We Came Here Together

When you look at the names here, remember these people. Cry for those who we have lost, and let your anger out for a society that would allow them to die.

– Remembering Our Dead site

Markgraf and I are running late.

My iPhone’s GPS has lied to us, and now we’re puffing our way along Brighton seafront in characteristically frenetic fashion, looking for a rather uncharacteristic venue: a Methodist church.  “We’ve never been to church together!” I pant. 

“I know, right? It’s an adventure,” says Markgraf. “If we actually find it on time. Or I might just implode into the sea,” he adds, staring again at the fruitless map, “instead.”

“Mmm. Maybe it’s this next left?”

*

We were there, in a roundabout way, because of Twitter.

A month previously, I’d logged in and seen something Markgraf had RT’d. The original tweet went something like ‘Will be observing Transgender Day of Remembrance‘, adding that ‘many feminist friends just seem to be ignoring it.‘

I made the decision then not to be one of those feminists, and shunted myself Googlewards to find out more. I read the roll of names¹. An angry, sad light went on in my head that day. I texted Markgraf half an hour later.

I saw your RT and googled around. Educated self a bit. Reading the stories. It’s heartbreaking. If anything like that ever happened to you I don’t know what I’d f***ing do. So, um. There’s an event in Brighton. I think I’m going to go.

The response-beep came five minutes later.

Yes. Let’s go. Let’s both of us go. And write an article on it.

So that was the plan.

A London event was added later, but we stuck with Brighton. There is a hella good tea shop there, after all. So Markgraf and I got on a train and went on a kind of pilgrimage.

*

I don’t want to make TDOR all about me (in fact, go and read Markgraf’s post instead). This post is a marker for my own experience of the event, but I hope it’ll make more people, particularly cis people like myself, consider observing TDOR, or at least think about the prejudice trans*² people face all over the world and what they can do to help. There’re positive posts out there about TDOR – as a more high-profile cis-authored example, Anton Vowl had a good rant the other day, or there’s the F Word post here – but I’ve yet to see the news really talk about it. How many ‘allies’ show up to actual events? Would I be on this trip myself if I hadn’t witnessed what transphobia looks like via Markgraf? I’d like to think I might, but I suspect I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention before a personal friend was affected.

Many of the cisgender people I saw at TDOR had some connection to a trans* person themselves – they were a friend or relative. I don’t want to over-generalise, but at the same time this seems to be the spur that makes a cis person bother to go to an event like TDOR – they’ve watched their loved one experience prejudice and discrimination. Perhaps they’ve yelled at the hooligan hassling their partner. Perhaps they’ve read their friend’s blog and realised that things they take for granted – using a public loo, say – can be cause for fear of abuse. These are all good reasons to care. But everyone should care, whether they’ve met someone with a direct experience or not. Hard to achieve when people have to work so hard to find any mainstream media about real trans* experiences at all. There are barely any characters on TV, no bestsellers. The ones we do see are often negatively stereotyped.

In my experience transphobia is never mentioned as an issue or a problem in most educational settings. In any education young people may get in those settings about diversity, it is very much the silent T.

Back to the seafront.

*

Markgraf and I are running late, but – as it happens – so’s the vigil. We slink breathlessly into the church, where the Clare Project drop-in is based, and mooch awkwardly in the porch under a sudden cloud of shyness. But we’re welcomed. There are lone figures, twosomes like us, groups, couples and families. All in all, about 30 or 40 of us.

And, while “knowing someone” just shouldn’t be the only way a cis person comes to identify and comprehend transphobia, at the same time, knowing someone obviously does makes it personal. As we read the causes of death, I picture Markgraf and his partner, and what they are like together; playfighting on my sofa, sharing an umbrella, decorating their home. I think of these people I’ve never met, with their own lives and loves, quirks and habits, all of them brutally, senselessly murdered, and I can’t hold back tears for the names on this long, long list.

There’s a current of horrified energy coursing silently through the room with the names, with these murders. Beheadings, burnings, shootings; it’s relentless. Some attendees are old hands. Some are realising in front of me how heavily the dice are stacked against them. I am watching people, many of them very young, realise that a great many people in the world at large would shrug if they were murdered. Afterwards, as people clutch plastic cups of tea and began to talk again, one attendee murmurs to me, “You know, I go to Pride, I go on protests. I go out for causes. And I really feel that other people – they need to be here. It’s time for them to come out for us.” Later, she passes an email address on to Markgraf, who has mentioned that the town where he lives has nothing like the Clare Project, with a promise of support.

I’m never quite sure what to do with myself in churches. But there’s a paper tree in the little anteroom near the church doors, with detachable paper leaves. There’s a pencil on the little altar and an invitation to write your own prayers, or thoughts. I just write:

T.D.O.R.
WE CAME HERE TOGETHER

Read Markgraf’s post about TDOR here.

1. The list we actually read out on the day was far longer. [↩]
2. I’m using the asterisk here to include anyone with a trans – transgender, transsexual, whoever. I’m using it as a catch-all inclusive term for those with a non-binary gender identity, regardless of status in transition or not, what or where. [↩]