I like what Bear said:
It’s Trans Day Of Remembrance. We lost thirty this year. Mostly transwomen and transfeminine spectrum people, mostly women of color, mostly savagely beaten or stabbed for being too challenging to understand, assimilate, classify.
For the first time the NYT wrote about the murder of a transwoman of color in a way that suggests that her death is to be taken seriously, and did so before a well-meaning white non-trans person made a film about it. But it is hard to understand this as progress.
I’ve seen a variety of kinds of vigils and memorials for TDOR, but the one that is most vivid for me is one I saw at Wells College, a few years ago. The students there wrote the names of each of the trans dead on a slice of paper that they taped to the back of a dining hall chair. Suddenly it became clear that in the seven years (I think) since count had been kept, a huge hall’s worth of transpeople had been killed. Sitting in the chairs was emotionally intense, and if you were quiet you could hear the chatter of the ghosts, making friends. I sat in Rita Hester’s chair, and missed her.
Please take a moment, even if it’s just a breath right now, to remember. If you’re the praying kind, a prayer couldn’t hurt. If you’re the doing kind, tell someone else it’s Transgender Day of Remembrance, and what that means. If you’re the giving kind, make a donation to National Center For Transgender Equality – they can always use it. If you’re the writing kind, write about who you have lost, or found, and post or publish it if you’re able. And whatever other kind you are, please also be the kind who interrupts transphobia. Because it’s killing us, you see? It’s killing us.
Radical Doula 