Trans Day of Remembrance.
We remember you.
(content warning: murder, suicide, institutional violence. We remember.)
Hello, everyone. Miss Dee Jay here. And it's November 20.
For a short descriptor, Trans Day of Remembrance was started in 1999 to make sure that our community would remember those who died before their time, usually those that died by violence. Too many of us had died anonymously, died forgotten to the point that our own community was starting to forget. TDoR, as it's sometimes abbreviated, is to make sure that we don't forget, that the world doesn't forget, and that we keep fighting so that one day TDoR becomes obsolete, that there are no more of us lost to violence, whether violence done to us as individuals or the societal hostility that we all face as trans folks.
(For the list of people remembered in this year's service, that list can be found here.)
My initial introduction to the Trans Day of Remembrance was to sing with a group performing at a TDoR event... and to look a mother in the eyes.
In the first months after I publicly came out, I joined a queer choral group to gain practice in my voice. As might be expected, our choir was slated to perform at TDoR to help mourn and to remember. Except this time... the event was more personal than what I could have imagined.
For those just starting, for baby transes, there are all these expectations, frankly naive expectations, with regard to a TDoR memorial. It almost feels like going to church. We feel the tragedy, but at a particular level, the tragedy remains abstract. We remember those gone, but we never knew those gone. For this particular situation, though, abstractness was about to take a backseat to searing reality.
Once the service started, we performed our songs as an opening, then sat down for the rest of the service. The group that was hosting this service, unfortunately, had lost one of their own that year, a young trans man killed too soon. I'm skipping over a lot of details to keep my anonymity, but the local police did not treat him - and, by extension, did not treat his case - with the dignity and urgency called for. The police repeatedly deadnamed him, treated his family horribly, and ultimately filed no charges against the known perpetrator - and yes, in this case, the perpetrator was known.
The family of that young man would never know justice, and everyone knew it. The service thus became a memorial to him, to his life, and to his family. That family, including his mother, were of course in attendance, to remember this young man - their young man - gone.
When you look in the eyes of the mother of a murdered child - knowing that her baby is gone forever - and, to make matters worse, that mother would never know justice? Agony would have been one thing, but the pure brokenness, the act of living in a world gone so very wrong, is what stays. Looking into the eyes of the mother of a murdered child is not something you forget anytime soon.
I wish that that was the last mother of a murdered trans child I'd had to look in the eyes like that. But it's not. It's not.
It's been a really rough year, everyone.
Given the deaths I've been too close to, there is no abstract anymore. The persecution we're feeling, the funerals and wakes I've been to, it all feels as "abstract" as a baseball bat to the face.
Music can't approach this mass murder; art can't approach this mass murder. How does one portray the creeping horror of genocide? How does one describe the gunshot hole left in the hearts of those left behind? What sort of art could adequately convey the extent of our persecution? No art form can even come close to the agony that is the truth.
This opera is as close as I can get. I'd talk more about opera right now, but I'm not feeling much for words at the moment. Just know that the characters in this opera - Poulenc's "Dialogues des Carmelites" - are about as close to the state of trans people that opera gets - innocents caught in the crossfire of a culture war, innocents facing the guillotine for living authentically, innocents being murdered for following their calling.
A warning: this performance will be emotionally upsetting; this will trigger. It is designed to trigger.
The finale of "Dialogues des Carmelites", as performed by the Metropolitan Opera.
For my siblings who faced La Guillotine... those who died alone, those who died by violence, those who died abandoned by family or friends, those who died bereft of hope...
We remember you.
We remember you, but I am so very tired of funerals.
