When my cousin first heard of the Transgender Day of Remembrance earlier this year, she asked me why the trans* community is so focussed on death. It's not a question I was prepared for but I gave it a lot of thought and I realised that, as a community, there is one thing that we all have in common: whether you are black of white, rich or poor, old or young, the thug in the street will not care. They want to attack us, and they want to kill us, because we are trans*.
We have all experienced hate of one kind or another. Maybe we are the lucky ones and the hate was not directed at us, this time at least, maybe it was directed at a friend. Maybe this time it was verbal abuse, rather than physical, or maybe it was hate from a distance; a text message, an email, a rejection letter after a job application, or an eviction notice from a landlord. The possibilities are endless.
Whatever it was, we've all been there. We all know hate when we see it. It's an experience we all share, even if we really wish we did not. There's an old lie that sticks and stones break our bones but names will never hurt us. We all know it's a lie. Names hurt just as much. Broken bones heal, but the damage done by words does not. It builds up and builds up until we reach our breaking point.
Some of the names that are read out today at the many remembrance ceremonies going on around the world will be those of people who reached their breaking point this year. They are the names of people who endured so much hate that they simply could not take any more, and decided death was preferable to enduring more punishment.
There is still a lot of work to be done before transphobia is wiped out. We have seen big steps forward in the last few years but here in Europe there are still 24 countries that require trans* people to be sterilised before they can receive recognition of their genders, and 10 countries that simply do not recognise a trans person's gender in law.
If the nations of Europe cannot recognise our basic rights, how can we expect the average person in the street? How can we expect greater public acceptance of trans* people and their rights when members of the LGBT community hold conferences that attack our right to exist? This has to change, and it will change, but until it does change we can't expect the number of names we must add to our lists of the dead to fall.
So I will say to my cousin, and to anyone else who asks, that today is not about a fixation on death. It is about remembering those who did not make it through another year, either because they could not endure more of society's callous hatred toward us, or because someone else stole their life from them.
The media will not mark their passing. In many cases, their families have long since washed their hands of them. But we remember them. We honour their memories and the memories of the thousands of other transgender people who can no longer be with us, and we hope that next year there will be fewer names to add to the list. We hope this because we know the day when we can hope there will be no more names is still a long way away.
by LGBTory officer, Zoe Kirk-Robinson