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.

There are a couple of things I’d like to get out of the way first.  Firstly, some readers may be aware, others aren’t – I’m transgendered.  I’m a guy with non-factory-standard genitals.  So there’s that.

Secondly, I have some privileges of my own that I want to lay down.  I’m white, I’m able-bodied, I don’t have any disabilities or illnesses that anyone can see, I’m middle-class and I have a house.  I do my best to work around these in how I treat people and the world around me, but I know that sometimes, they’re going to cause me to fuck up a bit.  So there’s that, too.

Oh – one other thing I have: I have passing privilege, sometimes.  Not all the time, but sometimes.  Which is great, but also a thing to consider, because then I get to have male privilege, too.

We got to the venue for the remembrance service, and I was nervous.  I’ve never really been to any specifically trans-inclusive spaces – let alone a church! – and didn’t know what to expect.  I was surprised!  It was very welcoming, very inclusive and friendly, and the service was well thought-out.  I felt as though I was on friendly territory.  Which was nice.

Now: the service.  What happened was, after a vigil for the loss of a member of the Brighton trans*¹ community, the list of victims between 2009 and 2010 was read out.  Name, age, date of death – and manner in which they were killed.

If this sounds horrifying and harrowing, let me tell you: it is absolutely nothing compared to the experience.  It was so horrible.  It was so hard to read, so numbingly dreadful and so damn depressing that I just burst into tears after reading my first victim’s name.  She was stabbed up and abandoned in a dump.  I thought, is this really the world I’m transitioning in today?  Is this the reception I’m to expect from the public?  Is this a true reflection of how transgender people are perceived?

There were photographs of some of the victims, too.  Now, here I’m brought back to passing privilege.  There is an insidious, embarrassing, totally inaccurate and highly offensive supposition in the media (that appears to have been slowly, very slowly, dying out since the 1970s) that all trans* people are trans women who don’t pass.  These victims were not they.  The victims whose pictures I saw were women with passing privilege.  These were not the cruel media’s “favourite” sort of transgendered victim; the pantomime parody that’s miles and miles away from real trans* people and does more to inspire mockery in the public rather than righteous anger on their behalf.

This realisation served to remind me how bloody vulnerable trans* people are in the face of a society that can’t or won’t understand them.  These people were the members of our community who had that enviable passing privilege that’s meant to help one lead a “normal” life (for whatever definition of “normal” you prefer).  I know that when I don’t have passing privilege, I feel intensely isolated; like some inexplicable, unintelligible Other that will never be able to, say, use a public bathroom without coming under suspicion and scrutiny.  The transgender experience is, whatever your level of passing privilege, a very isolating one.

There are support groups, but they’re few and far between, lost in a tide of support groups for lesbian, gay and bisexual people who also have their own unfair share of discrimination and isolation.  I know I have trouble finding anything outside of London, which is where I’m not.  I know it’s often quite hard to find other trans guys within accessible transgender communities (we’re outnumbered by the ladies 10 to 1 in Britain!  Isn’t that interesting?) if we can work up courage enough to go at all.  Many of us can’t find support in our family – quite the opposite, sometimes – and coming out to social groups often ensures the sloughing of manifestly unhelpful acquaintances.

It’s lonely.  We need allies.  We need allies that are close to us, and we need allies that are further away in the media and government.  I mused upon this as I moistened my best friend’s shoulder at the service, and then mused upon it further as we nerded out over different sorts of tea later.  I did some extra musing when I emerged, resplendent, from the bathroom and announced excitedly to her that I’d been read as male there, and she was gleeful and pleased for me.  We need people like this in our lives.  My friend is cisgendered and she understands.  She makes the effort to understand and to support and include.  She does this, and in doing so, she’s one member of the majority that will encourage others to do the same.

So, hurrah for allies.  Thank god for allies within the LGBTQI community that go against the distressing trend of leaving off the “T” from the acronym, or argue with those that would claim trans women who like women to not be “real lesbians”.  Thank god for allies within the feminist community who don’t agree with Germaine Greer or Julie Bindel’s frankly disgusting attitudes towards transgendered people.  But perhaps most of all, I’m thankful for cisgendered allies who love and care for their trans* friends and make the effort to spread tolerance, support and understanding within the majority.

You can read my friend’s companion post on TDOR here

1. I’m using the term “trans*” to specifically 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.