Remembering Our Dead - Blog https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/blog Remembering trans people lost to violence or suicide en-us TDoR 2021: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/blog/2021/11/20/tdor-2021-say-their-names-read-their-stories-remember-them_bc33992c Some of the trans people we have lost to violence or suicide in the past yearSome of the trans people we have lost to violence or suicide in the past year.

It has 20 months since the pandemic started, and unlike this time last year, 2021 has seen the start of some sort of return to "normality" (whatever that means) - at least in privileged parts of the world where the majority of the population has now been vaccinated.

But inevitably, many TDoR vigils will still be conducted online for the safety of all involved. But the medium chosen doesn't matter - what really matters is that - as every year - we remember them

There were - as far as we know - no UK trans victims of murder this past year, although it is always worth mentioning that the UK Office for National Statistics states that “it is not possible to identify transgender victims in current homicide statistics” (never mind that they don't even try).

However, as always the UK claimed trans lives in other ways. There are several UK cases in our database right now - and, like last year, one of them was someone I knew. Rest in power, Jane.

What makes Jane's death even more tragic is that her partner Bella was one of the trans people we lost last year.

Another, Sophie Gwen Williams, died by suicide after being told she would be on an NHS GIC waiting list for a total of five and a half years before being offered even a first appointment. Although I'm always wary of ascribing causation to correlation, in this case it's hard to avoid the conclusion that she might still have been alive if the NHS had not failed her. Her case has echoes of that of Jacob Whelan.

Transgender Europe reported 375 killings of trans people in the past year, but we only saw their official list of the names of the victims on 11th November 2021.

Once we received the data set I started the difficult task of checking it (a task that took nearly 4 days of poring over really grim spreadsheets) and merged it with our own. As part of this process all entries were checked against original sources where available, and the results reflect that.

That process led to the discovery of several duplicate entries on the TGEU TDoR list, which I naturally merged and filtered out. Those were:

As a result of this process the effective total number of cases on the TGEU memorial list went down from 375 to 372.

While doing this I also noticed that some remarks were transposed between entries and there were some causes of death which did not seem to match up to the available source information. Given the volume of data and the limited resources TGEU have at their disposal, this is not unexpected - but it does make interpreting the data harder.

If you want to learn more about the people behind Transgender Europe and their Trans Murder Monitoring Project, I recommend you read https://tgeu.org/about-us/.

But even before it was published we knew most of the names on the TDoR 2021 memorial list already.

We already knew them because of the many trans people and groups posting to social media, talking to each other and sharing their memories of those who they had lost.

We already knew them because of social media posts and articles by families mourning their murdered trans children and siblings.

We already knew them because of the (often sparse and laden with stereotypes and misgendering) news reports we have seen in our RSS feeds throughout the year.

We already knew them because automated translation engines had made it possible to read about them even when we do not even speak the same languages.

We already knew them because after so many years we knew where to look to find news of what happened to them.

The deaths of those we have lost this year follow a familiar pattern.

Beaten, shot or stabbed in the street or at home - either by clients, gangs, police or partners or ex-partners.

Being taken by friends from one hospital to another to try to get medical attention after clinicians refused to treat them or to take them to hospital in an ambulance.

Suspicious deaths and murders being reported as suicides.

Being disrespected or erased in death - by the authorities and media, but also far too often by their own families.

The end result is, sadly, always the same.

Geographical distribution of TDoR 2021 victimsGeographical distribution of TDoR 2021 victims [source: tdor.translivesmatter.info]

It is always worth reiterating that direct violence of the kind reported in the yearly TGEU TDoR memorial list is only ever part of the story. A trans person who dies from suicide or from COVID-19 - after being forced to go on the street to do sex work during a pandemic to earn money to buy food and pay rent - is no less dead, and no less worthy of being remembered.

So our list is longer than the official TDoR list. Of course, it is far from definitive - far too often trans people die without anyone noticing (or the media, authorities and/or families actively try to erase their lives through misgendering and deadnaming.

As such those whose deaths are reported represent just the tip of a very large iceberg.

[TRIGGER WARNING: VIOLENCE. MURDER]

The reports linked above can be broken down as follows:

  • Deaths in custody: 9 (two of whom, Victoria Nuñez and Fatima Belén Barrios, died at the hands of the police and appear on the TGEU TDoR list)

  • Medical (including COVID-19): 25

  • Suicide: 44

  • Uncategorised: 24 (many of whom are likely to have been victims of violence, but without more detailed source reports we can't confirm that. Some, for example Barbie dos Santos, appear on the TGEU TDoR list).

  • Direct violence: 360

For these few we know about there is at least some chance they will be remembered.

Is that any consolation? I don't know.

If anyone has details to add, please let me know and I'll do what I can to help make sure that they will be remembered.

No matter who they were, we mourn and miss every single one of them.

If you are involved in organising a vigil, resources for TDoR 2021 - including raw data, photos of those we've lost and and Powerpoint slides (see the screenshot below) - can be downloaded in either pre-prepared form or generated from a user-defined subset of the live data (e.g. that for a particular country).

Slides for TDoR 2021 can be downloaded from tdor.translivesmatter.infoSlides for TDoR 2021 can be downloaded from here.

I'll finish with a goodbye - not to you, the reader - but to Jane and Bella, on behalf of all of us on UK #TransTwitter.

We miss you both. 😢

Related blogposts are linked below:

Preview image
TDoR 2020: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) feels different this year of necessity. After all, how could it not, when a pandemic is ravaging the globe and so many - including all of us here in the UK - will be locked down on 20th November?
tdor.translivesmatter.info
Preview image
TDoR 2019: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) is here again, and with it, a whole collection of names and faces who have been lost to us in the past year.
tdor.translivesmatter.info
Preview image
TDoR 2018: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
At the end of October 2017 a group of us started preparing for the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) 2017 vigil in my home town of Bournemouth. Aside from the vigil itself, the end results were blogposts, tears and painstakingly collected data which we used to produce a memorial card for every victim we knew about.
tdor.translivesmatter.info
Preview image
TDoR 2017: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
I've done many things since I came out in 2001, but volunteering to collate the data for the Trans Day of Remembrance vigil in Bournemouth (see Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier) this year was definitely one of the hardest.
tdor.translivesmatter.info
Preview image
Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier
A personal reflection on the Trans Day of Remembrance - and what I learned about some of those we lost to violence in between October 2016 and September 2017.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

About The Author

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe is a software engineer who volunteers to help research, collate and share data on violence against trans people. This blogpost was originally published by Anna on Medium.

]]> Sat, 20 Nov 2021 06:00:00 +0000 Trans Day of Remembrance 2020 https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/blog/2020/11/20/trans-day-of-remembrance-2020_0d68c557 Today is Trans Day of Remembrance 2020.

I've spent much of the last year preparing for today.

Researching, collating and sharing news reports about trans people we have lost to violence in its many forms. Raising awareness. Updating the tdor.translivesmatter.info website. Supporting others, and letting them support me.

It's been hard, but now it's finally over.

Last night we held a livestream #TDoR memorial service at Inclusive Community Church here in Bournemouth.

 

After reading all of the 432 names we had my voice feels a little hoarse now so Lemon & Ginger tea with honey is probably a good idea!

The Trans Day of Remembrance 2020 memorial service at Inclusive Community Church.

Unfortunately the killings and suicides don't ever stop, so the names we will be saying at TDoR 2021 are already starting to mount up.

But - at least for now - it's time to rest. Please be safe out there.

About The Author

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe is a software engineer who volunteers to help research, collate and share data on violence against trans people. This blogpost was originally published by Anna on her personal blog.

]]> Fri, 20 Nov 2020 21:00:00 +0000 TDoR 2020: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/blog/2020/11/20/tdor-2020-say-their-names-read-their-stories-remember-them_f4b63ce0 Some of the trans people we have lost to violence or suicide in the past yearSome of the trans people we have lost to violence or suicide in the past year.

Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) feels different this year of necessity. After all, how could it not, when a pandemic is ravaging the globe and so many - including all of us here in the UK - will be locked down on 20th November?

So this year there are no outdoor candelight vigils. No faffing around with PA systems and running cables from nearby cafes. No freezing cold feet and hands in the cold wind and night air of a British November. No gathering together at all.

We're locked down, so instead, we'll be sitting on our sofa or at the kitchen table watching presentations on YouTube or taking part in Zoom calls trying to console each other.

Some things never change though - with November always comes the awareness of a whole new collection of names and faces who have been lost to us during the past year.

The grief is never-ending; and with it, the tears, resolve and anger not only about what happened to them but also about the attitudes, conditions, discrimination and violence that caused their deaths.

