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TG day of remembrance

458 replies

WomanAndProud · 22/10/2018 15:08

When did 20 November become the transgender Day Of Remembrance?

Is there an International Women's Day of Remembrance? We bloody well need to get onto it given the numbers of us who are actually killed every single day. And given that the majority of women who are murdered are killed by men, that's anti-women (adult human female, to be clear - and that's not exclusionary, trans women don't want to be included anyway, they've made their own day they can't now complain about not being in ours).

And I do hope that they'll be remembering the trans people killed by other trans people. Because there are a fair few of them too.

TG day of remembrance
OP posts:
catkind · 22/10/2018 22:02

If you're going to declare yourself as at least as female/male as those of us born that way and want to end discrimination against you as you're not any different to other people, then you can't be having days that set you up as a third category!

Their argument is transgender people are a subcategory of their identified sex so I don't think this particular line works, subcategories can still be singled out for events. I think they're a subcategory of their respective birth sexes which also doesn't preclude remembrance, if there was something to remember and if remembering it was actually the point of the exercise which sadly is not clear to me.

Ereshkigal · 22/10/2018 22:01

Oh yes I remember that piece! Didn't the author come on MN when people liked it, or am I thinking of a different person?

Trousered · 22/10/2018 21:49

Great piece by a New Yorker about the USA figures, I've posted this before so you may have read it.

The author is trans, so you know, please hold back on the outrage.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3402225-tg-day-of-remembrance?pg=3

Outspoken trans activists want to appear way more oppressed than they really are. To achieve this, they need to be able to prove just how discriminatory everyone is towards them. But since this doesn’t match up to reality, they have changed reality to make it line up with them. They have created linguistic rules that the common person has no way of knowing, so that when some ordinary person accidentally activates a semantic trap on Twitter or elsewhere, these angry trans folk can dogpile on them and call them out for being “transphobic.”
These people want to be oppressed because the left awards those that are victims, and now they’re in the most ironic dick-measuring contest of all time in an effort to prove which identity group is the most victimized.
This is even evident in how these wannabe victims misuse stats. In 2017, there were 28 transgendered individuals across the United States who were murdered. LGBT advocates would like you to believe that these people were all murdered due to their gender identity. However, in many cases, there is little to no evidence of this.
Hell, that statistic even includes three dumbasses who thought it was a good idea to charge law enforcement with knives.
Fun fact: That same year, multiple normal people were killed by police for the same reason — so, clearly, gender identity played no role in their deaths-by-cop.
This idea that we’re being murdered en masse has even led to some laughably bad claims. Remember the shrill voiced psychotic trans girl who heckled Rose McGowan at a Barnes and Noble a short while ago? Well, while she was shrieking at the actress she alluded that our deaths are comparable to genocide.

Ereshkigal · 22/10/2018 21:43

Otherwise it comes across as another attempt to paint transpeople in the here and now as victims and imply transphobia (actual transphobia as oppose to existence of biology transphobia) is much more common than it really is.

This is my issue with it. I have no problem with a day to remember the lives of murdered (mostly) Brazilian MTFs, but it should be clarified that that is where pretty much all the trans murders are. Not the UK.

noeffingidea · 22/10/2018 21:41

Maybe we need a Sex Workers Day of Remembrance
Yes that would be a good idea.

WomanAndProud · 22/10/2018 21:24

QuiteContraryMary you make a lot of sense and was well put. Thanks for taking the time.

I was annoyed this morning when I posted. Every murder is wrong. I'm disgusted at the coopting that the trans movement does. How can we be having a day of remembrance when literally nobody in the country knows or is related to someone we're supposed to be remembering?

And I still cannot get my head around trans women insisting I even write those two words separately because they're actual women, yet they refuse to drop the "trans". If you're a woman, shut up and get on with it. You know, like we have to do all the bloody time. They want to be treated and counted as women, yet want a day of remembrance (with funding) for not being actual women (few trans men I've come across seem to be quite so vocal, if they are then include them here too).

If you're going to declare yourself as at least as female/male as those of us born that way and want to end discrimination against you as you're not any different to other people, then you can't be having days that set you up as a third category!

Hopefully Lily and her fellow Labour Women's Rep in Telford will be championing an equivalent Remembrance Day for women killed in the U.K. and globally.

Yeah....didn't think so.

