The Transgender Day of Remembrance is the day we take a moment to remember all those who have died as a result of continuing prejudice and violent transphobia, both here in Britain and around the world.
In a year where so many trans people featured on the Rainbow List and where progress has been made in improving media relations with the trans community (although there is still so much work to be done in that area) it can sometimes look like the fight for equality is being won. It is not. It is still an uphill struggle and we are nowhere near the peak yet.
Jacqueline Cowdrey, a British woman from Worthing, was the first trans person we know of to have been murdered in the last year. She was killed on 20 November 2013, the day the trans community was remembering its dead.
Although she is the only recorded British murder victim from the trans community in the last year, she is not alone in being a fatal victim of ongoing transphobia in the UK. The suicide rate remains high, as does the rate at which trans people simply disappear. This is true in Britain and also abroad, where 225 more trans people, mostly women of colour, have been murdered this year.
More needs to be done to achieve equality for trans people, both in Britain and internationally. We can do more. We must do more. We will do more.
This year LGBTory has worked to fight against homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools, with strong Government backing. Nicky Morgan, the Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities, recently announced a £2 million funding package to fight homophobic and transphobic bullying.
In Government, the Conservative Party is backing trans equality and equal opportunities in society.
This was the first government to introduce a Transgender Action Plan to improve trans rights and trans inclusion and the promises made in that plan have been fulfilled.
Over the next year, LGBTory will continue to promote social change and acceptance of trans people in society at large by continuing to work with LGBT groups who work toward trans inclusivity.
We met with Stonewall to discuss their inclusion of trans people and their coming into the fight for trans equality. We have discussed with Kaleidoscope and other groups how to work on LGBT rights abroad, and we met with the Discrimination Law Association to discuss employment discrimination and homophobia & transphobia in sport.
LGBTory will continue to push for greater equality, greater acceptance and greater inclusion of trans people in the political process by working with our trans-positive Conservative MPs, Councillors and MEPs as well as continuing our efforts to make allies of those politicians who have not yet seen that equal rights for all are worth fighting for whether you are trans or cis.
All of this is an ongoing battle and LGBTory will continue to fight it until transphobia is a thing of the past, because if there is even one name on the list of the dead next year it will be one name too many.