Trans Day of Remembrance
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November 20 was Trans Day of Remembrance, so that what I want to write about for this mid-week “explainer.”
Trans Day of Remembrance commemorates all trans lives lost to violence in the past year and year after year.
I’m not going to do the usual list of statistics, how many trans people have been murdered; you can look that up, and if you’re not already familiar with the numbers, I hope you will. But I don’t want this post to be traumatizing for trans readers and I don’t want it to be an impersonal recitation of data. And surely you don’t need me to explain why it’s important to remember those lost to violence.
Instead I want to “explain,” as it were, an experience I had, as a cisgender person who cares about trans and non-binary people, at a Trans Day of Remembrance vigil many years ago.
At the time I was working in the LGBTQIA2+ community, so I knew many of the attendees by face or name. I stood in the park after sunset, lit my candle from my neighbor’s candle, then passed my flame to my other neighbor, to light their candle. I listened to the speaker list the names of local trans people who died by violence that year. We all stood in a circle, in silence. It was a simple and beautiful ritual.
And then we all walked back to our cars. I saw someone I recognized from my work, whom I hadn’t spent time with for a while, and I greeted them by name. They waved at me desultorily, and I decided their lack of enthusiasm was due to the solemnity of the night.
Couple weeks later, I see that person again and discover they had transitioned to different pronouns and a different name.
I had deadnamed this person at Trans Day of Remembrance.
*Facepalm* doesn’t begin to express how I felt.
“I’m really sorry about that,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
They were incredibly gracious, waved it away as just one of those things that can happen, which I appreciated, but I did not receive it as permission to keep making the same mistake.
Fortunately, I have a very convenient memory; once a person transitions and tells me their name, my brain erases their deadname. I remember that person’s name now, but I don’t remember the name I called them on that Trans Day of Remembrance. This is a memory style I highly recommend cultivating.
This is a story about being an ally, advocate, and accomplice in creating a better world for people who face daily discrimination and threats of violence.
I still sometimes misgender people, using the wrong pronoun when I’m talking about them in the third person. I know my job is to catch myself and correct myself.
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Stay safe and see you next time.