In a year when far too many trans people worldwide have been forced out onto the street to work alongside a silent killer virus, the unofficial TDoR motto of TDoR of “Remember Our Dead. Fight Like Hell for the Living” feels more apt than ever.

Unlike TDoR 2019 (rest in power, Amy) there were - as far as we know - no UK trans victims of murder this past year (though it is worth mentioning that the UK Office for National Statistics states that “it is not possible to identify transgender victims in current homicide statistics”).

However, as usual the UK claimed trans lives in other ways. As of right now, I know of two confirmed cases of suicide - and two cases in which an inquest is pending. There are undoubtedly others.

One of those is four is someone - Bella - I knew through Twitter. Had she not passed away, I'm certain our paths would have crossed at Trans Pride sometime, and her death came as a huge shock to the UK #TransTwitter community.

Transgender Europe reported 350 killings of trans people in the past year, but we only saw their official list of the names of the victims on 10th November 2020.

Once we received the data set I started the difficult task of checking it (a task that took nearly 3 days) and merged it with our own.

That process led to the discovery of some duplicate/erroneous entries on the TGEU TDoR list, and I naturally attempted to identify others and filter them out.

For example, the following entry actually relates to a TDoR 2019 case on 19 May 2019:

There were also 10 pairs of entries which were duplicates of each other:

As a result of this process the effective total number of cases on the TGEU memorial list went down from 350 to 339.

In addition I noticed that some remarks were transposed between entries and there were some causes of death which did not seem to match up to the available source information.

All entries were checked against original sources where available, and the data referenced below reflects that.

If by this point you are thinking that Transgender Europe (TGEU) could possibly have checked the data more carefully, I think it's worth remembering that TGEU are a trans-led organisation which I suspect has very limited resources. Furthermore, collating reports of violence against trans people is very hard, and errors can creep in easily. I have no doubt that they are just trying to do their best with very limited resources.

If you want to learn more about the people behind their Trans Murder Monitoring Project, I recommend you read https://tgeu.org/about-us/.

But even before it was published we knew most of the names on the TDoR 2020 memorial list already.

We already knew them because of the many trans people and groups posting to social media, talking to each other and sharing their memories of those who they had lost.

We already knew them because of social media posts and articles by families mourning their murdered trans children and siblings.

We already knew them because of the (often sparse and laden with stereotypes and misgendering) news reports we have seen in our RSS feeds throughout the year.

We already knew them because automated translation engines had made it possible to read about them even when we do not even speak the same languages.

We already knew them because after so many years we knew where to look to find news of what happened to them.

The deaths of those we have lost this year follow a familiar pattern.

Beaten, shot or stabbed in the street or at home - either by clients, gangs, police or partners or ex-partners.

Being taken by friends from one hospital to another to try to get medical attention after clinicians refused to treat them or to take them to hospital in an ambulance.

Suspicious deaths and murders being reported as suicides.

Being disrespected or erased in death - by the authorities and media, but also far too often by their own families.

The end result is the same.

Geographical distribution of TDoR 2020 victimsGeographical distribution of TDoR 2020 victims [source: tdor.translivesmatter.info]

It is always worth reiterating that direct violence of the kind reported in the yearly TGEU TDoR memorial list is only ever part of the story. A trans person who dies from suicide or from COVID-19 - after being forced to go on the street to do sex work during a pandemic to earn money to buy food and pay rent - is no less dead, and no less worthy of being remembered.

So our list is longer than the official TDoR list. Of course, it is far from definitive - far too often trans people die without anyone noticing (or the media, authorities and/or families actively try to erase their lives through misgendering and deadnaming.

As such those whose deaths are reported represent just the tip of a very large iceberg.

[TRIGGER WARNING: VIOLENCE. MURDER]

The reports linked above can be categorised as follows:

  • Deaths in custody: 2

  • Medical (including COVID-19): 25

  • Suicide: 48

  • Uncategorised: 24 (many of whom are likely to have been victims of violence, but without more detailed source reports we couldn't tell)

  • Direct violence: 333

For these few we know about there is at least some chance they will be remembered.

Is that any consolation? I don't know.

If anyone has details to add, please let me know and I'll do what I can to help make sure that they will be remembered.

No matter who they were, we mourn and miss every single one of them.

Resources for TDoR 2020 - including raw data, photos of those we've lost and and Powerpoint slides (see the screenshot below) - can be downloaded from:

https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/tdor2020

Slides for TDoR 2020 can be downloaded from tdor.translivesmatter.infoSlides for TDoR 2020 can be downloaded from https://tdor.translivesmatter.info.

I'll finish with a goodbye - not to you, the reader - but to Bella, on behalf of all of us on UK #TransTwitter.

We miss you. 😢

Related blogposts are linked below:

Preview image
TDoR 2019: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) is here again, and with it, a whole collection of names and faces who have been lost to us in the past year.
tdor.translivesmatter.info
Preview image
TDoR 2018: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
At the end of October 2017 a group of us started preparing for the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) 2017 vigil in my home town of Bournemouth. Aside from the vigil itself, the end results were blogposts, tears and painstakingly collected data which we used to produce a memorial card for every victim we knew about.
tdor.translivesmatter.info
Preview image
TDoR 2017: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
I've done many things since I came out in 2001, but volunteering to collate the data for the Trans Day of Remembrance vigil in Bournemouth (see Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier) this year was definitely one of the hardest.
tdor.translivesmatter.info
Preview image
Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier
A personal reflection on the Trans Day of Remembrance - and what I learned about some of those we lost to violence in between October 2016 and September 2017.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

About The Author

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe is a software engineer who volunteers to help research, collate and share data on violence against trans people. This blogpost was originally published by Anna on Medium.

]]> Fri, 20 Nov 2020 09:00:00 +0000 TDoR 2019: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/blog/2019/11/20/tdor-2019-say-their-names-read-their-stories-remember-them_1ac64f27 Some of the trans people we have lost to violence or suicide in the past yearSome of the trans people we have lost to violence or suicide in the past year.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) is here again, and with it, a whole collection of names and faces who have been lost to us in the past year.

The grief is never-ending; and with it the tears, resolve and anger not only about what happened to them, but about the attitudes, conditions, discrimination and violence that caused their deaths.

After all, the unofficial motto of TDoR is quite simply: “Remember Our Dead. Fight Like Hell for the Living”.

We lose trans people for so many reasons. Some are killed by violent partners — a phenomenon also very familiar to cisgender women — some are killed while working as sex workers, often on the street (a profession many “choose” because they have no other choice, as regular employment is closed to them because of discrimination), and some are targetted by gangs or other criminals in the violent societies in which they live — often in poverty and fear. In some countries, being “out” is so dangerous that we never even hear about them.

The end result is death. Lots of death, and it is also worth remembering that for every case we hear about, there are undoubtedly several (or many?) others who we will never know about. So much depends on if, where and how the deaths of trans people are reported. Trans suicide victims, in particular, are notoriously under-reported.

This year the UK also lost Amy Griffiths to murder. It's small consolation that her murderer was caught and has been charged, but that obviously can't bring her back. Rest in power, Amy.

But the UK is by far one of the safer places. Latin America and USA are where we have the most data, and what we know is terrifying. The most sobering fact however is the fact that among the most dangerous places are likely to be places we have very scant or no data on (e.g. the Middle East and most of Africa) simply because the environment is too hostile for trans NGOs and activist groups to openly exist.

Geographical distribution of TDoR 2019 victimsGeographical distribution of TDoR 2019 victims [source: tdor.translivesmatter.info]

This blogpost gives details of trans people we know to have been killed during the period 1st October 2018 to 30th September 2019.

I have also included details of a handful of those known to have been lost to suicide, have died in custody (it should be no surprise that the few trans people who end up incarcerated have a really, really bad time in prisons) or backstreet surgical procedures, although as most cases are not reported (or not reported as being deaths of trans people), very few cases are listed here by comparison with the number killed directly by others.

The contents of the memorial list of victims released by Transgender Europe (TGEU) in early November 2019 in preparation for TDoR events worldwide is also included — although it's worth noting that several issues with the data it represents (several duplicate entries, and two misreports of cases from previous years) have been filtered out in the process.

The end result is 369 names. *

369 names of people whose lives have been cut short.

369 names of people who we'll never be able to meet or get to know

369 names of people whose true potential is forever lost to the world.

* We are still learning of additional cases, so this number is likely to rise further.

The numbers this year are significantly down, but please don't read anything in that — things really haven't improved noticeably.

For example, a brief look at the numbers for Brazil during TDoR 2019 (148) vs TDoR 2018 (185) immediately makes me wonder if the change is largely correlated with the level of resilience of a handful of hate crime researchers and activists.

