Visible Man: Remembering our dead

Transpeople do die of old age, the ravages of illness, poverty, accidents and suicide, and we mourn all whom we have lost with equal sorrow. But we reserve a special day to bring visibility to those whose deaths were expressly caused by someone else, those who were deemed disposable, those who were the victims of deliberate, hateful violence.

This year, 2003, we know of 37 transpeople who were murdered since the last candlelight vigils were held in 90 cities around the world. The annual Transgender Day of Remembrance started in San Francisco in 1998, the inspiration of Gwendolyn Ann Smith, my fellow board member at Gender Education & Advocacy, Inc., a tiny nonprofit that is dedicated to improving the health and well-being of all trans and gender-variant people. And violence is certainly a barrier to our health and well-being. The vicious killings of transgendered people, often more than simple gunshots or stabbings, and often involving combinations of weapons and brutally destructive acts that are intended as statements of hatred or disgust, are frequently perpetrated by groups of people, or by one person encouraged by others who witness and even cheer the brutal act. At no time is it more clear to us that we are regarded as less than human.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance is one international statement of response to that violence, a statement that is growing louder and stronger every year. It is a time when transgendered people, our families and our allies, can come together to call for an end to this abuse and waste of human lives. We say the names of those whose bodies have been broken, whose spirits have been extinguished, so that their lives are noticed. Sometimes this is the first recognition these individuals have ever received in life, and it is doubly sad to me that it seems their only mark on the world comes from the stain of their blood on the hands of their killers. Yet this cannot be their only legacy. These people have had families, friends and lovers at some time in their lives. They cannot have been alone from the moment of their birth, touching and impacting no one. They were human beings, gender-variant human beings who struggled to find themselves and sometimes lost their way.

We carry candles in the dark to symbolize their spirits, the fragility of the flame behaving much like our lives -- strong and bright in one instant, weighing nothing yet possessing the force to burn and change whatever it contacts, and then suddenly, in an instant, vanishing. We all live with this fragility; we all risk death just walking down the street. And whether more transgendered people are dying because more of us are visible now, or whether more of us are dying because journalists or family members are less likely to deny or cover up the transgender identity of a victim so that more transgender murders are recorded, the fact is transgendered people are being killed just because someone else doesn't like the clothes they wore, or the name they wanted to be called or the incongruity between their body and their gender presentation.

This harsh judgment that others feel powerful or righteous enough to inflict on those of us who are transgendered is a judgment we do not deserve. We must say the names or our fallen sisters and brothers out loud, we must say their names with pride. We must not let the rest of the world forget that they, and we, are as sacred as any vessel filled with the breath of life. And when one of us is snuffed out, scores, hundreds more of us must rise up to take their place, until one day thousands of people, maybe even all people will say it is wrong to take another's life, transgendered or not, queer or not, different or not. And even after that day comes, we must still remember those who died, whose souls have guided us to this resistance, to this action, to this community that seeks its own dignity, its own way of peace.

Learn more about the Transgender Day of Remembrance at www.rememberingourdead.org