Today—November 20, 2019—marks the 21st Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR), a day dedicated to memorializing transgender people around the world who died due to acts of anti-transgender violence. A transgender advocate named Gwendolyn Ann Smith organized the first TDoR as a vigil in 1999. It was to honor and remember a transgender woman named Rita Hester of Allston, Massachusetts whose murder on November 1998 “shook the local trans community to its core and transformed the way people across the country respond to anti-transgender violence.”
Transgender Day of Remembrance is an annual observance on November 20 that honors the memory of the transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.
— GLAAD (@glaad) November 20, 2019
Find out how you can show support for the community on this #TDOR: https://t.co/2XYC8NqN8T pic.twitter.com/23CDjOQZwg
This Trans Day of Remembrance and every day, speak out against transphobia.#TDOR pic.twitter.com/NcP9UNCBjB
— Trans Actual (@TransActualUK) November 20, 2019
Today is Trans Day of Remembrance. There were 331 recorded murders of trans people – the majority of them trans women of colour – around the world. It’s likely the true number of deaths is not available. Mourn the dead, fight like hell for the living. #TDoR
— Vagina Museum (@vagina_museum) November 20, 2019
Today is Trans Day of Remembrance. How much do you know about trans history?
— PinkNews (@PinkNews) November 20, 2019
We asked @jakeftmagic and @Pheenips to take our transgender history quiz. 👇 #TDOR pic.twitter.com/fsEtytXqKR
And so, today, we—the A4A community—will take this time to honor the memory of our transgender brothers and sisters who have been killed this year and the years before this. According to a newly-released Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) report conducted by Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide (TvT) team, a total of 331 trans and gender-diverse people have been killed between 1 October 2018 and 30 September 2019. Of the 331 cases, 130 of these reported killings happened in Brazil, 63 in Mexico, 30 in the United States, while 9 trans people were killed in Europe.
Further, the report says that majority of the victims were sex workers (61%) while in the United States, most of the transgender people who have been killed were “trans women of color and/or Native American trans women (85%).” In European countries like France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain on the other hand, most of the reported murder victims were migrant trans women at 65%. Read the report in full here.
An organization called the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) released a video recently containing the names of the 331 reported trans victims. Take a look at the aforementioned video below.
The Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) report is an annual research that began in 2008 and they have, since their monitoring started on the 1st of January 2008 up to the 30th of September 2019, recorded a total of 3314 cases in 74 countries worldwide.
This for me is not easy to go through. I’m a survivor of this evil war that is happening in this world. I was close to death right before I was saved. It breaks my heart that it’s still happening. I just pray that we truly think before we speak and always speak life. We are to lift one another up, not tear each other down. We should represent LOVE!!! We should bc I’m sure like most we were never shown it for ourselves. Rest in peace my brothers and sisters.