In Brazil, the single volunteer running the site Who Has Homophobia Killed Today? — a site which published details of every reported murder or suicide of an LGBT+ person they could find between 2016 and 2018 — retired at the beginning of 2019. His loss of very keenly felt, but it's not surprising — I myself can vouch for the fact that reading about that level of horror every single day really takes its toll on people.

Furthermore, during 2019 another of the Brazilian monitoring groups dramatically reduced their own monitoring. Compare the level of detail of reports published by RedeTransBrasil during 2019 with that published in previous years.

All of that feeds through into the data published by TGEU and the list of victims remembered every November at TDoR vigils worldwide.

So I would caution against reading anything into the specific numbers. Given how poor the reporting of trans violence is worldwide and how few activists and volunteers have the stomach to research this subject, they are likely to be a severe underestimate.

What matters most is not how many or few of them there are, but that we remember them, and do what we can to change things for the better.

[TRIGGER WARNING: VIOLENCE. MURDER]

If anyone has details to add, please let me know and I'll do what I can to help make sure that they will be remembered.

No matter who they were, we mourn and miss every single one of them.

Related blogposts for previous years are given below:

Preview image
TDoR 2018: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
At the end of October 2017 a group of us started preparing for the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) 2017 vigil in my home town of Bournemouth. Aside from the vigil itself, the end results were blogposts, tears and painstakingly collected data which we used to produce a memorial card for every victim we knew about.
tdor.translivesmatter.info
Preview image
TDoR 2017: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
I've done many things since I came out in 2001, but volunteering to collate the data for the Trans Day of Remembrance vigil in Bournemouth (see Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier) this year was definitely one of the hardest.
tdor.translivesmatter.info
Preview image
Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier
A personal reflection on the Trans Day of Remembrance - and what I learned about some of those we lost to violence in between October 2016 and September 2017.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

Raw data for TDoR 2019 can be downloaded from https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/tdor2019.

About The Author

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe is a software engineer who volunteers to help research, collate and share data on violence against trans people. This blogpost was originally published by Anna on Medium.

]]> Wed, 20 Nov 2019 09:00:00 +0000 TDoR 2018: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/blog/2018/12/24/tdor-2018-say-their-names-read-their-stories-remember-them_0da1b178 The Bournemouth TDoR 2017 vigilThe Bournemouth TDoR 2017 vigil [photo: Anna-Jayne Metcalfe]

At the end of October 2017 a group of us started preparing for the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) 2017 vigil in my home town of Bournemouth, and I volunteered to collate data on those we had lost.

Aside from the vigil itself, the end results were blog posts, many tears and a lot of painstakingly collected data which we used to produce a memorial card for every victim we knew about.

Preview image
TDoR 2017: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
I've done many things since I came out in 2001, but volunteering to collate the data for the Trans Day of Remembrance vigil in Bournemouth (see Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier) this year was definitely one of the hardest.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

There was of course a cost — collating the data we needed for the vigil was an incredibly time consuming and emotionally intense experience which took quite a toll on me. I wrote about what happened in the blogpost Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier.

Preview image
Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier
A personal reflection on the Trans Day of Remembrance - and what I learned about some of those we lost to violence in between October 2016 and September 2017.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

Nevertheless, it was the right thing to do and I don't regret it one bit. That said, for my own sanity I decided to approach the process for TDoR 2018 differently and collect data throughout the year.

That is actually not as difficult as it sounds as the majority of the deaths reported originate in a single country (Brazil) with a well established trans murder monitoring programme by organisations like RedeTransBrasil and Grupo Gay da Bahia. Many others are either in the USA (which is well covered by the English speaking LGBT press) or countries in Latin America which share a common language (Spanish). In Europe, Turkey and Italy seem to be the countries in which trans people are most likely to be killed.

However it should be said that in many countries (e.g. most of Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and much of Asia) violence against trans people is often not reported as such and therefore it is much harder to learn much about anti-trans violence there. Similarly, languages with non-Roman character sets (e.g. Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Malay and Korean) pose their own difficulties.

However — assuming they are reported — once you know the search terms to look for (e.g. “trans/travesti/transgenero/transexual muerte/muerto” for Spanish language countries) it is often relatively easy (albeit very time consuming) to find most of the corresponding news reports — at least in countries where the deaths of trans people are actually reported as such.

It also helps that I'm far from the only one tracking down such reports. For example, there are Transgender Violence and Trans Violence News Facebook groups which activists use to share and distribute details of relevant news and social media reports. As a result this year I've been able to focus my efforts more towards writing up what we've found and making people more aware of what's going on in the world.

Back when I was compiling TDoR data for last year, it struck me that a blog site like Medium really wasn't the ideal way to present individual biographies, and that a dedicated database driven site where contributors could upload/edit individual entries independently would probably work much better.

Since last year a site for this purpose is being developed and is now being used to host the detailed reports linked to below (as an aside, if you wish to contribute to this effort please let me know).

Preview image
Remembering Our Dead
This site memorialises trans people who have passed away, as a supporting resource for the Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR).
tdor.translivesmatter.info

Please see the blogpost TDoR: Learning more about those we have lost for details.

Preview image
TDoR: Learning more about those we have lost
Introducing tdor.translivesmatter.info - a new website to provide supporting information and resources for TDoR events.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

Sadly this year the horror just kept coming, with February and March 2018 being particularly brutal months. Almost every morning at least one new report turned up in the search results, and keeping up with them was both traumatic and hard.

Inevitably some reports hit harder than others. Quite honestly the sight of the (blurred, thankfully) photo of the bloodied body of Gabriely Fancciny which the Brazilian media included in their news reports of her murder still gives me nightmares.

Gabriely FanccinyGabriely Fancciny was murdered in Porto Velho on 28th April 2018.

But there were positive things to hold on too, too. I read the words of Kyara Barbosa, watched a video of Maritza Harrera dancing behind her decks while DJing at a Mexican TV station and more. It feels like a privilege to be able to see those little glimpses — and a reminder that every time we lose someone, we lose so, so much.

Closer to home, the last tweet of Naomi Hersi — the only UK murder victim this year — was about violence towards trans women of colour, and her murder didn't get half the attention you might have expected. I can't help wondering how much of that was due to the fact that she was a black trans woman herself.

Naomi HersiNaomi Hersi was murdered in Greater London on 18th March 2018.

The official Transgender Europe (TGEU) TDoR list of names doesn't generally include suicide victims, so the handful we knew of in the UK (a tip of a very large iceberg, we think) weren't included on it.

One of them — Chrissi Bentley — was on the edge of my social circle and I may well have met her at Trans Pride Brighton (I honestly can't remember, and I feel guilty for that).

Chrissi BentleyChrissi Bentley

It never gets any easier, but when it's so close to home it is especially hard.

A few weeks before the Bournemouth vigil (and with the period covered by TDoR 2018 over), local groups once again met in Bournemouth to plan our vigil.

The intention was to run the event similarly to last year, and in the same space in Bournemouth Triangle. By the time the planning meeting took place we knew of 353 victims (most victims of direct violence, but the data we had also included 31 suicides, 4 deaths in custody and 7 victims of clinical neglect).

That was bad enough, but when the official TGEU list of 368 victims was released and we merged the two sets of data the combined list included a horrific 419 victims.

A memorial card was printed and laminated for each victim using the corresponding option on tdor.translivesmatter.info.

But then — two weeks before the event — we were blindsided by the area we planned to use being fenced off, with a large HGV parked right where we planned to hold the event. Once the dust had settled, this commercial monstrosity appeared:

The upside down house which appeared in the space we were planning to use for the vigilThe "tourist attraction" which appeared in the space we were planning to use for the vigil.

I don't mind admitting that I lost it at this point.

“How could the council do this? Do they honestly not know that trans folks use this space to mourn our dead every November? Have they no respect?”

It took me a while to calm down. The short answer is that no, they didn't know (although if the organisation had managed to actually be representative of the community they serve, I can't see how that could have happened), and once again I owe the Pastor of our church — Revd. Dwayne Morgan — my heartfelt thanks for sorting it out, and for making sure that the event was firmly in the council calendar.

Once the Council were onboard, they didn't (as they had in 2017, when we enquired with them when planning the vigil) try to charge us for the privilege of mourning our dead. They did however hoist our flag for two days, on 20th and 21st November, and that is a definite first for Bournemouth!

The Trans Flag flying outside Bournemouth Town Hall for the Transgender Day of RemembranceThe Trans Flag flying outside Bournemouth Town Hall for the Transgender Day of Remembrance

I hope that next year we won't have to contend with the same challenges, but obviously you can never rule out these sorts of things popping up at the last minute.

The vigil itself ran smoothly (other than the power dying two thirds of the way through after a cable got sliced). It was a squeeze, but somehow we found space to one side of the upside down house for both the crowd and all 419 memorial cards.

