It's Transgender Day Of Remembrance 2012

Today is the official date of TDOR, the Transgender Day of Remembrance.   We lost over 175 people this year around the world to anti-trans violence, and far too many of them were Black and Latina.

The bulk of the remaining TDOR commemoration events will happen today, including one organized by Houston POC transpeople at 6 PM tonight that I will attend. 

But one of the things I continue to be concerned about is the lack of POC participation in events organized by predominately white groups.  Once again I'm getting reports from around the country about TDOR events that are predominately monoracial down to the people who are attending them. 

That's unacceptable and it's something that either needs to be permanently fixed in 2013 and beyond or else you are probably going to start seeing as we do with the Black pride circuit now separate TDOR events.

I would like as a long time supporter of the TDOR for that split not to happen.  But neither can I ignore the vanillacentric privileged nature of the events that have been taking place with Gay, Inc org stamps all over them.  I also must point out the rising anger of Black and Latin@ transpeople who see these orgs popping their collars about what they do (or don't do) for the community on the backs of our dead.   Neither are we happy about not having a say in how these events are planned, executed or much less not being invited to participate in them.

But that's a fight for tomorrow.   Today is about focusing on the more than 173 people we've lost.

We have work to do on that front to change hearts and minds so that a transperson's life is considered just as valuable to society as a cis person.  We have work to do to ensure that transgender inclusion happens in all aspects of society.  We have work to do to spread the message that transpeople don't want tolerance, we want unconditional love and respect as fellow human beings on this planet.  We have work to do to reduce the unacceptable murder rate of our transsisters around the world so that having TDOR's will become unnecessary

And to those of us transpeople who are living, it's time for us to redouble our efforts in the spirit of this solemn day to ensure this happens as expeditiously as possible.