Black background on the blog today to mark the 2010 Trans Day of Remembrance.
In my last post I mentioned 'The Smiling Animal at His Appointed Hour', a poem I'd written about the murder of Andrea Waddell. But it could just as easily have been about the hundreds of other trans women who are murdered every year, just as she was. . And it would be nice to say that those victims are murdered only by the people who commit the immediate violence against them, but that would be a comforting lie. Trans people - overwhelmingly trans women - are subject to such violence because of a system that discriminates against them, disadvantages them and makes them outcasts.
Andrea Waddell was murdered by a client she met as a sex worker. But she became a sex worker because, despite her being a Durham University graduate, employers rejected her from other jobs. If the transphobes who rejected her hadn't done so, she wouldn't have been murdered that night. Like all the victims of anti-trans violence, Andrea's murder was as much the fault of everyone who discriminated against her because of her trans status as it was of the cis man who murdered her.
This is why I get so angry with scumbag 'comedians' who make transphobic jokes or venal little newspaper bastards who write dehumanising, misogynistic reports about trans women. That kind of behaviour legitimises the discrimination and exclusion that create a climate in which so many trans women are murdered. Those jokes, those reports and that attitude have a body count.
Today is the day we remember all those who have died as a result of that ignorance. You can find out more here and find a list of the dead from the past year here.
Enough.
Showing posts with label International Transgender Day of Remembrance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label International Transgender Day of Remembrance. Show all posts
Saturday, 20 November 2010
Saturday, 21 November 2009
More TDOR
Some more links to blogs discussing the Transgender Day of Remembrance on 20th November 09.
Cheryl Morgan muses on, among other things, the prevalence of transphobic violence in Brazil, and a commenter discloses a tragic story from Italy about yet another way in which the Catholic church seems, to this reader at least, to be on an ongoing quest to make itself as least like Christ as it can possibly get.
The wonderful people at The Angels paint it black in remembrance, providing a list of the fallen.
And Lucy from Catspaw makes the important point that when we talk about the murder of trans people, we're overwhelmingly talking about the murder of trans women, and particularly trans women of colour. Oppressions, as she says, do intersect, and if we're ever going to undo the kyriarchy , as Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza calls it (though in my sci-fi geek heart I still call it the Matrix), then we have to be aware of those intersection points of oppression, and not try to co-opt them to play the I'm-the-most-oppressed game.
Lucy also provides another important service, in providing links to further blogs dealing with TDOR, all of which I urge you to check out.
It isn't November 20th on the Greenwich Meridian anymore, but it's still that day somewhere, and somewhere on this planet, men and women are being oppressed, harassed, and murdered for being themselves. And whatever day of the year it is, that has to stop.
Cheryl Morgan muses on, among other things, the prevalence of transphobic violence in Brazil, and a commenter discloses a tragic story from Italy about yet another way in which the Catholic church seems, to this reader at least, to be on an ongoing quest to make itself as least like Christ as it can possibly get.
The wonderful people at The Angels paint it black in remembrance, providing a list of the fallen.
And Lucy from Catspaw makes the important point that when we talk about the murder of trans people, we're overwhelmingly talking about the murder of trans women, and particularly trans women of colour. Oppressions, as she says, do intersect, and if we're ever going to undo the kyriarchy , as Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza calls it (though in my sci-fi geek heart I still call it the Matrix), then we have to be aware of those intersection points of oppression, and not try to co-opt them to play the I'm-the-most-oppressed game.
Lucy also provides another important service, in providing links to further blogs dealing with TDOR, all of which I urge you to check out.
It isn't November 20th on the Greenwich Meridian anymore, but it's still that day somewhere, and somewhere on this planet, men and women are being oppressed, harassed, and murdered for being themselves. And whatever day of the year it is, that has to stop.
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Operation: Sex Change
...is the title of a game I proposed to MB that would, I swear, have made them a cool billion, but did they go for it? No. They thought a game in which the player has to carry out a perfect vaginoplasty (link NSFW, BTW) on a ruddy-nosed cartoon man might be, and I quote 'pushing the envelope in a direction we, as a family games manufacturer, really don't want to go, and if you keep calling our office high on drugs in the middle of the night we'll have you bludgeoned', and instead went with a Simpsons tie-in edition of the old Operation! franchise. Pussies.
Not really of course. What Operation:Sex Change is, in fact, is a Facebook Campaign set up by people from Bekhsoos, a queer arab magazine, to draw attention to the problems faced by transgendered people around the world, and in particular to draw attention to the International Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20th. It's a pretty simple idea: you go on Facebook, you change your gender identity on your profile, publish the change to your profile and, when people ask why, you tell them about the campaign.
Readers of this blog will know that as someone who self-identifies as genderqueer I often explore related issues on this blog and in my work, and will not be wholly surprised to note that on my FB profile I now appear to be one of those HOT LOCAL GIRLS facebook ads are always telling us we should meet up with RIGHT NOW. But I'd also like to encourage you to do the same. As Cheryl Morgan points out, it doesn't hurt, and it's only temporary. Go on, live dangerously.
Not really of course. What Operation:Sex Change is, in fact, is a Facebook Campaign set up by people from Bekhsoos, a queer arab magazine, to draw attention to the problems faced by transgendered people around the world, and in particular to draw attention to the International Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20th. It's a pretty simple idea: you go on Facebook, you change your gender identity on your profile, publish the change to your profile and, when people ask why, you tell them about the campaign.
Readers of this blog will know that as someone who self-identifies as genderqueer I often explore related issues on this blog and in my work, and will not be wholly surprised to note that on my FB profile I now appear to be one of those HOT LOCAL GIRLS facebook ads are always telling us we should meet up with RIGHT NOW. But I'd also like to encourage you to do the same. As Cheryl Morgan points out, it doesn't hurt, and it's only temporary. Go on, live dangerously.
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