Transgender Day of Remembrance
Photo by Hans55, from last year’s Beacon of Hope vigil in Manchester, UK.
Today (Sunday the 20th of November) is the 13th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. Memorial events are taking place all over the world.
According to GLAAD, there has been an alarming global increase in brutal violence against LBTGQ people in recent years. More specifically, nearly two hundred transphobic murders were documented last year by the Transrespect vs Transphobia project. Statistics compiled by Trans Murder Monitoring assert that approximately every 72 hours, a trans person is murdered somewhere in the world. The countries with the most transphobic murders last year were Brazil, the United States, and Honduras.
These numbers only show us parts of a far bigger and more disturbing picture, as there are many countries where little, if any data, has been recorded. Nor do any of the statistics above include the gut-wrenching number of people who have been driven to take their own lives. Something to bear in mind: according to a National Gay and Lesbian Task Force / National Center for Transgender Equality survey posted at the National Network of Libraries of Medicine earlier this year, in the United States alone, “a ‘staggering’ 41 percent of the more than 6,400 respondents said they had attempted suicide, compared to a rate of 1.6 percent for the general population.”
Take a moment.
November 22nd, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Nice post, except:
“assert that approximately every 72 hours, a trans man or woman is murdered somewhere in the world.”
OK, first of all, trans men are murdered at a much much MUCH lower rate than trans women. And not all trans people are men or women. Almost all of the people on the list this year were trans women (of color) or non-binary trans folks.
So… facepalm in a big way.
November 22nd, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Eep. Good point. Okay, give me a second; I’m gonna change the wording simply to “trans person”. Let me know how it reads? Thanks.
November 22nd, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Not an excuse or a justification, just a heads up: I cobbled all of the stats and bullet points for this piece together from a lot of different sources (providing linkbacks, of course). There’s similar “trans men and women” wording here:
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/news/transgender/2011/11/20/1786.html
Thanks for calling out the facepalmyness of it. I promise to do better next time. :)
November 25th, 2011 at 6:50 am
one person every three f-ing days?! that makes me want to go out and bash some fag bashers.
thank you for sharing this post and for the continuing discussion of gender on this web site.
October 25th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
I found the source and did some more specific math, the every three days is generous. A trans individual is actually killed every 2.7 days, or one every 65 hours.