After we had set everything up we said our introductions. I gave a short speech as part of the introduction, which you can read in the blogpost A short speech from a Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil.

Preview image
A short speech from a Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil
This is a short speech I gave at the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) vigil held in Bournemouth, UK on Tuesday 20th November 2018. I thought I would reproduce here in case anyone else finds it useful in future.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

Over three freezing hours all 419 names we knew of were read, candles were placed and we all paid our respects.

Volunteers place candles during the Bournemouth TDoR 2018 vigilVolunteers place candles during the Bournemouth TDoR 2018 vigil

Each memorial card had a QR code which when scanned would open a page relating to that report, with an appropriate trigger warning issued at the beginning for the distressing content they obviously contain.

Memorial cards during the TDoR 2018 vigil in BournemouthMemorial cards during the TDoR 2018 vigil in Bournemouth Mourners walk amongst the memorial cards during the TDoR 2018 vigil in BournemouthMourners walk amongst the memorial cards during the TDoR 2018 vigil in Bournemouth.

So that's it for another year.

I'm afraid that the killings keep happening, and even as we were planning the TDoR 2018 event we already knew of the first of those we will be commemorating at next year's event: names such as Juliana Ferreira, Laysa Fortuna, Ciara Minaj Carter Frazier, Brenda Zarik Sifuentes Andrade and Tydi Dansbury.

Just when will it all end?

In the pages linked below you will find details of trans people I know to have died by violence, suicide or as a result of related causes during the period 1st October 2017 to 30th September 2018.

I've also included details of a handful of those lost to suicide or unlicenced surgical procedures, although as most cases are not reported (or not reported as being deaths of trans people), very few cases are listed here by comparison with the number killed directly by others.

Needless to say I will continue to update the data for each month as time progresses and more reports come to light.

I would however caution not to read anything into the specific numbers, as given how poor the reporting of anti-trans violence is worldwide, they are likely to be a severe underestimate.

What matters most is not how many or few of them there are, but that we remember them, and do what we can to change things for the better.

[TRIGGER WARNING: VIOLENCE. MURDER. SUICIDE]

If anyone has details to add or correct, please let me know — I'll be happy to update the reports linked above with any additional details you can share.

No matter who they were, we mourn and miss every single one of them.

Raw data: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/tdor2018?action=export&sortby=date&sortup=1

TDoR 2018 victims

A final thought: In compiling the equivalent information last year, it struck me that a blog site such as Medium really wasn't really the ideal way to present individual biographies, and that a dedicated database driven site where contributors could upload/edit individual entries independently would probably work much better.

A site for this purpose has been developed and now hosts the detailed reports linked above:

Preview image
Remembering Our Dead
This site memorialises trans people who have passed away, as a supporting resource for the Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR).
tdor.translivesmatter.info

Please see the blogpost TDoR: Learning more about those we have lost for details on the background to the site. If you want to contribute to this effort please let me know.

Preview image
TDoR: Learning more about those we have lost
Introducing tdor.translivesmatter.info - a new website to provide supporting information and resources for TDoR events.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

About The Author

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe is a software engineer who volunteers to help research, collate and share data on violence against trans people. This blogpost was originally published by Anna on Medium.

]]> Mon, 24 Dec 2018 09:00:00 +0000 A short speech from a Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/blog/2018/11/30/a-short-speech-from-a-transgender-day-of-remembrance-vigil_86b15fec TDoR 2018 Memorial cardsAt the TDoR 2018 vigil in Bournemouth we used memorial cards to help everyone visualise those we were remembering.

This is a short speech I gave at the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) vigil held in Bournemouth, UK on Tuesday 20th November 2018.

I thought I would reproduce here in case anyone else finds it useful in future.

This is a traumatic time of year for trans people, so thank you all for coming — I know how hard this is. If you are not trans yourself, thank you for coming along to support us.

Every year the Trans Murder Monitoring Project produces a report which lists all of the trans people they know of who have lost their lives to violence in the past year.

Every year the numbers go up. Last year they reported 325 names, but this year it is 368.

But still far too many reports go unnoticed. To support last year’s vigil we started doing our own research.

The end results were memorial cards for each victim like those you see here today — and the realisation that we were finding reports of victims who were missing from the official list.

I have to tell you that as of today, we know of 419 victims.

The data on the official list nominally only includes murder victims — however we lose people for lots of reasons — murder, suicide, medical neglect, organisational indifference, homelessness and so on.

Some of the cases we know of reflect that. Some were deaths in custody, or cases where medical treatment had been withheld by the authorities. Some were a result of unsafe medical procedures which they felt they had to undergo to function in society.

And every life lost is a tragedy.

The memorial cards in front of you give you a little information on each of them. In many cases we know very little, but in some cases we know enough to paint a picture of who they were.

On each card there is a QR code. If you scan that it will take you to a page which tells you what we know about them.

On those pages you can find things they’d written, quotes from friends and family members, poetry and even in one case a video of of one of them having a great time dancing behind her DJ decks at a Mexican TV station.

They were poets, musicians, dancers, doctors, clerks and so much more. Many were sex workers of necessity, but that shouldn’t be how we define them.

Please be aware that each page may link to news sites containing disturbing imagery. We recommend not following source links unless you feel strong enough to do so.

But we hope that this year you will take a moment to learn a little about the people we have lost.

Most of them were so young, and we mourn all of them.

This year there were several victims in the UK. One — Naomi Hersi — was stabbed in Hounslow in March, and her killer is now serving a life sentence.

The others we know of were suicide victims — two of whom were students at the same university, one a volunteer with Trans Pride Brighton, and one a child.

We know there were many more suicide victims we don’t know about.

Today is heartbreaking, but I think it’s important.

The Trans Day of Remembrance has a motto: “Remember Our Dead. Fight Like Hell for the Living”.

So I hope that today’s events will strengthen us, and leave us more and more resolved to carry on that fight.

Thank you.

Footnote: The memorial cards we used (all 419 of them, each individually printed and laminated) were produced using the website at https://tdor.translivesmatter.info.

Preview image
Remembering Our Dead
This site memorialises trans people who have passed away, as a supporting resource for the Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR).
tdor.translivesmatter.info

I wrote about the website and the data behind it not that long ago in the blogpost TDoR: Learning more about those we have lost:

Preview image
TDoR: Learning more about those we have lost
Introducing tdor.translivesmatter.info - a new website to provide supporting information and resources for TDoR events.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

About The Author

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe is a software engineer who volunteers to help research, collate and share data on violence against trans people. This blogpost was originally published by Anna on Medium.

]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2018 19:24:00 +0000 TDoR: Learning more about those we have lost https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/blog/2018/09/07/tdor-learning-more-about-those-we-have-lost_c3e16fa9 Introducing tdor.translivesmatter.info — a new website to provide supporting information and resources for TDoR events.

The Bournemouth TDoR 2017 vigilAt the Bournemouth TDoR vigil in November 2017, memorial cards helped people to connect with those we had lost.

[TRIGGER WARNING: transphobia, violence, suicide and murder]

In October 2017 three LGBT+ groups on Bournemouth got together to plan the local Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil the following month.

As most of us will know, a TDoR vigil is usually a simple event where we read the names of our dead and remember what happened to them [guidance].

Often, all we know for certain about the victims is how little we know. The official TDoR memorial list released by Transgender Europe (TGEU) in early November doesn't tend to tell us a great deal about each of them:

  • Often (but not always) a name

  • Sometimes their age (and all too often they were often so very young)

  • How and where they died

  • A (very) brief narrative describing what happened to them, often maddeningly incomplete.

  • A little information about the source of the report (though usually not a link where we could learn more)

And that's it — a whole life extinguished, with barely a few lines of text to tell their story. As each is only one among so very many lost lives the need for brevity is understandable — but I can't help thinking that it doesn't help us to connect with them.

Learning A Little More

By and large the information disseminated about each victim hasn't really changed since TDoR started at the end of the last century. However today we have far more advanced tools at our disposal (for example search engines, translation tools and of course social media) which can allow us to learn more about them if we a) have the time and b) can cope with all of the horror doing so inevitably involves.

Many activists all around the world are already doing just that of course — each doing their bit to shine a light on to the horror, raise awareness and advocate for change. It doesn't matter whether they are protesting, educating or just lighting a candle — what's important is that among us there are those who feel able to and driven to do something.

Among them are those working to raise awareness of the murders and suicides of individual trans people. I know from my own experience of the past year that that is a traumatic, distressing task and it's not one I'd wish on anyone.

However, the result of that is that when a trans person is murdered in many countries there's a reasonable chance that an activist somewhere will find the original news report and search for corroborating information. The same can be true of deaths by suicide, although with the exception of high profile cases like that of Ekai Lersundi they tend to be far less well reported.

