Trigger warning: Violence agaisnt trans people
Let’s look at the TDoR database. I’ve been following this database for a few years.
Every year on or around 20th November trans people worldwide gather for the Transgender Day of Remembrance to remember those we have lost to violence in the past year.
This site gives details of trans people known to have been killed, as collated from reports by Transgender Europe and trans activists worldwide.
Details are also given for those lost to suicide where known.
The site is intended to act as a supporting resource for anyone involved in Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) events and is intended to be used alongside the official data collated by the Trans Murder Monitoring Project and published by Transgender Europe (TGEU) in early November of each year.
A big thanks are due to the many trans activists and organisations worldwide who work tirelessly collate data on anti-trans violence and in particular to the members and admins of the Trans Violence News Facebook group, without whose support this site would not be possible.
All material presented is gathered from publicly available sources. Please don’t read anything into the raw numbers. What matters is the lives lost, and their stories. Be warned though – some of their stories are horrific.
This project is generally of more of a solemn topic as transgender people become more and more persecuted each day in horiffic and violent ways. One of the things that spurred me on into being more enthusiastic about this specific dataset is the death of my close friend Claire, an 18 year old trans girl. She died by suicide in April of this year, which was extremely difficult for me as we used to be extremely close. I just remember thinking ‘I, and we, are to young to be dealing with this.’
We have no protective weapons, we only have ourselves as we are stripped of our rights. Recently, I’ve also been lookng at perspectives by genocide scholars discussing what the future looks like for us as one of the most persecuted groups on the planet within the context of the 10 stages of genocide.
I believe that we are nearing stage 8 and 9, as recently it was noted that Florida recently published a bill citing that child sex offenders can be punished by the death penalty. Horrifyingly, it’s also being pushed that Florida, a state that ONLY recognises transgender people to legislate that they should have no access to healthcare and young trans girls can’t play sports with the other girls at school, is also trying to mandate that those being caught in the ‘wrong bathroom’ can be charged with a child sex offence. Do you make the connection?
So, as younger transgender people who reside mainly on the internet for our comfort and community as the real world gets worse and worse, I thought, perhaps we need weapons. Not in the sense that all trans people should arm themselves, but campaigning weapons and resources for ourselves.
So I see the TDoR website as a tool, as a weapon, something like the bricks thrown during Stonewall – as it is the cumulative dataset which is used to organise vigils for transgender people for us to remember our dead. It can be used for protesting, rememberance, and an open source of information as I see that our killings are being denied. In fact, upon searching for articles to read for this blog post, I saw many articles trying to say that ‘trans genocide isn’t real, we are not at risk of being killed more than anyone else.’
It tells you otherwise. It will become a staggeringly important source of information in the future. So, what can I personally make from this?
Perhaps if this website is a sword, I can make a shield. What I want to make is a gentle, comforting website where we can explore and reflect on what’s happening to us safely – a digital saferoom, perhaps. This concept likely needs more facets and development, but the bare minimum will be a dataset OF masterposts and of the victims from this year.