OP posts:
AspieAndProud · 22/10/2018 20:52

From Wikipedia:

Transgender activist Mirha-Soleil Ross criticizes TDoR for conflating the motivation behind the murders of transgender women sex workers. In an interview with scholar Viviane Namaste, she presents examples of transgender sex workers who were murdered in Toronto for being sex workers and accuses the organizers of TDoR of using these women who died for being sex workers as martyrs of the transgender community.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_Day_of_Remembrance

Maybe we need a Sex Workers Day of Remembrance.

OlennasWimple · 22/10/2018 20:44

This list of transwomen killed in the US is interesting because of the number of gun victims in the list. I don't know whether this is in line with the overall homicide trends for the US last year, or whether there is something different going on

OlennasWimple · 22/10/2018 20:37

The big fat elephant that is missing from the narrative around the TGDOR is that the vast majority of transwomen are murdered by men. The second biggest perpetrator group is other transwomen. The number of women who have been convicted of murdering a transwomen - across the globe - is vanishingly small

And yet it's nasty terfy, cunty women who are so dangerous that transwomen protestors at feminist events need a human shield and transwomen political activists claim that they have to leave the room because the presence of known feminists makes them feel unsafe Hmm

catkind · 22/10/2018 20:32

I get the impression a lot of the people doing the remembering do not actually know the story of a single victim of transphobic violence. That's not actually remembering is it? If it's about these south American prostitutes, tell us some of their stories, how did they end up on the streets, how did they come to be killed, who did they leave behind?
Otherwise it comes across as another attempt to paint transpeople in the here and now as victims and imply transphobia (actual transphobia as oppose to existence of biology transphobia) is much more common than it really is. It's scare tactics, to the detriment of good constructive conversations around transgender issues.

QuietContraryMary · 22/10/2018 20:17

"If being GC is all about protecting women’s rights, please tell me how a transgender day of rememberance erodes your rights? "

It's very simple. Transwomen claim that they are/would be attacked in men's toilets, are at outlandish risk of murder/rape/etc., and therefore need extra legal rights (which come at the expense of natal females).

By presenting a narrative that tw are being killed, using TDoR, this attracts public sympathy, political support, etc. for their political goals.

On a very simple level, it works like this: white man says 'I'm a victim, give me more rights' - everybody laughs 'you're in the group that's exact opposite of victim'. But if said white man becomes a TW, they are able to successfully argue that they are in an out group and in need of special rights. And this comes despite the TW being in many cases very plainly enormously privileged.

As an example, John Ozimek as a man was simply a hardcore pornography advocate. That was fine, but nobody treated him as anything more than a rentaquote when they needed someone on some new pornography law or whatever. It was understood that John was a consumer/advocate for hardcore pornography, but nobody seriously imagined that John was oppressed.

However when John started identifying as Jane, suddenly the narrative changed, and Jane was able to identify as a feminist, a member of a victim group, and so on.

We have to look at where this insta-victim status comes from, because on a basic level, as a middle-class white journalist,
John/Jane is very plainly NOT a victim, nor someone at great risk of violence.

We know from police figures that transphobic violence is by far the rarest form of hate crime, and while, say Sajid Javid, as an Asian male, is at risk of random racial hate crime, I don't think we would recognise Sajid in our analysis as a 'victim', even though racial hate crime is at least 100x more common than transgender hate crime.

And I don't think we have a 'racist murder day of remembrance', even though there is a real risk of racial violence & murder in this country, and racially motivated murders are something that happen from time to time.

And again we have an epidemic of sexual violence and murder against women and girls and there is no day of remembrance there either.

So you have to look beyond 'these people just want to remember their dead friends', and actually look at the facts, look at who is celebrating these events, and what message is being sent out. If Thurrock Council are raising the transgender flag for TDoR, but the local police tell a woman not to walk home a certain route because she has experienced sexual violence from men on that route, and it's likely to be repeated, I'm not really sure what the message is being sent out there, but it's certainly not 'let's think about the safety of women and girls'.

Because let's be honest, the risk and fear of random sexual violence (quite outside domestic violence) is something that every woman and girl lives with for decades, and nobody's doing a damn thing about it other than saying 'get a taxi home' or whatever.

Now ok, on one level, if a transwoman is perceived as female by an attacker then that TW might be subject to a heightened risk of random sexual violence, as opposed to someone who just looks like a man, who in general don't worry about being raped AT ALL, but to somehow frame this as transphobic violence is quite the take, when the risk is literally only a function of the fact that the subject is perceived as a member of the female sex class, that is to say the subject of the overwhelming majority of sexual violence and murder. And not a day of remembrance in sight there.

The official recognition and observance of TDoR is the political favouring of one group (transwomen) with the intent to prioritise it over others (women).

