What is Transgender Day of Remembrance?
Many victims of transphobic violence never have their deaths publicly acknowledged. With the recent bombardment of anti-trans legislation aimed to suppress the trans and gender variant community in this country, the acknowledgement of these tragic deaths is all the more critical. Now, more than ever, it is important to speak their names and honor their memories.
Transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith began Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) in 1999. TDOR began as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in Alliston, Massachusetts in 1998. The vigil also commemorated all the transgender and gender variant lives lost to anti-Trans violence in the time following Rita Hester’s murder. Thus began an important tradition that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance observed throughout the world on November 20th.
TDOR founder Gwendolyn Ann Smith says, “Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people — sometimes in the most brutal ways possible — it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice.”
How can I get involved in the Transgender Day of Remembrance?
Join organizers from the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brunswick, First Universalist Church of Yarmouth, Beth Israel Congregation in Bath, the Sexuality, Women, and Gender Center from Bowdoin College in a service to honor the transgender and gender variant lives lost this year to transphobic violence.