The Dead and Missing in the Trans Community
Content Notice: This article discusses murders and suicides of nonbinary, transgender, and gender nonconforming people.
Today, November 20th 2015, is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It’s one of those days I wish didn’t need, you know, its own day.
The Transgender Day of Remembrance memorializes those who have been murdered as a result of hatred or prejudice against transgender and gender nonconforming people. According to the Trans Murder Monitoring TDoR 2015 Update, there have been 271 trans people murdered this year. That’s an average of approximately one trans person every twenty-eight hours.
That information alone should be horrifying to anyone who reads it, but I also wish to talk about something I have mentioned on Twitter many times: nonbinary and transgender people who have died by suicide or gone missing.
The rate of death and people seeming to all but disappear among us is, frankly, horrifying. planettransgender.com collected a list of 27 trans people who died by suicide this year, and I know of ten not on that list. There are also those who simply disappear — either they die and nobody hears of it, or they intentionally hide themselves in an attempt to regain safety. I was unable to find any proper statistics on this sort of thing, but this year alone, 22 nonbinary and trans people I regularly interacted with have disappeared for at least the past two months. Many I only knew online either simply stopped using their public accounts or removed them entirely. One I knew in-person did the same, and has not been seen anywhere in months. A few told me they were planning to disappear, but explicitly refused to tell anybody where they were going or how to contact them.
And I cannot blame any of them. At all.
In a world where our very existence is vilified, and who we are is treated as justification to hate and abuse us, I can’t blame them. In a world where the day before Trans Day of Remembrance, reports came out of a trans woman found dead in a men’s prison, and that kind of thing has happened before, I can’t blame them. I only find myself able to blame those who vilify us, those who use who we are as justification to abuse us, and those who stay quiet while watching this happen.
When the only ones who reliably stay beside us are others who are similarly targeted, it is unsurprising that our progress moves slowly and is paid for with the lives and safety of those who are most vulnerable. Often, this is trans women of color.
Spend today quietly and attentively listening to the nonbinary, transgender, and gender nonconforming people around you. If you can, attend a vigil for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. And, on this incredibly sad day, let’s remember not only those who had their lives taken from them, but also all of the people who are missing. There are so, so many people who should still be with us, but are now gone. Every one of them, and every one of us still around, is loved and important.
There is a list of vigils for the Transgender Day of Remembrance available on tdor.info. Note that some of them occur the weekend after the Transgender Day of Remembrance.