Transgender Day of Remembrance 2014
For the last dozen years as November 20th approaches, I tend to get particularly reflective and become aware of a depressive cloud that sometimes haunts me. No, it’s not because it is my birthday and I’m another year older and not much wiser, but because it is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) and I will be speaking about the insidious crimes against people like me… just because we choose to be honest about our gender identity and want to live — as ourselves in a culture, a society, a socio-political- religious environment that for whatever reason or reasons tolerates, condones, or promotes the fear and hate that wants us gone.
The more violent the culture, it seems the more violent the crimes against us. As transgender people make strides in gaining rights and positive visibility, so it appears that the crimes against us, the murders grow in number and become more gruesome.
Progress… TDOR has become an international event that is observed all across the globe. We are recognized… this year there is even a TDOR in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. In 2012 the White House held it’s first TDOR observance. In 2009 the US passed the very first LGBT inclusive federal bill the Matthew Shepard-James Byrd Jr. Hate crimes law. Today In over 150 US jurisdictions it is explicitly illegal to discriminate against transgender people in employment, housing and public accommodations. Technically, across the USA since 2012 under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to an opinion issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) under the chairmanship of Obama appointee, Chai Feldblum, it is illegal to discriminate against an employee or applicant on the basis of the person’s gender identity. I say technically, because unlike NJ’s Law Against Discrimination and other jurisdictions’ explicit laws, it does not say so in black and white.
Mia Macy who won her EEOC case is, still in 2014, unemployed. That’s what I mean about technical, we need more! We need Congress to move on ENDA and other explicit inclusive protective laws!
More and more groups and institutions are holding a transgender awareness week, capped by a TDOR observance!
So why are more and more murders reported? We come out we are recognized, we are empowered, but when we come out, we are more visible and some of us more than others are vulnerable, and we must be wary.
Is this the price of progress? The problem is that aside from Brazil, in most other countries we are not recognized or our lives even reported. So as we push for recognition and openness, this is the risk, but if we don’t stand up, step out, how can we change the world, how can we remove the stigma with which the ignorant and the haters have burdened us?
Mahatma Ghandi — “ First they ignore you, then they laugh at you (ridicule you), then they fight you, then you win.”
In much of the world we are still ignored and many of those who are murdered are never reported and when they are in Third World countries, there is often not even a name. When you watch Fox News and other right wing and even mainstream press and media, you see that we are often ridiculed, trivialized and mocked. But more and more the haters, the religious fascists are fighting us. The National Organization for Marriage, seeing that the marriage wars are being lost has now spent millions of dollars going after what is perceived to be the weak link in the LGBT community, the “T”, and more and more we are now winning with more of us coming out, being positive role models and tearing down the false stereotypes.
Progress is uneven and we cannot be politically ambivalent or cavalier.
Princeton University has hosted a TDOR observance for the past dozen years in their University Chapel, which rivals the most magnificent of Gothic cathedrals. Each year I read a proclamation from either the governor, or one of our US Senators or Congresspeople. In 2013 Congressman Rush Holt, the local Representative who is an acknowledged “Champion” of transgender rights, attended and spoke. (He is one of the 7 Democrats who defied Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi and voted “NO” to the gay only ENDA because it was not transgender inclusive, and was penalized by HRC which denied him a coveted 100 rating). Now fully out, a former high ranking aide to Christie Whitman read a letter from the former Republican Governor. The Essex County Prosecuter, Carolyn Murray, was so moved after the brutal murder of Victoria Carmen White that she attended and asked to speak!
Late this summer when we engaged the Princeton University organizers to plan ahead for this year’s observance, the feedback from the students was, “too many political people”! They did not want to hear from the people who care and who are in a position where they can and do make things happen. OK this year there will be no proclamations, no public officials appearing in the cozy confines of the elite who have progressive and transgender supportive political representation.
The last few years I’ve spoken at the TDOR service at a Lutheran Evangelical Church in Teaneck, NJ. After the 2010 redistricting, many folks in Bergen County woke up to the fact they now were represented by a anti everything civil rights tea party reactionary ideologue in Congressman Scott Garrett. Is it surprising that the organizers, representing the shrinking middle class, reached out to the New Jersey transgender community’s political godmother, the feisty Senator Loretta Weinberg and to the proactively transgender inclusive Assemblyman Tim Eustace as speakers?
I was also invited to speak at a TDOR event in Newark, NJ, which is sponsored by AAOGC, a group servicing some of our most at risk inner city transpeople. In 2012 I met Eyricka Morgan a panelist at their transgender awareness event. In September 2013, the Rutgers student was stabbed to death, brutally murdered in New Brunswick. TDOR has been especially moving for me… but when I realize that there is something personal… someone I’ve met… it takes it to a whole new emotional level and the realization how important it is that this violence must end!
Needless to say, the folks in Newark who are most affected by the violence against transgender people, would love to have politicians and law enforcement public servants attend and participate in the TDOR event!
And so it goes!
For information on TDOR and local observances please visit the TDOR website.
Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion, Transgender Politics
About the Author (Author Profile)
Babs at 76 passed away in 2019. She was a member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, Deputy Vice Chair of the NJ Democratic State Committee and Political Director of the Gender Rights Advocacy Association of NJ. She served on the Executive Committee of Trans United 4 Obama. She has served as Vice Chair of the DNC Eastern Caucus, was President of NJ Stonewall Democrats, Co-Chair of National Stonewall Democrats Federal PAC Board, Vice-Chair of Garden State Equality, Executive Board member of National Stonewall Democrats as Chair of the DNC Relations Committee and a member of the NJ Civil Unions Review Commission.Subscribe
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