Transgender Day Of Remberance

The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) was started by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor her memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998.

Photo Credit: Tdor

 Rita was found in her Allston apartment on Saturday dead by multiple stab wounds. The Globe reported the death of a William Hester. "He was a nightclub singer and a party thrower, a man who sported long braids and preferred women's clothes..." The Globe editor responsible for the story decreed to his reporter that only male references would be made about the victim. Nowhere in the article was acknowledgement made that Hester was living as a woman.

 The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence in 1998 and began an important memorial that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. The Transgender Day of Remembrance is held on November 20 to honor all those whose lives were lost to anti-transgender violence that year.  Vigils are typically hosted by local transgender advocates or LGBT organizations, and held at community centers, parks, places of worship and other venues. The vigil often involves reading a list of the names of those who died that year. See the TDOR website

The Trans Murder Monitoring project reports that from January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2011, there have been 816 reports of people who died from anti-transgender violence in 55 countries. It should be noted that this number is probably much lower than the actual figure, as it only represents known cases due to issues of language used in reporting the murders (different countries have different terms for being transgender or gender non-conforming) and due to the fact that not all trans people who are murdered are identified as trans.

Hester's death also launched the "Remembering Our Dead" web project in 1998 and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Transgenderdor.org notes that her murder -- like most anti-transgender murder cases -- has yet to be solved.I think this is a heartbreaking and outrageous number, and the Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day not only to mourn those we've lost and celebrate the lives they lived, but also bring awareness to the struggle and dangers that trans and gender non-conforming people face around the world on a daily basis.