Often it is possible to find out a little bit more about what happened from news reports or social media posts. Sometimes it is just their name or age (if those were not reported by TGEU), sometimes it's a quote from a friend or family member — and occasionally it's something far more personal — like something they have written [Kyara Barbosa; 4 Dec 2017], a blogpost or article about them [Brandi Bledsoe; 8 Oct 2016], or even a video of them doing what they loved [Maritza Harrera; 25 May 2018].

Every piece of information tells a story, and I think we owe it to them to try to make at least some of that part of TDoR, somehow.

The 2017 Vigil

It wasn't the first time we had held a vigil in Bournemouth — in previous years, volunteers had read from the list of names and lit candles for them in much the same way as (I imagine) most TDoR vigils all around the world.

It was, as always, horrible and sorrowful but full of the resolve of all present to try to change things.

But this time a new idea was put forward — to create a laminated memorial card for each of the victims — all 325 of them.

I described what happened next in the blogpost Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier.

Preview image
Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier
A personal reflection on the Trans Day of Remembrance - and what I learned about some of those we lost to violence in between October 2016 and September 2017.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

One of the things we wanted to do for the vigil was print a laminated sheet in the colours of the trans flag for each victim so that attendees could light a candle for them. I volunteered to collate the data from TGEU [Transgender Europe] and convert it into a form (a spreadsheet, basically) we could use to generate the materials we need, and it struck me that if we were able to add photos for at least some of them it would help everyone to visualise those we mourn.

I honestly didn't know what I was letting myself in for. I started by searching PinkNews, as they routinely report on the killings of trans people in the UK and USA, and occasionally also from elsewhere in the world. It didn't take long to find an article which listed every victim in the USA, and that gave me enough information to find appropriate photos for almost all of them.

Suffice it to say that it was a traumatic experience. Reading murder reports (particularly those from Latin America, which can be much more graphic than we are used to in the UK) is definitely not easy, and by the end of it all I was numb and badly needed to talk through what I'd learnt with friends (which needless to say, wasn't something they were ready for either).

But no matter how traumatic an experience I found reading reports of all of the horror, it was worth it for the way it helped everyone who came to the vigil to so obviously relate to those we'd lost. It didn't matter that most of them lived lives so different to our own — having just a little bit more information about them helped us to empathise more closely with them.

After the vigil was over I wrote up what happened and what I'd learnt in a series of blogposts starting at TDoR 2017: Say their names. Learn their stories. Remember them. There was one blogpost for each month, and a summary one which indexes them all together.

Preview image
TDoR 2017: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
I've done many things since I came out in 2001, but volunteering to collate the data for the Trans Day of Remembrance vigil in Bournemouth (see Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier) this year was definitely one of the hardest.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

Preparing for TDoR 2018

The impact the memorial cards had at the TDoR 2017 vigil helped me to conclude that if I could I should try to keep collating details of those we had lost — but I knew I had to find a way to do so that was less damaging to my own mental wellbeing. Fortunately, I've found that keeping track of reports as they come in during the year is easier to cope with than trying to do it all in an intensive set of research just before the TDoR vigil.

So that is exactly what I — and many others worldwide — have been doing over the past few months. We use Facebook groups such as Trans Violence News and Transgender Violence to share details of news reports and other news sources, and work together to discover appropriate details that would otherwise remain hidden.

As a result of this work we already know about most of those who we will be remembering at TDoR vigils in November 2018, and in fact there is already a draft blogpost covering TDoR 2018 at TDoR 2018: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them.

Like the corresponding blogposts for TDoR 2017, the stories they reveal are heartbreaking and make very sobering reading.

Preview image
TDoR 2018: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
At the end of October 2017 a group of us started preparing for the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) 2017 vigil in my home town of Bournemouth. Aside from the vigil itself, the end results were blogposts, tears and painstakingly collected data which we used to produce a memorial card for every victim we knew about.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

What should we do with this information?

Even at the time I wrote the TDoR 2017 blogposts it was already obvious that the blogpost format was not at all ideal for presenting this sort of information, and ideally we needed something better. At the end I wrote this:

A final thought: in compiling all of this information, it struck me that a blog site like Medium really wasn't the ideal way to present individual biographies, and that a dedicated database driven site where contributors could upload/edit individual entries independently would probably work much better. If others wish to collaborate on such an effort, let me know.

Hence for the past few months I've been working on a dedicated database driven website to present this information.

In June I took a prototype to the Trans*Code hackathon staged as part of the PyLondinium 2018 conference to gather feedback and share ideas. The folks at the hackathon came up with lots of ideas and added a popup content warning to the site (something I'd not thought of, but which is definitely needed).

Since then I have been working through some of those ideas and turning them into reality. As a result the site is now available at https:// tdor.translivesmatter.info.

Preview image
Remembering Our Dead
This site memorialises trans people who have passed away, as a supporting resource for the Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR).
tdor.translivesmatter.info

Although only data for TDoR 2018 and 2017 is included so far, that for previous years will be added eventually as time permits. At the moment the site is read-only and does not provide a way for others to contribute, but that should also change in due course.

Update: Data is now available going back to March 1970, and as and when other reports come to light they'll be added.

However the site already provides a basic memorial slideshow facility which may well be suitable for a background display at a TDoR event, and you can selectively download all of the data (in CSV form suitable for opening in a spreadsheet) and photos for the displayed reports if you need to.

A companion Twitter account (@tdorinfo) has also been set up:

Preview image
TransLivesMatter - @TDoRInfo
Account commemorating #trans people lost to violence and suicide. DMs open. TRIGGER WARNING - distressing content.
twitter.com

Coming Sooner or Later

What we have so far is a start, but obviously there is scope to do a great deal more if needed. The sort of things I can see being potentially useful include:

  • Direct editing of reports (since implemented)

  • A way for people to submit links, reports or corrections (since implemented)

  • Downloading and printing of memorial cards (like the ones shown in the photo at the beginning of this article) for TDoR vigils (since implemented)

  • RSS feeds (since implemented)

  • Translations to other languages

What we have already is a start, however.

Technical Stuff

For the technically minded, the site is running on a hosted CPanel Linux server which comes with PHP and MySQL. Scripts are written as a mixture of Python and Windows batch files (though I'm open to changing the latter to a cross-platform alternative).

Repositories for the project are available on GitHub at:

Maintaining a site like this (and especially the data behind it) is an intensive, psychologically demanding process, so how it develops will obviously depend on the volunteers who are willing and able to work together on such a grim project.

Any help with the project (whether on a technical, research, data collation or social media capacity) would be most welcome. If you want to help out or offer feedback, please let me know.

Risks

I am very aware that there is a degree of risk associated with doing this. In particular, there are people out there who wish us ill, and will have no qualms about trying to weaponise information about the deaths of trans people against us all.

That said, our lives can be just as broken and messy as the rest of the population. As such the fact that some trans murder victims were killed by other trans people isn't something we should shy away from or pretend does not happen.

Equally, site security is something we must take seriously and there is a conversation to be had about what data we should (as opposed to could) share about victims — especially given the amoral tactics of some transphobes out there.

However, it is worth being clear that all information shared to date has been taken from publicly accessible sources (mostly news reports and public social media posts). Some links quoted are to Closed social media groups, but (obviously) none are to or sourced via Secret groups.

Lest We Forget

But we must never forget that all of these details are just a means to an end.

TDoR 2018 is still over two months away, and even browsing through the reports that we already have is absolutely heartbreaking — but if we can, we owe it to them to do at least that.

Just some of the far too many trans people we have lost to violence in the past year.Just some of the far too many trans people we have lost to violence in the past year.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't say thank you to all of the activists worldwide who are working tirelessly to shine a light on all of the violence and try to make sure that those we have lost are not forgotten. You're all amazing.

I'm an optimist, so I'm convinced that one day the endless trail of horror will finally end — but even when it does, I hope that we will all feel that we should keep remembering those we will have lost on the way there.

I think we owe them that, at least.

About The Author

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe is a software engineer who volunteers to help research, collate and share data on violence against trans people. This blogpost was originally published by Anna on Medium.

]]> Fri, 07 Sep 2018 10:01:00 +0000 Some months are harder than others https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/blog/2018/03/04/some-months-are-harder-than-others_e9a6abc4 [TRIGGER WARNING: pain, violence and murder]

Rainbow candlesRainbow candles in the prayer chapel of my church in Bournemouth.

There are times when I wonder how I ended up doing what I do, and what makes me carry on doing it.

Collating information on violence against trans people in preparation for Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) events held every November is like that.

I'm not joking when I say that the cavalcade of horror that has passed through my browser since I started doing this last November has been quite unrelenting. It's rare that more than a couple of days passes without me seeing a photo of something ghastly, and every so often something I see pulls me up short and the sheer horror of it all really hits home. Tears inevitably follow.

