Transgender Day of Remembrance Has Passed

No, this isn't a trap. And yes, this is a trap. Just hold my hand and read for a minute, will you?

I don’t tend to put myself out on Transgender Day of Remembrance. It’s a sad day, and if anyone should be putting themselves out, I kinda feel like it should be the non-trans folks, y’know? So there’s not a big TDoR post up here, and there won’t be next year, and I’m setting this to post just after midnight Pacific time so TDoR is over here before anyone reads these words.

But this isn’t to make people feel like shit if they didn’t do anything on Monday to remember all the dead trans people. I didn’t delay and delay to catch you out thinking, “Oh my god, I didn’t realize!” or worse, “Oh my god, I forgot the remembrance.”

There is a point to mourning, and if you haven’t been affected by the death of a trans person in your orbit, I’m glad. I hope that’s because you have lots of wonderful trans people in your life and none of them have snuffed it. But even if it’s because you don’t know a single trans person off-line, well, it’s not like it’s a good thing to be in mourning. Take it as the one compensation for the lack of gender glitter in your local environment.

From the beginning I’ve had difficulty observing TDoR. It is a day of mourning to me, a very real mourning of people actually close to me who have actually died. I am not comfortable with the fact that the murder of an acquaintance and the suicides and illness of my friends are for mourning but are supposed to be political, too. Like I’m supposed to yell at you about all the death and say, “LOOK WHAT YOU’VE WROUGHT,” but I don’t feel that. When I think of the trans friends I have lost, from A to J to another J to L to P, I miss them.

And sometimes I’m angry on their behalf. But grinding cis folks collective nose in the spilled blood of trans lives feels gross to me. I remember one of my J’s telling me that she wanted to be forgotten, because she didn’t trust how the world would remember her. Carrying her body to the barricades like Gavroche would be to turn a human into just another revolutionary flag. She was more than that. And even if she wasn’t, even if I had barely known her, I wouldn’t want to betray her, to crush that one moment of spun-glass trust in her confession.

I hope you mourned if you have someone you miss, and I hope that their memory was a comfort to you on Monday, but don’t look for TDoR posts here. At Pervert Justice, it’s a private day for authentic relationships, for friends to hold hands and sip tea and fail entirely to think of what to say, for siblings to say, “And the hat…,” and never finish, because their laughter tramples into the dust of the past all the petty words too small to describe such large loves.

Tuesday we can begin again to reach out beyond ourselves. Tuesday, perhaps, we can be political. Tuesday when our eyes are not clouded at our thoughts for the dead, we can look around us and find reasons to fight fiercely for the living.

Tuesday perhaps we can spare a minute for those who spent Monday alone. Wednesday we might stand with the trans person navigating TSA with an outdated license. Thursday we can feed the agender soul who lost their job over their truth. Friday we can hold the hand of a man who observes Buy Nothing Day on accident, having no family left who will value his gifts.

November 20th is an important day. I didn’t let it pass without comment because I no longer notice my losses. But if we are to change the world, I want to work our creation while we think of the living. We have 52 weeks for that. The dead have had their day.