Yesterday was Transgender Day of Remembrance

And, poor ally that I am, I didn't even know until this morning when I saw all the USAian blogs I read had commemorated it.

Clarisse Thorn has put together a few links that are really useful and interesting. The explanation of "cis-" to which she links is particularly good.

She also links a piece by C. L. Minou, guest-posting at Feministe:

...it seems that nowadays some trans folks are turning against TDOR. Not just the various observances of it, but against the entire concept of having a day to remember the murdered trans people of the previous year. “It’s depressing,” say some. “Where is the positive day?” say others. “Why do we only talk about the depressing deaths, when trans people have accomplished so much?”

Minou has her answers to these issues(well worth reading carefully), and I'd like to add my own, as a somewhat gender-complicated cis-dude (check out "My sexual orientation" in the sidebar!) Minou talks about the TDoR being a reminder to the more privileged of trans folk that they, too, could become victims, and not to push the weaker, the poor, the disadvantaged, under a bus.

I kind of want a day like TDoR to send a message beyond the communities who created it. I want it to send a message as far as possible to cisfolks as well as transfolks. 179 murdered human beings is 179 too many, and I want cisfolk to look and see what their attitudes do. We remember, hoping that others will see us remember, and maybe begin to reflect upon the issues. There are those out there, of course, who will be unmoved. Who will think of these women and men, "good riddance!" because to them it is as though it happened to a stranger in a foreign land, and for whatever reason they fear or hate the idea of fluid gender, and the human representations of that. But then, those are the people who commit these murders and, far too often, get away with them. They get to hold these views unchallenged, and to commit these acts unpunished, because everyone else turns a blind eye or tacitly accepts the excuses they make (such as the so-called "trans panic defence" where discovering a date has different parts than expected somehow excuses battering her to death).

Remembering that this hatred costs lives - 179 that we know of in the past year - is not trivial. Reminding cisfolks that hatred costs lives is not trivial. Innocent victims, many of whom have no political agenda, have died. We remember them, and we can hope that in remembering, we show this to the cisfolk who need to see. Which is why, even though I'm a day late (and needed to be reminded about the day myself), I still post now to say "I remember".