![]() And you honor that legacy every single day that we build these relationships to be stronger and even more resilient. You have inherited a legacy of resistance, resilience, and conviction, a legacy of stepping outside the boundaries of what is expected and putting yourselves directly in the line of fire so that people like me have a community to belong to in the first place. My friends, my colleagues, and my community. ![]() My daily reality is the culmination of so many nameless individuals forced to advocate for themselves in a world that would not accept them – which brings me to you all. We wake up every day knowing that we inherit a long, painful, and beautiful legacy of resistance, resilience, and conviction, and with that, the responsibility to use this privilege of daily existence to further the possibilities for transgender people in the future. That is, for those of us who do have the ability, desire, and privilege to come out and medically transition. We did not know what to expect for the future when we chose to come out and medically transition. Being transgender is a burden and a gift. I’m not saying my path has been easy, because it hasn’t been on so many levels – but it has been easier than most in a lot of ways. They forged the path forward for myself and my trans siblings. Other people did not have the opportunities that I do. Spending time with a mixed group of other trans friends recently, especially some older and wiser than myself, I was reminded that who I am and what I’m doing today was somebody else’s dream deferred. The intersections of transphobia, racism, sexism, transmisogyny, etc., continue to maintain the systems that leave them intensely vulnerable on many levels.Īs a transmasc individual who began transitioning over a decade ago, I would like to share what this day means to me. It would be a disservice not to point out that this type of fatal violence highly disproportionally affects transgender women of color. This happens on multiple levels for no good or right reasons. We say "at least" because these stories go unreported far too often or are intentionally misreported. We know at this point in the United States, at least 32 transgender/gender non-conforming individuals have been murdered in this past year because of their perceived gender identity (globally, the number is painfully higher). and the globe, light candles, and say the names of our trans siblings whose lives have been lost that year. So, on November 20, we come together in most major cities across the U.S. There have been nearly 300 bills proposed since 2021 by state lawmakers across this nation in a calculated attack on the rights of transgender Americans. It's become an important tradition that so many generations of trans people carry each year as we try to make sense of a society that seems hell-bent on erasing us in some of the most brutal ways, year after year. The event also commemorated all of the trans people lost to senseless anti-trans violence that year. It started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a Black trans woman who was murdered in Boston in 1998. This weekend, and this day every year, November 20, is the Transgender Day of Remembrance.
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