JenFromTheGlen · 22/10/2018 20:11

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

BettyDuMonde · 22/10/2018 20:11

Naomi Hersi

(although the reasons for Hersi’s murder were not clear, the perpetrator pleaded guilty. Hersi was killed by a nasty, violent, entitled male murderer, who callously ended the life of a sex partner he no longer had an interest in or use for. No suggestion has been made that Hersi was victimised specifically for being trans).

That’s it for 2018 (so far). There were none in 2017.

Thankfully.

wingwarbler · 22/10/2018 20:10

The UN still holds that women's rights are female sex based.

CEDAW AND VIENNA 93 are powerful conventions.

JenFromTheGlen · 22/10/2018 20:10

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

theOtherPamAyres · 22/10/2018 20:10

There is a project tracking the murders of transgender people globally.
These are the people who will be remembered and honoured.

(Side note: imagine if there was a website tracking the murders of women, girls and girl babies, globally - the statistics would be mind-blowing).

Back to the point. Looking at the transgender murders (as I do, periodically) you'll note that the majority are transwomen

  • prostituted
-operating with highly dangerous clients -under the control of abusive pimps -in places like South America, particularly Brazil

(The lates figures come from 2017. Of the 325 murders during the year, 267 occurred in South America, 3 in Europe, 26 in Asia, 26 in the USA and Canada, 1 in Africa, and 2 in Russia)

No-one is saying that a prostituted man cannot be remembered and honoured by transgender people. What I find difficult to accept is that these prostituted men were killed for being transgender. Isn't it just as likely that they died because they were prostituted men ?

tgeu.org/tmm/

Reggiano · 22/10/2018 20:08

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

wingwarbler · 22/10/2018 20:08

The white Ribbon organisation is a men's organisation, who say they are working to end violence against women. Men are ambassadors, but women can only be champions. I don't know enough about them to comment further. Though they do say it is about men talking to men and taking responsibility, and not being heroes etc. "The campaign is about engaging men in taking action against violence towards women and girls. It is not about men ‘riding in to save the day’. Men must ASK, LISTEN, then ACT. This is where our Champions come in". They do mention all genders which is a but suspect obviously.

The UN have designated November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Shall we have a new thread to look at what we can do on that date for women?

AspieAndProud · 22/10/2018 20:05

If I say I’m prepared to set aside a day of remembrance of all the transwomen murdered for their identity in the UK will somebody remind me who they are?

Ereshkigal · 22/10/2018 20:01

I do, however, wonder how the significant incidence of trans-women sex workers being murdered aligns to the popular TRA view that sex work should be legitimised. Surely the Nordic model would offer better protection for those trans-women and considerably reduce their risk of physical harm. Yet we are decried as SWERFs for offering up the view that prostitution is exploitative and dangerous.

Me too. Yes.

JillyArmeeen · 22/10/2018 19:59

"There was a great deal of discussion as to the health risks for transwomen taking certain brands of hormones- one person said they knew three other people who’d died taking them, and they’d nearly died as well."
From the 'we're still here' thread, minutes from the meeting.
I'm guessing from this, more transpeople die from transitioning than from murder (one would be more so seems likely) possibly from murder and suicide deaths combined. Are those people remembered?
Where are the numbers on this?
You would think trans people dying from their medication would be of interest to trans allies and advocates.

ResistanceIsNecessary · 22/10/2018 19:57

To clarify why that happened, I tend to type a bit of stream of consciousness and then go back and edit - which often involves me moving words and sentences about. The question mark should have been deleted as it was originally at the end of the point about the day of remembrance. It is a good thing that no trans people were murdered. Hopefully MNHQ will edit ASAP.

BettyDuMonde · 22/10/2018 19:57

Thanks! I might drop them a line and point out that putting the date on the front page of the website would probably help with engagement.

I wonder why it’s white ribbon?

I associate white with surrender, which doesn’t seem quite appropriate. I’m sure they have an explanation somewhere though!

breastfeedingclownfish · 22/10/2018 19:56

"If TWAW then why isn't there more noise about a day of remembrance for the two women killed in the UK every week as a result of domestic violence? There have been no trans murders (a good thing?) so why ignore the community you are claiming membership of, which is right on your doorstep?"

"If trans-sex workers in Brazil are at much higher risk of fatal violence, then why do so many TRAs oppose the Nordic model - which criminalises the men who buy sex - and instead propose full legalisation - which has been shown to increase human trafficking and sex slavery?"

Yes and Yes to both! Very well said