Several trans justice organizations have decided to also honor the people who survive against the odds.
On Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), which is held each year on November 20 around the world, trans and nonbinary people gather with their families and allies to light candles and say the names of trans people killed by anti-trans violence over the past year. While the list grows longer each year, the demographics of the people killed tend to stay the same: women and/or femmes; people who struggled to survive on next-to-no money; Black, Latinx, and/or Indigenous folks; and immigrants. There’s no Census or large study to track the life expectancy of queer, trans and gender-nonconforming people; but considering the disproportionate rates of violence, depression, suicide, employment discrimination and incarceration, common wisdom among community members holds that if you’re a trans person of color, living past the age of 35 is a feat. Several groups, starting with BreakOUT! in New Orleans, have decided to observe “Transgender Day of Resilience” instead of “Transgender Day of Remembrance,” to honor the people who survive against the odds instead of the norm: acknowledging their struggles only when they’re gone. Resilience is a must-have quality of those who survive to the next TDOR. They face right-wing attempts to kill health care for trans people in states such as Alabama and Arkansas. Meanwhile, getting a living wage job is harder than it already is for non-trans people, even if they’re fortunate enough to be in one of the few places with LGBT employment nondiscrimination laws. Harassment by police for “Walking While Trans” is an everyday worry. And anti-trans hate-posting on social media by so-called trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) such as JK Rowling, the billionaire author behind the Harry Potter series, is an everyday encounter online. Jemma DeCristo is a housing activist and one of a handful of trans professors in the entire University of California system who works in the African American and African Studies department at UC Davis. She spoke with Truthout about getting beyond grief and moving toward material change for trans and queer people. Toshio Meronek: What have the past few years of more positive mainstream representation of trans/queer people — in media, government and the nonprofit world — brought most trans/queer people? Jemma DeCristo: I think representation has brought, to answer your question, a mass delusion in a certain kind of way. The way I think about it is this: I always remind myself representation is never actually for the people it represents. For people that are old enough to remember, it’s like when they introduced Black sitcoms on television. You know, there were some episodes of shows that snuck in that were interesting. But the idea to have them on was to show white people, after the Civil Rights Movement, “Hey, Black people are civilized, and they’re just like us,” you know, “They have mothers and fathers, and they go to work and all those things.” Those shows in the ‘70s have many important representations of Black people; people will go, “Oh, that show was really amazing, it was really funny.” But I think the joy that we get from representation as Black trans women, as Black people, is almost kind of incidental, but it is sometimes hard for us to avoid thinking that because we’re on screen, our lives are getting better, we’re “moving on up,” to use another ‘70s reference.