While doing this I know I have to be careful to pace myself as I know it could all too easily consume me (I had a taste of that last year while preparing for the Bournemouth TDoR event. It wasn't fun).

But despite all of the horror, it feels worth it because it's helping me (and hopefully others) to better understand what some other trans people face, and the lives they are forced by circumstances to lead. By reading about what's happening to other trans people around the world (and in particular reading outside the anglocentric bubble I know I live in) I have also learnt more about the intersection of poverty and marginalisation than I care to admit. It's a very sobering experience.

Of course it also helps those taking part in TDoR events to connect with everyone we've lost - which is really the point.

The Bournemouth TDoR 2017 vigilThe Bournemouth TDoR 2017 vigil.

For me, the potential impact of this was illustrated perfectly by the reaction of one passerby at last year's TDoR event here in Bournemouth. She wasn't taking part in the event, but was walking by while we were reading the names of the victims and how they had died.

When she saw us all gathered and heard us reading she came over, knelt down, crossed herself, read some of the cards naming the victims and how they had died and then prayed earnestly before walking away.

It was such a simple gesture, but (to me at least) a beautiful and heartfelt one. I have no idea who she was, but I am grateful to her for sharing in our grief.

But back to those we have lost.

I know I can't ever fully comprehend the lives they led or how they suffered.

I know I'm fortunate and privileged. I'm white, "passable" (whatever that means), financially independent and live in a place which feels (to me at least) safe and secure. I have never been a sex worker, slept on the street, lived in fear of gun or gang violence or been a drug user. For all it's (many) faults, I even live in a country where even most trans healthcare procedures are free.

Make no mistake - I'm very privileged.

I know that most trans people don't have all of my advantages, and that among them are the far too many we mourn.

So I carry on regardless - but this February has been quite brutal. I'm glad it's over.

One more thing.If you want to help this effort, please join the Trans Violence News group on Facebook and post any keep an eye out for reports of violence against trans people in the media or elseware.

The more we can share out the horror, the easier it becomes on all of us.

About The Author

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe is a software engineer who volunteers to help research, collate and share data on violence against trans people. This blogpost was originally published by Anna on Medium.

]]> Sun, 04 Mar 2018 12:44:00 +0000 TDoR 2017: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/blog/2017/11/24/tdor-2017-say-their-names-read-their-stories-remember-them_94cc5399 The Bournemouth TDoR 2017 vigilThe Bournemouth TDoR 2017 vigil.

I've done a lot of things since I came out in 2001, but volunteering to collate the data for the Trans Day of Remembrance vigil in Bournemouth (see Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier) this year was definitely one of the hardest.

Preview image
Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier
A personal reflection on the Trans Day of Remembrance - and what I learned about some of those we lost to violence in between October 2016 and September 2017.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

Between all of the tears (and there were many) one thing that struck me was that we didn't have a particularly good picture of just who we have lost — their lives were literally often reduced to just a few words on a page, and in many cases we don't even have a name.

With the official list collated by Transgender Europe not coming out until a few days before the event there also wasn't really time to find much more out. Worse, once we did have the official list the data available was quite sketchy or only partially translated from the original news reports, and there were no photos which can give us a feel for who they were.

Taken together this can make it hard to connect with the trans people we've lost, and I think we owe it to them to do better, somehow.

For the Bournemouth vigil we wanted to give people a way to connect directly with as many of the victims as we could. The idea (not one I can take credit for — it came from Revd. Dwayne Morgan, the pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of Bournemouth* ) was to print a laminated A4 sheet for each, and light a candle for them at the vigil. Getting all of that together takes time, so I volunteered to start collecting data a little earlier by browsing blogs and a handful of news sites.

* The Metropolitan Community Church of Bournemouth has since been renamed to Inclusive Community Church.

Preparing memorial cardsPreparing memorial cards for the Bournemouth TDoR 2017 vigil.

Just doing that unearthed a lot of information — including photos of many of those we had lost — which were duly entered into a spreadsheet. Once the official list arrived I tried to merge that in it into a form suitable for what we wanted to do for our vigil - a messy process which took several days of editing and reformatting.

While doing so I found that many of the descriptions in the official list didn't read particularly clearly (many were translated from news reports in various languages) so I ended up spending lots of time rewording them and cross-referring to the original news sources (Google Translate was helpful here) where those could be found.

It was grim work, and suffice it to say I now have a fairly good idea which search terms to use for the murders of trans people in various languages, and which sites to look at.

For many victims we didn't have a photo, or even in many cases a nameFor many victims we didn't have a photo, or even in many cases a name.

But three fraught days later it was done. By then we had discovered quite a bit of additional data (including over 100 photos and details of 9 victims who were not recorded in the official list), and started the process of editing, printing, laminating and collating…all 334 times over. It took a while, but eventually we got there.

Memorial cardsOn the night of the vigil we laid out the memorial cards on the ground.

On the night of the vigil we laid out the pages in ten rows, grouped into five rows of two so that people could walk among them. As the names were read, candles were lit. It was powerful.

Maybe it was the fact that this year we had a P.A. system, or maybe it was all of the candles and the pages memorialising the victims — but a lot of passers-by stopped to look…to read…to cry...and even to pray.

What will I think be my most lasting memory of the evening is of a passer-by who was walking by when she heard us reading their names and how they had died. She came over, knelt down, crossed herself, read about some of the victims and prayed earnestly before walking away. It was such a simple gesture, but (to me at least) a beautiful one.

To her and the many cis (i.e. non-trans) folks who took part, thank you for caring. Many trans people have a really rough time, and knowing that others care enough to come along and make such a simple gesture really helps.

TDoR is now past us this year, but the killings never seem to stop so we'll be doing it all again next year. In the meantime, rather than let the everything we learnt about those we have lost in the past year fade into obscurity it seems appropriate to memorialise them all somewhere — and here is as good a place as any.

In the pages linked below I hope you'll learn a little about the trans people I know of who were killed between 1st October 2016 and 30th September 2017 (the 334 we commemorated on the night, plus those identified since).

Although we we know a little bit about some of them, sadly we know nothing about many — but I hope that others might be able to fill in some of those gaps in time.

I hope you'll be able to empathise with and understand them and the lives they tried to make the most of. Well over 100 of the entries have photos, and the one thought I can't shake when I look at them is just how young most of them are.

I can't promise is that reading what happened to them is likely to be an easy process — it certainly hasn't been for me.

Despite that, I'm glad I took the time to learn a little about them.

[TRIGGER WARNING: VIOLENCE. MURDER]

Note that in addition to the victims identified in the TGEU TDoR 2017 list, the pages linked above also contain details of:

  • Ahya Sapphire (10 Oct 2016 in Caloocan, Philippines)

  • Raina Aliev (31 Oct 2016 in Moscow, Russia)

  • Pamela Macedo Panduro (1 Jan 2017 in Le Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina)

  • Sean Hake (6 Jan 2017 in Sharon, Pennsylvania, USA)

  • Symone Marie Jones (12 Jan 2017 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA)

  • Gabriele Almeida (8 Feb 2017 in Montes Claros, Minas Gerais, Brazil)

  • C. A. de Mendonça (25 Feb 2017 in São João Nepomuceno, Minas Gerais, Brazil)

  • L. F. dos Santos (12 Mar 2017 in Serra, Espírito Santo, Brazil)

  • Angie Velásquez Ramírez (16 Mar 2017 in Le Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina)

  • Danilo Melhorini (15 Mar 2017 in São Paulo, Brazil)

  • Vulgo L. H. Santos (18 Mar 2017 in Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brazil)

  • Name Unknown (24 Mar 2017 in Porto Da Areia, Paraíba, Brazil)

  • Name Unknown (28 Mar 2017 in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil)

  • Sayra Hills (3 Apr 2017 in São Paulo, Brazil)

  • Pinha Priscila (17 Apr 2017 in Fortaleza, Brazil)

  • Imer Eliu Alvarado (17 May 2017 in Fresno, Ohio, USA)

  • Leo Etherington (31 May 2017 in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom)

  • Ezequiel Batista da Silva (3 Jun 2017 in Alto Tietê, Brazil)

  • Sandra de Souza Medeiros (25 Jun 2017 in São Carlos, Brazil)

  • M. Ferreira Avelino (13 Jul 2017 in New Parnamirim, Brazil)

  • Akio Willy Costa Cruz (18 Aug 2017 in Ananindeua, Brazil)

  • Pepper K aka Phoenix (25 Aug 2017 in Mansfield, Ohio, USA)

  • Brandy Bardales Sangama (10 Sep 2017 in Le Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina)

  • Scout Schultz (16 Sep 2017, Georgia, USA)

Dates of death have been corrected (using original news reports) for:

