Local community honors lives lost on Trans Day of Remembrance

“For me, Trans Day of Remembrance is a time to remember those our community has lost but in a way that they are honored,” said Niko Stone, vice chair of Out Boulder County’s Trans Steering and Events committee and the coordinator for the Boulder County Gender Support Group. “It is important to remember all those lives that have ended too early for just being who they were.”

Trans Day of Remembrance, or TDOR, started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor Rita Hester, a trans woman killed in 1998. According to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD, Hester was an advocate and educator for the trans community in Boston. Hester was found in her apartment by a neighbor after being stabbed 20 times by an unknown assailant. She was rushed to the hospital but died of cardiac arrest moments after being admitted.   

Recognized annually on November 20, TDOR has become a global day to recognize and memorialize Hester and other trans people throughout the world who have been victims of violence. According to GLAAD, November 20 was chosen by Smith for the first vigil almost one year after Hester’s death.

According to international organization Transrespect, at least 375 trans and gender-diverse people were murdered between Oct. 2020 and Sept. 2021, an increase of 7% from 2020 which reported a total of 350 murders. The majority of those deaths were in Central and South America, among other regions of the world. According to Transrespect, data shows a total of 4,042 trans and gender-diverse murders since the organization started collecting data in Jan. 2008. Of the 375 deaths noted by Transrespect, 96% were trans women and 58% were known to be sex workers.

The majority of Transrespect’s data comes from countries with established trans and LGBTQ organizations, acknowledging that there may be more from countries that do not record or report those deaths.

“Data indicates a worrying trend when it comes to the intersections of misogyny, racism, xenophobia and hate towards sex workers, with the majority of victims being Black and migrant trans women of color and trans sex workers,” Transrespect said in its report. 

In the U.S. during 2021, the Human Rights Campaign, or HRC, counted at least 47 violent deaths of transgender or gender-noncomforming people, which is again more than any previous year. The most recent was a 28-year-old African American trans woman, Marquiisha Lawrence, who was fatally shot in Greenville, NC on Nov. 4. Of those 47 deaths, more than 35 were trans women of color, according to HRC.

These crimes come in a year where dozens of states in the U.S. have passed or attempted to pass legislation restricting trans and LGBTQ access to healthcare, competitive sports and allowing religious exemptions to bar service to LGBTQ people, among others. The ACLU keeps an up-to-date list of the status of those bills, with several dozen successfully signed into law in states like Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee and Mississippi.

Stone, who uses the pronouns they and them, said one of the things that struck them during their first experience with Trans Day of Remembrance was the number of trans people lost who didn’t have accurate names or locations for a memorial. 

“Not always, but a big cause of (inaccurate names and locations) is estranged family members claiming the body under a person’s deadname (a person’s name from before their transition), burying them in the wrong clothing and under the wrong name,” Stone said. “One of the big things that’s important and valuable is honoring those people for who they were, not who their family wanted them to be.”

This year’s TDOR vigil organized by OBC will strike a balance between the duality of honoring lives lost while providing a space to recognize and support the trans and LGBTQ community in and around Boulder County. The vigil will begin with several speakers, as well as music and a poetry reading in front of the Boulder County Courthouse on Pearl Street before making a steady procession to OBC’s Pride House a few blocks away. 

A screen at the Pride House will display the names of those trans lives lost since last year’s TDOR. Long said one of the more heartbreaking aspects of TDOR’s memorial list are those trans folk who were unnamed and unclaimed on death. It’s important to remember that even though they were unidentified they were a person and somebody cared for them, Bryn Long, board vice president for OBC, said.

OBC’s vigil for Transgender Day of Remembrance will begin at 6:30 p.m. tonight and all members of the community are invited to witness and participate regardless of age or identity.

Trans Day of Remembrance is the culmination of a week dedicated to Trans Awareness. 

Stone said as important as it was to memorialize and honor the trans lives lost on the Trans Day of Remembrance, it was equally important to celebrate those trans people who are in the community. That sentiment was echoed by Long.

Long, who grew up in Dallas before moving to Colorado, said the struggle of finding a community that respects and acknowledges the lives and needs of the trans population is felt throughout the whole LGBTQ community. A trans man, Long recognized his luck and privilege in being able to transition with the support of his job, church and eventually his family made the experience easier, acknowledging that the majority of trans folk don’t necessarily have that community support.

“This sense of knowing that I’m not on this journey alone, I never have been in my life …  it's so important that other people in the trans community can find that one person,” Long said. “It’s so critical to let people know they are seen, heard and there are people out there.”

From heartfelt compassion to the simplicity of acknowledging someone’s pronouns, both Long and Stone emphasized the myriad of ways allies and members of the LGBTQ community could come together to aid each other. Long recalled the feeling of warmth after his transition, when an old acquaintance commented on how happy Long seemed now that he was honoring his authentic self. 

For Stone, the smallest and easiest thing that allies can do is normalizing the use of pronouns for both cis and trans people, particulary in professional settings like email signatures. 

While looking for a new job recently, Stone said they felt more comfortable when contacting human resources managers who had pronouns in their email block and saw it as an indication that it was more likely to be a positive work environment.

“For me personally, having cis people introduce themselves (with their pronouns) makes me feel more comfortable introducing my own,” Stone said.

Stone also encouraged curious allies to ask questions to their trans and LGBTQ acquaintances, so long as they are approached in a respectful and earnest way. Stone said they would rather ask well-intentioned and respectful questions than have allies feel stressed and awkward during an otherwise normal interaction.