard that expands the range of acceptable normal. The rest of us only secure it.
I'm sorry, the student group at a univeristy is no more rightoues then HRC. The fact is, neither is repping the people most affected by trans violence. It's a big tent people, time to move onward and upward.
I'm sorry, Anonymous--since you don't have the ovaries to use even a pseudonym--a group of actual grassroots local trans people has no more right to speak for themselves and their community than a national organization with a history of directly harming those trans people? Are you from the moon?
Terribly sorry for suggesting that those most affected by transphobic violence be considered the right people to talk about, and set the agenda for, stopping that violence. The people whose problem it actually is should definitely not be listened to. You're right. We should embrace "the big tent" and let people who've never experienced what we go through tell us to sit down and be quiet and so they can tell us what we need and when and what our lives are about.
Absolutely right. That's the only way onward and upward.
Anonymous, you may call that a "big tent," but it's not--it's a tent that doesn't include the people who need it. It's a tent that doesn't include the people being subjected to the violence in question. It's just a tent for the privileged to stand in and speak for the riffraff they won't let in, but whose cash they're happy to take at the ticket booth.
Don't come back.
I'm sorry, are we really quibbling about the exact odds of me getting murdered, here? It could be 1 in 20, or 1 in 50--it's still an astonishingly, unacceptably high level of violence directed at vulnerable people. Instead of trying to poke at the math while avoiding the actual problem, can we simply agree that violence against trans people is epidemic, far too common, far too often excused, and intolerable? And work to change it? Jesus.
And Cari? No, you aren't aware of the specific issues.
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Little light, no, I'm not aware of the specific issues, which is why I read your blog and otheres. I'm trying to learn more about them because they directly affect people I care about. I meant to present a possible positive of the general theme that seemed to have been overlooked or ignored without discounting your complaints on the specifics. I'm sorry if it didn't read like that. But I don't know things. So tell me them.
Algormortis, thank you so much. Your response gives me more insight on the history surrounding this specific issue. Considering that, the anti-HRC sentiment makes a lot of sense. There are probably better avenues for the community to gain exposure than through an organization a history of such internal marginalization.
And Haylacious, thank you for your response also. It's only the general concept I'm trying to point out. An Awareness Day is NOT the same thing as a Day of Remembrance and I was relieved to read the edit saying that it's original organization had been preserved. I tried to make my opinion on that clear in the beginning of my comment, but I can see that it didn't come across. I'm sorry for my lack of clarity, so let me be clear now: I do not think that mainstreaming the Day of Remembrance is a good idea. Your points solidify that for me even more. I also wasn't aware of the history of the trans community with the HRC that Algormortis listed, which helps shed a lot of light on the extra vehemence concerning this specific organization's potential involvement. I really appreciate that you and Algomortis took the time to understand what I was trying to say and explain why it doesn't apply to this situation.
Thank you.
Okay, Cari, are you a transexual person? Because if not... go to another place, and don't bother transexual people with your 'doubts'. That's extremely privileged of you.
Noir,
I just want to clarify: Cari is an old friend, and is welcome here, and no, is not trans. Whatever her issues with privilege, I don't need her to go away from here. That said, I appreciate your protectiveness.
Cari,
Thank you for continuing to listen. As I'm sure you can understand, this has been an emotional and difficult day, and my buttons have been easy to push.
Noir,
I'm sorry to have offended you. I'm not trans. And I recognize that that makes me privileged. I have never experienced unapologetic or violent prejudice based on who I am and I have a very different, and often unconsciously narrow, perspective because of that. I know that my opinions on some things are sometimes not as valid as those of others simply because of these different experiences. I work to broaden my perspective through my relationships with people- all people- close friends, mere internet acquaintances, those who happen to fit into minority categories, and those who do not.
I don't know exactly what you mean when you say "doubts". I certainly didn't doubt that Little Light's anger was well placed. I tend to trust her judgment and, as I said, I didn't know enough specifics to doubt it either. I simply felt that she may be overlooking a potential positive result of what she termed "mainstreaming". However, clearly that does not apply to the HRC, which was something I did not understand, and in any case I never meant to imply that the Day of Remembrance should be mainstreamed. Even in my ignorance I can understand that much, though I apparently didn't make it clear enough in my writing.
Feel free to email me if you want to concerning this or anything else that may have upset you. Little light can give you my address.
~
LL- After reading the other comments, I wasn't actually surprised at the snappiness of your reaction as much as the lack of information accompanying it. You usually put me in my place by talk circles around me when I'm missing something vital.
*and by talking me in circles, even.
I shudder at the number of typos I make without a grammar check.
Cyndi, not that you're likely to read this, but I found this year's--and last year's Chicago DOR hugely problematic. My memory was that, of everyone who spoke, there were only two people of color, one of whom was, well, transphobic & deliberately-privilege-erasing-even-though-I-called-her-on-it-specifically-and-broke-off-reporting-my-hate-crime-*because-I-was-too-triggered-by-talking-to-her*-on-that-basis (Laura Velasquez), and the other didn't speak to the intersections of racism or misogyny with transphobia (though I know that she gets it and I really liked what she did say--she was one of the few--the only?--people who didn't shift the focus off physical violence.).
I think the BYC needs to have a much larger hand in the ceremony itself, not just the night of fallen stars. It's really upsetting for me to hear a lot of folks with way more privilege than me shift the focus onto discrimination rather than violence. (Diane's inclusion of suicide was fine, though my memory was there was some of it problematic) I couldn't help but notice that the people who spoke generally did so through institutional station/power, which is obvi not so great for TPOC...
Oh, I apologize then. I wasn't trying to tell you that you shouldn't accept her here, and I'm sorry for sounding like that.
And yeah, a lot of what she said bugged me wrong, but I understand it's not the same as a stranger coming here asking you to teach them about trans issues. And heck, you are the one who has the right to decide who can ask you things. Sorry for sounding that entitled.
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