  • Bianca Bittencourt (17 Oct 2016 not 31 Oct 2016)

  • Camila de Souza Magalhães (23 Feb 2017 not 25 Feb 2017)

  • H. Ramirez Calderon (19 Mar 2017 not 20 Mar 2017)

  • Paola Ponce (19 Mar 2017 not 20 Mar 2017)

  • Sophie Castro (29 Apr 2017 not 3 May 2017)

  • Juliana Orrego Monsalve (30 Jun 2017 not 2 Jul 2017)

  • Gabrielle Sousa (31 Jul 2017 not 21 Jul 2017)

In addition, names (e.g. “Eyelen” should be Ayelén Gómez) and narratives have been corrected and expanded upon using original sources where possible and the following unidentified victims identified:

  • C. A. Armas Carvajal (11 Oct 2016 in Pénjamo, Guanajuato, Mexico)

  • C. do Nascimento Rolim (13 Oct 2016 in São Paulo, Brazil)

  • A. Soto Mena (“La Jana”) (29 Oct 2016 in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico)

  • Kristina Trance (19 Jan 2017 in Voronezh, Russia)

  • J. M. Sepriano (13 Feb 2017 in the Naga, Philippines)

  • J. (1 Mar 2017 in Municipio de Chalco, Mexico)

  • E. A. Moreira (16 Apr 2017 in Itabuna, Brazil)

  • Gina Huerta Vallejo (4 May 2017 in Apatzingán, Michoacán, Mexico)

  • Bruna (10 Jun 2017 in Salvador, Brazil)

  • L. da Silva Santos (16 Jun 2017 in Caraguatatuba, Brazil)

  • M. Ángel Vega Martínez (4 Jul 2017 in Estado de Mexico, Mexico)

  • Monserrat Alejandra Carrizales Castro (27 Jul 2017 in Nuevo Leon, Mexico)

  • R. S. Durán (20 Aug 2017 in Cuautla, Morelos, Mexico)

If anyone has details to add, please let me know — I'll be happy to update the posts above with any additional details you can share.

No matter who they were, we mourn and miss every single one of them.

Raw data for TDoR 2017 can be downloaded from tdor.translivesmatter.info.

TDoR 2017 victimsJust some of the trans people lost to violence during the period covered by TDoR 2017.

A final thought: while compiling all of this information, it struck me that a blog site like Medium really wasn't the ideal way to present individual biographies, and that a dedicated database driven site where contributors could upload/edit individual entries independently would probably work much better.*

Update: A site for this purpose](https://tdor.translivesmatter.info) has now been developed:

Preview image
Remembering Our Dead
This site memorialises trans people who have passed away, as a supporting resource for the Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR).
tdor.translivesmatter.info

If you wish to contribute to this effort please let me know.

Follow-up blogpost:

Preview image
TDoR 2018: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
At the end of October 2017 a group of us started preparing for the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) 2017 vigil in my home town of Bournemouth. Aside from the vigil itself, the end results were blogposts, tears and painstakingly collected data which we used to produce a memorial card for every victim we knew about.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

About The Author

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe is a software engineer who volunteers to help research, collate and share data on violence against trans people. This blogpost was originally published by Anna on Medium.

]]> Fri, 24 Nov 2017 09:00:00 +0000 Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/blog/2017/11/16/remembering-our-dead-never-gets-any-easier_580bd388 TDoR 2017 victimsJust some of the trans people we have lost in the last year. May they rest in peace, and may we remember them.

[TRIGGER WARNING: VIOLENCE. MURDER]

Her name was Gwen, but I never knew her.

It was late October 2002, and I was about to leave the family home for the last time. My transition was approaching, my marriage disintegrating and my wife wanted me to move out. I didn't have anywhere to go, but fortunately a good friend (thanks Tracey!) let me stay on her sofa until I found a place to rent.

That proved to be tricky as I was then quite visibly trans and still had to present as male at work until January. Awareness of trans people among the general public was pretty poor at the time, and when I enquired about places to rent I found that landlords just wouldn't get back to me. As a result, I didn't find a new home until December 2002, and even then the landlord was reluctant to consider meeting me (she'd never met a trans person before) until Tracey managed to talk her round over the phone.

Fortunately, once I met my prospective landlord, she was fine (the roadblock was getting past the initial phone enquiry) and that shared house proved to be the safe space I needed for the next two years while I got all of the medical stuff out of the way. I was privileged, and I was lucky.

But I digress. Until late that October I'd never even heard of the Transgender day of Remembrance….and then one day I read about what had happened to Gwen Araujo in Nevada on 4th October 2002 (just a few weeks before I moved out of the family home) and everything changed.

Preview image
Gwen Araujo murder 14 years later: Transgender teen’s killers face parole
The two men convicted of second-degree murder are facing parole board for the first time in a world more aware, more sensitive to what it means to be a transgender person.
www.mercurynews.com

If you've not heard her story, Gwen was beaten to death with a shovel at a party by people she thought of as friends. Afterwards they buried her body in the woods in an attempt to conceal the crime.

Up until then I hadn't been particularly conscious of violence against trans people other than as a personal awareness to be careful of my own safety — but knowing what happened to Gwen changed that. Suddenly, I realised I was far, far more vulnerable than I thought.

For Gwen, there has at least been some justice — of the four men involved, two were convicted of second-degree murder, one of voluntary manslaughter and the fourth gave evidence against the other three in return for a sentence of involuntary manslaughter. In 2006, her life was also memorialised in the movie “A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story”.

Preview image
A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story (TV Movie 2006) - IMDb
A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story: Directed by Agnieszka Holland. With Mercedes Ruehl, JD Pardo, Lupe Ontiveros, Henry Darrow. The true story of Gwen Araujo, a young trans woman who was brutally murdered by four men in 2002.
www.imdb.com

However the killers of many murdered trans people do not receive justice — and there are far too many of them. Until the Transgender Day of Remembrance was started by Gwendolyn Ann Smith to mark the murder of Rita Hester on 28th November 1998 (a murder which is still unsolved), those deaths would also go largely unreported.

Preview image
The Trans Murder That Started a Movement
When Rita Hester was murdered 17 years ago, the LGBT community promised not to let her die in vain.
www.thedailybeast.com

What news reports there were frequently misgendered and deadnamed murdered trans people — and this is often still the case today. To quote the article above, when Rita died:

News outlets like the Globe and the Herald referred to Rita as “a transvestite,” as “a man who sported long braids and preferred women's clothes,” and as someone who was living an “apparent double life.” Both papers used male pronouns, even though everyone in the community had known Hester as a woman for years. When transgender advocates protested this misreporting, a [Boston] Phoenix reporter chided them for putting the papers “under the political-correctness microscope.”

“Is Rita Hester's murder being eclipsed by the transgender community's grammatical agenda?” her headline asked, as if insisting on respect for the dead were a distraction from fighting the prejudice that may have led to the murder.

This same reporter, of course, made sure to describe Hester's breasts and genitals — details that served only to exoticize her case.

Adding insult to injury, even the New England gay and lesbian newspaper Bay Windows reportedly referred to Rita as “he” and placed her name in quotes.

This is quite simply not a respectful or fitting way to remember our dead. Not only is it disrespectful, but also willfully ignorant and transphobic.

In life, our dead were every bit as varied, creative, compassionate, loving, colourful and broken as the rest of us so to generalise or judge who they were is quite frankly an appalling thing to do. To disrespect them further by deadnaming and misgendering crosses a line far, far beyond that.

If you didn't know them and want to understand a little — go and learn about them — and even better still — respect their memory by helping a vulnerable trans person who is still alive. So many of us need your help.

The really tragic thing about all of this is that each of those we've lost leaves a uniquely them-shaped hole which just can't be filled. They're missed by friends, relatives, neighbours, co-workers and those they loved — and even by strangers like me. They deserve to be remembered. To be celebrated. To be honoured.

That is what Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) is all about. Since 1999 TDoR events have been held on or around 20th November every year to commemorate all of those we have lost in the past year. Although things have improved for trans people in many countries since then (and there are vastly more of us visible), the deaths just keep on coming.

A TDoR event is usually a simple candlelight vigil where we read the names of our dead and remember what happened to them [guidance].

The methodology used to identify those we have lost has evolved since that first TDoR event, and today the most widely recognised source is the list collated by the Trans Murder Monitoring Project and published by Transgender Europe (TGEU).

In early November, TGEU release a PDF list giving details of all reported killings they have information for and covering the period 1st October through to 30th September. Invariably, there are more reports almost every year. *

*Some of the data from earlier years runs 20th November — 19th November. In addition, the summary text at the start of the TGEU TDoR 2010 list says it includes 179 victims, but one of those is listed twice (so there were actually 178 recorded)

How much of that increase is due to improved communication and reporting, the increasing visibility of trans people (remember that as we get more visible the people who want us dead can see more of us too) or other factors, I can't say. What I can say is that every year, we seem to have more trans people to mourn and remember.

