Three students explain what Transgender Day of Remembrance means to them

Transgender Day of Remembrance is held every year on November 20th. The three articles below have been submitted to us, but each writer has asked to remain anonymous. If you have any questions, please contact trans.cardif´¼égbt@gmail.com.

———————————————————————————————————————————————–

Think of three people you know. They can be anyone. People you see in lectures, someone in a seminar group, a housemate and friend.

Now imagine all three of them gone. All chose death for the same reason. They could no longer tolerate the crippling self-hate, the hate aimed at them by society, the endless black tunnel with the light so far at the end it can hardly be seen.

[pullquote]Think of three people you know. Now imagine all three of them gone.[/pullquote]

This happened to me.

I lost friends, comrades in the everyday battle I face, and I lost members of a support system that has been one of the only things keeping me going.

This year, for me, Transgender Day of Remembrance is not just a commemoration of lives lost. It is a personal day of mourning, to honour friends lost to me and my community.

Since coming out as trans*, I have known what it is to constantly live in fear. In the past two years, I have been attacked a number of times, beaten, assaulted, humiliated, and the told by the police, counsellors, family and, yes, even friends, that it was my fault, that somehow, just by being myself, I provoked them into doing it.

This has not stopped me using my voice to speak up for those too afraid to. But each time I do, I put myself in even more danger. I still do it though, in the hope that fewer trans* people will take their own lives, or have their lives taken.

However, I do still have to wonder sometimes, as I sit and mourn, what the chances are that next year I will be the one being mourned.

———————————————————————————————————————————————–

It should tell you a lot about the trans* community that they have TDOR, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, when other minorities have celebrations. This is because the ´¼üght has not been won, not even nearly.

My ´¼ürst contact with the trans* community was in my ´¼ürst year at university. When you join an LGBT+ society, you are instantly surrounded by extraordinary individuals, people who have a strength of character that would put the rest of society to shame. People who have succeeded in that great struggle for their own identity.

As E. E. Cummings so eloquently put: “The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you somebody else.”

Even among this exceptional group, there were those who had surpassed all others by their endurance of trials beyond what any of us can imagine.

There is probably something you would change about your body ÔÇô lose a little weight here, a little more tone there, bigger this, smaller that. Now multiply that by a thousand, until you feel disconnected from the body you are damned to inhabit, and you realise the struggle that almost every member of the trans* community faces.

Not only do they endure being at a loss themselves, but they are then persecuted every minute by people who don’t realise what they are doing. And, horrifyingly, by those who do. All it takes is for people to think and, of course, remember.

“If you’re wearing a disguise for too long, it will be difficult for the mirror to recognize you. At the end of the day I hope you become the person they didn’t expect you to be. Be proud to wear you.” Dodinsky

Humble ally and friend

———————————————————————————————————————————————–

On a several-hour train journey back home for the weekend, after having read the LGBT+ page and other articles of last weekÔÇÖs Quench, I stood looking around, lost in thought.

Why do they only put three carriages on at the busiest time of the week on a mainline? Why does one woman take up a chair on the packed train just for her pink suitcase? Why on earth am I going back to my hometown? The latter being something that had preoccupied my thoughts since deciding to go home in the ´¼ürst place.

The problem with such a town is that everyone is exactly the same. And I mean EXACTLY the same. And if youÔÇÖre not? Well, you will wish you were.

During my thirteen long years there, I met only two LGBT+ people that I can think of. One was a pansexual guy who became my only source of sanity in the backwards thinking town. The only person I could talk to about being trans*; the only one who understood what agender even was.

Only with him could I discuss my disgust at my body. Only he wouldnÔÇÖt laugh and brush it off with a joke when I told them IÔÇÖd been misgendered ÔÇô when really it was so much more than that. Every week, without fail, strangers of any age, would shout across roads, whisper behind my back in corridors, or bluntly ask or say hurtful things to my face. ÔÇÿFriendsÔÇÖ did so almost as often too ÔÇô knowingly or unknowingly, they both cut as deep. I was utterly miserable.

Then I left. And as simple as that, life improved. Now almost everything is amazing. I am aware of not a single attacking comment made to me in my eight weeks in Cardiff. I have surrounded myself with people in similar situations who feel more like my family than any biological family member. I am now able to discuss it openly and become more myself than I ever have felt able to before in my life.

[pullquote]I am aware of not a single attacking moment made to me in my eight weeks in Cardiff.[/pullquote]

Understatement: Being trans* is hard.

DonÔÇÖt get me wrong, it still majorly sucks at times. But surround yourself with the right loving, caring, accepting people and things become a thousand times better and more enjoyable. And right now, I really wouldnÔÇÖt change anything at all.

Agender and Proud