Transgender day of Remembrance

I'm Transgendered.

I hate the "Transgender day of Remembrance".

This solemn occasion happens annually around this college town, where some well meaning people take turns at a podium and monotonously intone the names and numbers of our dead.

I've done my turn on that podium.

I'm not a numbers person. I'm not an activist. But Transgendered women die every year due to violence and things like drug overdoses and suicides, in far far greater percentages than almost any other subgroup you can name. Transgendered women of color have it worse.

I'm white, I'll state that now. But I grew up in the San Jose, CA area, and I don't 'feel' all that disconnected from the latino/mexican/hispanic culture that I grew up surrounded by. I have no claim to an 'of color' label, but I certainly feel their losses as my own.

I lived less than a half hour's drive from where Gwen Araujo was murdered by 4 men that she knew, at a party in Newark, CA.

I didn't know her, but that happening changed me, and it changed how I thought of myself, and my transition, and my home. It changed me from a lost trans girl struggling to define herself, to a angry frustrated activist, wanting to make a noise, make a change.

I tried then raising a flag under the "Transgender Liberation Front" banner, but the grey haired, old guard Trannies in the local support groups, wanted little or nothing to do with me or my issues.

A year of homelessness, and 9 years off HRT, took a lot of that fire out of me. Or maybe it was just the realities of losing my Father, my grandparents, entering middle-age, or just being so very tired of shouting into the wind, alone.

In this town, the Transgender day of Remembrance is a 4 day long festival that ends 4 days before the ACTUAL day. I call it a festival, but it is indeed fairly somber. There's some film viewing and discussion meetings and such. Why they changed the DAY of remembrance, I don't know. I'm a bit unhappy about that. Feels a bit like moving your local town's observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day because it fell on a Tuesday.

Unfortunately I put myself in the hospital for this one. I would only have been mildly interested in the Thursday 'coffee social'.. I am not emotionally strong enough to handle the intoning right now, and I've seen too many depressing films. The local scene is dominated by trans men and other assigned-female-at-birth gender queer individuals. I wouldn't expect their film choices to be uplifting, or remarkably relevant to me. I also expect a fair share of allies and supportive girlfriends and so on.

I won't be so pessimistic as to say they're all there looking for "ally merit badges" but sometimes I catch myself thinking it.

It's a college town, a major university town. There's more activists and vegans per capita than anyplace else in the world. As well as a huge number of "LUGs" and "BUGs" (Lesbian or Bisexual until Graduation).

Anyways, I won't get to go this year. And I'm sad.

Sad, because that part of me that still wants to avenge Gwen, still wants to fly that flag. Sad because I won't get my turn at the podium to intone the dead. But sad mostly, because in this shithole college town, there's very little support for this one lost, poverty-line, middle-aged tranny, trying to find her footing again.. and I could use a friend or two.

Therapy starts up again soon, now that I'm back on solid food. Maybe there's some resources out there I don't know about, or maybe I can shoehorn myself into some of the college clubs.