TDoR is painful, but important. If you still doubt why, please watch the video below.

Given all this, it shouldn't be a surprise that the weeks leading up to 20th November are a painful time of year for many trans folks. It's the time when we not only mourn our dead, but are forcibly reminded of our own vulnerability — and of the fact that there are many people in this world even today who would like nothing better than to torture, mutilate and kill us.

Hard though that is to endure, it is also an opportunity to say “We remember them. We are here, and we refuse to be afraid of those who hate us”.

I'm lucky to live in a town (Bournemouth, on the south coast of the United Kingdom) that's quite progressive and has a large LGBTQI+ community, but even here I know of trans people who are regularly on the receiving end of abuse in the street. I'm under no illusions that it's actually safe, but I also know that we're in a much safer place than most trans people in the world.

Here in Bournemouth the Transgender Day of Remembrance has been marked in various ways for a few years now, but for the last couple of years there has been a well attended candlelight vigil in the Triangle at the top of the town centre (historically an LGBTQI+ area).

The TDoR vigil in Bournemouth in November 2015The TDoR vigil in Bournemouth in November 2015. Photo: Flirt Cafe Bar.

This year four local groups (Communi-T, Space Youth Project, KissNmakeup and Metropolitan Community Church of Bournemouth *) have come together to organise different aspects of the vigil. Preceding that there will also be a TDoR memorial service at Metropolitan Community Church of Bournemouth in Pokesdown, which this year will be at 11am on Sunday 19th November 2017.

* The Metropolitan Community Church of Bournemouth has since been renamed to Inclusive Community Church.

One of the things we wanted to do for the vigil is print a laminated sheet in the colours of the trans flag for each victim so that attendees could light a candle for them. I volunteered to collate the data from TGEU and convert it into a form (a spreadsheet, basically) we could use to generate the materials we need, and it struck me that if we were able to add photos for at least some of them it would help everyone to visualise those we mourn.

I honestly didn't know what I was letting myself in for. I started by searching PinkNews, as they routinely report on the killings of trans people in the UK and USA, and occasionally also from elseware in the world. It didn't take long to find an article which listed every victim in the USA, and that gave me enough information to find appropriate photos for almost all of them.

Preview image
2017 is now the deadliest year for transgender people on record
Horrifying.
www.pinknews.co.uk

At this point the official list hadn't yet been published (it tends to come out only about 10 days before the vigils take place), so I put everything I found into a spreadsheet and wrote the narratives myself from the news reports.

It was a sobering experience, and it didn't take long before something I read hit me hard. That something was what happened to Ally Steinfeld in Texas County, Missouri on 3rd September 2017.

Preview image
Murdered trans teen had her genitals mutilated before she was set on fire
Three suspects have been charged.
www.pinknews.co.uk

Ally was just 17, and was killed by people she trusted — one of whom she had been dating. Not content with killing her, they gouged out her eyes and genitals before burning her body and hiding it inside a garbage bag in a chicken coop. I just can't even begin to process this, and the parallels to what happened to Gwen Araujo all the way back in October 2002 are unmistakable. Has so little changed?

The report about Ally brought on the tears I knew would come sooner or later….but I knew somehow I had to cope with that. I carried on, and eventually I had data on all of the US deaths I knew of. I then started looking to see what I could find on murders elseware in the world.

Knowing that the country with the most reported killings of trans people is Brazil, I next started looking for sources I could use to find any information from there.

Preview image
One LGBT person is killed every 25 hours in Brazil
One person is murdered every 25 hours in Brazil according to a shocking annual survey conducted by the Gay Group of Bahia (GGB).
www.pinknews.co.uk

The best sources I found were two blogs - http://goqueer.blogspot.com/ and https://homofobiamata.wordpress.com - which linked to the primary news sources. It was at that point that I discovered that Brazilian news sites tend to publish graphic photos of the victims corpses.

Be warned that if you view either of these links you will see things that will almost probably haunt you — they certainly do me.

[TW: MURDER. GRAPHIC IMAGES]

Preview image
(sem título)
A principal característica do fascismo é sua aversão ao novo, à diferença, à diversidade, à consciência crítica e à "dinâmica da verdade", que de maneira nenhuma se submete à pasmaceira de crenças e dogmas consagrados como verdades absolutas, imutáveis e inquestionáveis. As "esquerdas" precisam entender que a mentalidade fascista está longe de ser propriedade exclusiva…
homofobiamata.wordpress.com

Reading European and US based reports about murdered trans people is difficult enough, but Latin American blogs and news reports take it to entirely another level. The sheer horror of it all was overwhelming, but still I read report after report, using Google Translate to try to understand what happened to each of them.

Just seeing their smiling faces and knowing what happened to them proved to be enough to reduce me to tears time after time. Even now, just thinking about them can do the same thing.

And yet, there is a form of closure and even peace in undertaking such a macabre task. Although all of our instincts are to keep as far away from such horrific deaths as possible, it feels like the right thing to do. We owe it to them to share their stories. To share their smiles, hopes and dreams. To remember.

I won't pull any punches here— looking at all of this was was a numbing experience. Report after report. Life brutally ended after life brutally ended. Bloodstained corpse after bloodstained corpse….and yet, somehow it all had to be recorded.

But then I saw the report about what happened to Wilka in Vitória de Santo Antão on 26th March 2017.

Like Gwen, I never knew her, but looking at her photo she comes over as someone I could so easily imagine sharing a drink and a laugh with.

WilkaWilka was stabbed to death on 26th March 2017.

The report about her death hit me even harder than any of the others. Not only because I felt I could so relate to the sort of person she appeared to be, but the report of her murder [TW: GRAPHIC IMAGES] included close-up shots of her corpse with the knife wounds clearly visible. The contrast couldn't be more jarring or upsetting.

A translation of the text in the report reads:

A transgender woman, known as Wilka, was brutally murdered by knife in the city of Vitória de Santo Antão, in the northeastern state of Pernambuco. She was badly stabbed three times: in the neck, in the abdomen and in the back.

In another report, a friend reported that “someone tried to rob Wilka and murdered her when they realised she was transgender”.

At this point it all overwhelmed me and I broke. How could anyone do this?

Even now — nearly a week later — I still feel the tears come when I see her picture in particular. Maybe that will change in time, but I wonder if it even should.

That wasn't the end, of course…and many tears still lay ahead. I read about the horrors that overtook Dandara dos Santos (publicly tortured and beaten to death, with her murder videoed and uploaded to YouTube), Raina Aliev (hacked to death after her father called for her execution, just days after marrying), Michelle Rios (murdered inside her own home), Julhão Petruck (shot 7 times while leaving his home), Agatha Lios (stabbed, possibly on the instigation of a female pimp) and so, so many more.

By the time I called it all a day on Monday lunchtime I'd found photos of a total of 106 of our dead (nearly a third of the total), and 9 of them aren't even on the official TDoR list. I've collated the data into a zipfile containing a spreadsheet and the individual photos as well as a copy of the official PDF so that others can use it for their own TDoR vigils if they wish.

Given all of this it shouldn't be surprising that right now I feel completely drained, but I know the week isn't over yet. So much loss…so much unnecessary loss. And for what, exactly?

I'll finish with two thoughts.

The first is the depressing one that the victims we will be mourning at TDoR 2018 have already started being reported on - I have photos and details for 3 of them already, and I know there are more in the blogs I can't face looking at just yet.

So if you happen to know any trans people (and especially any who seem to be struggling), please look out for them. Ask them if they are OK, and what you can do to help.

The second is that Ally Steinfeld's last post on Facebook was about dyeing her hair. In the voice of the teenage girl she was, she said:

“I feeling little bit beautiful how likes my hair i got it red.”

To Ally and all of those we have lost we say — “Rest in peace. Most of us may not have known you, but we all miss you. We promise that we won't forget.”

So please remember our dead, and fight like hell for the living.

Because it's nowhere near over.

Postscript: Since writing this I've published everything I've learnt about all of those we've lost in a follow-up blogpost. I encourage you to read it and learn about them.

Preview image
TDoR 2017: Say their names. Read their stories. Remember them
I've done many things since I came out in 2001, but volunteering to collate the data for the Trans Day of Remembrance vigil in Bournemouth (see Remembering Our Dead never gets any easier) this year was definitely one of the hardest.
tdor.translivesmatter.info

About The Author

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe is a software engineer who volunteers to help research, collate and share data on violence against trans people. This blogpost was originally published by Anna on Medium.

]]> Thu, 16 Nov 2017 16:34:00 +0000