Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. This is an event that began eight years ago in San Francisco and has since spread to many cities around the world. It asks us to spend a few moments remembering those people who have been killed because their gender expression was somehow different from other people’s social norms. This is, of course, not an issue that many people are aware of, so here are a few brief numbers:
- In the USA transgendered people have roughly a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered, as compared to 1 in 18,000 for the general population (HRC)
- A UK survey of almost 900 transgendered people found that more than a third had attempted suicide at least once (PFC)
There’s not a lot you can say after numbers like that.
One personal story of what people face is related in this story on Erin Lindsay’s webcomic Venus Envy. Note that this story is not part of her comic’s story-line, but is something that really happened to the author. And she was “lucky” — she’s still alive to tell the tale.
Ask me to tell you the story of my daughter’s name next time we’re together. It’s one of those odd things that make for good family legends.
Those are truly horrendous statistics. And it seems so odd that society’s attitude to transgendered folks seems often negative and yet what is one of the biggest hits of the Edinburgh Festival every single summer for he last decade? The Ladyboys of Bangkok. Perhaps the schizophrenic attitude to transgendered folks today is a bit like attitudes to homosexuals in the 60s and 70s: fine and dandy as long as it is in entertaining showbiz…
I would imagine that most people who go to see the Ladyboys regard them as female impersonators. Indeed, the show’s web site actually defines them as such. There is a world of difference, in most people’s eyes, between a person pretending to be a woman for purposes of entertainment, and a person actually being transgendered.