A couple of things irritated me greatly during the Trans Day of Remembrance. Firstly we had supposed feminists telling trans women to quit all the depressing stuff about people being murdered. Like, who cares, right? And even if they did it was hardly as important as trans people being mean to celebrities on Twitter. On the other hand we had LGBT people in the UK saying that TDOR wasn’t important here because all the people who get killed live in other countries.
The points I kept making are that there is a reason that around 99% of the trans people who get murdered identify as female, and there is a reason why the vast majority of the victims are people of color. There is misogyny involved, and racism. Being a trans woman of color puts you very near the bottom of the tree, but it is a tree whose branches reach out and touch us all.
Now it so happens that today in the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. That means we get to look at cis women who get killed. There are a lot more of them than trans women, so the numbers are much higher. I understand that in the past year 88 women in the UK have been killed by their male partners.
Violence against women. It happens. And violence against trans women is part of that.
Talking of which, Pink News reports that a trans woman was found dead in her home in Worthing just three days after TDOR. The police are treating it as murder.
Every woman matters, and it doesn’t take a doctorate in gender studies to figure out that the vicious abuse and violence suffered by transgender women stems from misogyny. As a feminist, I’m sorry that some are trying to silence the concerns of some of their fellow women. We’re all in this together.
Thanks! I see from your website that you are not in the UK, and doubtless the educational system where you live is much better than it is here. In this country, we are constantly being told, words like “intersectional” are much too long and complicated for the ordinary woman to understand, and therefore the concepts embodied to them are irrelevant. Feminism is for cis white women who can afford to eat lobster and Bolly for lunch, and anyone who says otherwise is an evil stalker who runs hate campaigns against celebrity journalists.
You do our educational system in the States too much credit 🙁 The quality of education here really depends on the state and community a child/young adult lives in, and of course, their family and whether or not they had access to a college or university. Money and parental education make a huge difference. In the US also, most self-identified and outspoken feminists are from the more educated (and white) social strata, and feminism is often dismissed as an elitist movement. This is a serious issue, since poorer, non white, and working class women are most hurt by the status quo and have the most to gain from changing it. We see plenty of infighting, even so. It’s an aspect of human nature, but even at my age, I’m still shocked when people who are supposed to be concerned with social justice otherize people.