Last Sunday marked the 18th Trans Day of Remembrance, bearing witness to the 295 trans and gender-diverse people murdered in the last year in 33 countries around the world. More than a third (123) reported killings were in Brazil, with 10 across Europe (five each in Italy and Turkey). The trans community came together with allies to read the names of those murdered, mourn their passing and acknowledge pride in their wish to be their true self.
Overall, a total of 2,264 unlawful deaths of trans and gender-diverse people in 68 countries were committed worldwide between 1 January 2008 and 30 September 2016. That includes 44 from Turkey and 32 from Italy.
These figures only show the tip of the iceberg of homicides of trans and gender-diverse people, as most countries do not have robust reporting arrangements.
With ignorance commonplace and hate on the rise, anti-trans violence claims too many lives and even more victims of hate crime.
Denying the existence of trans people is manifested in many ways, including those put to rest with their former identity, not their authentic self.
Meanwhile, trans-exclusionary radical feminists (known as TERFs and led by the likes of Germaine Greer), along with intolerant newspaper columnists, peddle myths and whip up prejudice. The dismissive rhetoric stirs up crimes of hatred, creating fear among trans people that they will not be accepted and may be confronted with ‘deserved violence’.
While TDOR is always a sobering moment, we should also reflect on the advances being made in trans and gender-diverse awareness. There is much to celebrate, including the election of Labour’s first trans councillor this year.
Another recent landmark was the parliamentary inquiry into ‘trans equality’ conducted by the women and equalities committee. While not a game-changer, it sets a positive tone and direction of travel that could hold the government to account. Is Labour up for that?
As this was another example of the Tories taking the equality initiative with Labour lagging behind and not engaging effectively with the trans community, it would seem to be another missed opportunity by Labour’s ‘equality-troubled’ leadership.
Greater awareness of gender diversity is encouraging increasing numbers of people to express themselves more freely. Most are not transsexual (undergone surgery or changed legal status), but being transgender in a wider variety of ways (living in the acquired role without treatment or cross-dressing occasionally). Many people do not fit the gender binary or are gender fluid, especially younger people.
Referrals to specialist gender identity clinics are escalating, creating National Health Service capacity pressures that result in illegal waiting times for support. Without early and effective interventions many trans and gender-diverse people get more depressed and isolated; some resorting to self-harm or attempting suicide.
Inadequate healthcare acts as the lynchpin to many of the other inequalities that trans people experience. It is why urgent action is needed to replace the country’s leading clinic at Charring Cross and drive up GP awareness. It is also why Labour should be highlighting poor health outcomes, along with wider social and economic inequalities experienced by trans people.
Meanwhile, with 48 per cent of trans children and young people attempting suicide, it is vital that better support for families is put in place. It also means heeding what young people say about their identity. Too often clinicians do observe the principle behind ‘Gillick competence’ in determining support and treatment strategies. Instead they apply an arbitrary age of 16 for consent irrespective of their capacity, exposing them to the stress that comes with ongoing incongruence.
All in all the stark realities of the lived experience of gender transition and diversity reinforces the need for ‘trans-respect to triumph over transphobia’.
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Emily Brothers was parliamentary candidate for Sutton and Cheam in 2015 and London assembly candidate in 2016. She was Labour’s first transgender candidate for Westminster or devolved assembly. She tweets at @EBrothersLabour
You can read a reply to this article here.
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‘Greater awareness of gender diversity is encouraging increasing numbers of people to express themselves more freely. Most are not transsexual (undergone surgery or changed legal status), but being transgender in a wider variety of ways (living in the acquired role without treatment or cross-dressing occasionally). Many people do not fit the gender binary or are gender fluid, especially younger people.’
And that’s all lovely. Meanwhile male violence hasn’t gone away and sometimes women need separate spaces.
Why did you use Trans Day of Remembrance to have a pop at feminists? How many trans people have been killed by feminists? How many have been killed by men? Why won’t you name the problem?
This response, serves to illustrate many points about anti-trans activists.
To start with what Raymond is quoted as saying; “I want to eliminate the medical and social systems that support transsexualism…” This represents a good example of the proxy violence that anti-trans activists engage in, and needs to be unpacked in two parts. Firstly eliminating medical care for trans people is a form of direct violence by proxy. Like many others, a friend’s trans daughter who recently transitioned medically came close to suicide many times because she had to wait many years before she could access the medical care she needed. By the time of her operation she was literally clinging on to life by her fingernails. If she had not been allowed access to medical care she would not be living the full and fulfilling life she has now. Secondly eliminating the social systems that support trans people, including the right to identify in our real genders rather than our birth assigned genders would also be a form of proxy violence. Forcing trans people to out themselves every time they need to use the toilet or show some ID is to put us at risk of random violence by those who engage in transphobic hate-crimes against us.
Raymond is a figure who many trans people in the US accuse of connivance with the Republican government in the 1980s to remove access to medical care for trans people and accuse her of consequently being complicit in the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands of trans people.
http://transadvocate.com/fact-checking-janice-raymond-the-nchct-report_n_14554.htm
Just because she says she does not intend to harm trans people does not necessarily mean that is true.
The point made about the use of the term “TERF” is another example of the way anti-trans activists misrepresent trans people; “The term was actually coined by a liberal feminist” this responder says. This is a misrepresentation; I used the word “popularized” not “coined”, I know many radical feminists who are not trans exclusionary who are at pains to differentiate themselves from TERFs and who use the term as a means of doing so. Someone attempting to words in my mouth is usually doing so for a reason; they would like me to have said something I didn’t say so they are going to pretend I said it anyway. This is a tactic often used by anti-trans activists.
Personally I feel, as do many other feminists and radical feminists do, that TERF is not a good term to use because there is nothing either “Radical” or “Feminist” about abusing, misrepresenting and harming trans people. This is the reason one radical feminist told me the term should be repurposed to mean “Trans Exclusionary Reactionary Fakefeminists”. However I prefer the term “anti-trans activist” to denote this group.
The writer, whoever they are, attempts to assert that anti-trans activism is not well-represented in the media. This comes just after a slew of articles in popular news platforms articulating the anti-trans activist point of view on trans children, and after a well-known anti-trans activist has had her transphobic ideas splashed widely around on mainstream media all over the world. This assertion is simply not credible.
The final argument this individual engages in is pure disingenuousness; trans women are killed by male violence but are also at far greater risk of other types of violence and more likely, as a result of structural racism as well poverty and transphobia to be in positions of greater vulnerability to those who wish to murder trans people. The insistence of anti-trans activists that trans women are “men”, including the trumpeting of such opinions far and wide by a prominent member of this group is contributing to a cultural environment in which trans people face increasing violence. At the time when this anti-trans activism was in full swing two trans women died after being send to men’s prisons. This is violence by proxy. By the way I know of at least 6 trans people who have been murdered in the UK in the last few years not the two this individual maintains, and police forces are currently reporting a huge rise in reported hate-crimes against trans people.
In the UK context however trans people are still very likely to be victims of discrimination targeted at them simply for being trans. I know of trans boys being denied places in schools, a trans girl in a primary school being bullied by her headteacher, trans women rape victims being denied appropriate support, trans girls attacked at school and their attackers going unpunished as well as trans people being denied access to healthcare or discriminated against by medical professionals, employers and other public services. Anti-trans activists have been so successful in getting their dishonest and deliberately discriminatory anti-trans agenda into the public eye, largely with the help of the right-wing media, that their goal of poisoning the cultural environment with transphobia is a genuine possibility.
Misrepresentation, harassment and abuse by this group is not a mere incidental response, it is their prime mode of operation.