2023 Remembrance Report

Rita and Chanelle were not the first casualties of transphobia in the United States or even worldwide. This year marks the 35th anniversary of ballroom and documentary star Venus Xtravaganza’s unsolved murder, and in heartbreaking symmetry, the death of her house sister Carmen Xtravaganza this past August. Marsha P. Johnson, one of the mothers of the LGBTQI+ rights movement and heroes of Stonewall, died 31 years ago; after years of fighting for justice, it wasn’t until 2012 that police reopened the case to investigate after initially ruling it a suicide. Brandon Teena was murdered 30 years ago in a case that brought national attention to anti-trans violence and his killers will both likely die in prison. 

One of these names most people recognize from the Hollywood film made from his story, and the others are still waiting for justice. Venus and Marsha were trans women of color, and Brandon was a white trans man. Race is undoubtedly a factor in whose stories get told and remembered, and the story of violence against the trans community is incomplete without recognizing the enormous impact of racial discrimination. The ways in which Black, indigenous, and other people of color’s lives and identities are policed both in a social and literal sense compound the discrimination they face and are inextricably entwined with their transness. There are no words to overstate the severity of the harm inflicted on the people living at these intersections. The 2015 U.S. Trans Survey suggests that Black trans women make up 3.78% of the US trans population, yet they make up almost 25% of our U.S. list and 40.4% of the losses from violent crimes. Numbers are a shocking but familiar way to discuss this issue in our community, but they are insufficient. It is at least as important to listen to Black trans women speak to their experiences in their own voices. If you are foundering, Ashlee Marie Preston’s article “The Anatomy of Transmisogynoir” is a good place to start. 

Undoubtedly, progress has been made. Decades of work by countless activists has resulted in policy changes in the media’s reporting on attacks against transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people. As our lives become more visible, our loved ones’ hearts become more open, and families are choosing love over rejection. Social media has made distances smaller and brought community and resources to so many in the trans community who have felt rejected and alone. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have passed “trans panic” defense bans, prohibiting the use of a person’s gender identity or expression from being used to justify a crime against them. Thirteen more states have introduced similar measures. Hopeful news for trans lives isn’t limited to the United States either. Both Finland and Japan no longer require sterilization for trans people to have their gender legally recognized. In the UK, a leading clinic for transition related care has delayed closing to better serve patients, and two new clinics have been promised next year. 

With all the progress we’ve made, the past few years have made it clear that we have a very long way to go. Over 550 anti-trans bills were introduced in legislatures across the country. This isn’t a typo, and it’s more than the amount seen in the past 5 years combined. Fearmongering, exaggeration, and blatant falsehoods are weaponized against the rights of trans people to safe and private healthcare, to be represented in history and education materials, and to safely use the restroom without fear of violence, harassment, or arrest. Anti-transgender hate crimes increased more than 35% from 2021 to 2022. Both history and the present show us that attacks on the trans community, no matter how narrowly intended, harm everyone. Lawmakers have written themselves into tangles to withhold gender affirming care from trans children while carving out exceptions for cisgender children and encouraging intervention for intersex children in an attempt to “fix” something that was never broken from the start. In this country, which holds the freedom of speech and expression as the lifeblood of our democracy, what could be more fundamental to that freedom than the names and pronouns we use–the expression of our very identities and character.

When we look at the numbers collected for TDOR, we must be careful about the conclusions we draw from them. The dead can no longer speak their truth to us, and we are left to count and categorize from the stories, friends, and documents they left behind. This is why it is vital that data collection in life and in death includes transgender, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, agender, intersex individuals and other identities outside of the cisgender binary to which data collection is so often restricted. There have been pushes for greater inclusion of trans, nonbinary, and intersex people in public records. In 2018, Oregon updated the sex designation categories for their vital records to include female, male, x, undetermined, and unknown. New York City has added X gender markers on death certificates, and the state of California has followed suit. Despite a patchwork of state laws, more jurisdictions than ever offer name and gender marker changes on identification. These are encouraging and necessary steps, and the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) recognizes and is deeply grateful that these agencies have worked with and heard their state and local advocates who fought for these changes. However, until every government agency collects accurate and complete information on gender identity and issues official documents recognizing all people, our community's losses will remain undercounted. 

The names and stories on our list and others come from the year-round work of dedicated activists determined to ensure that the losses our community suffers are remembered with dignity and kindness. Many organizations, reporters, unpaid volunteers, and dedicated individuals work to share information so that every list is as complete as possible and that those who have died can be recognized widely. Submissions from loved ones are submitted via forms, emails, and social media posts. Untold hours are spent looking at police notices, missing persons databases, and registries like NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. Other activists scan news reports, obituaries, and memorial notices to find those who are, in death, given the small but meaningful dignity of recognition. It is especially disheartening to recognize that the names on our list are only those who had the privilege of recognition, the fortune of discovery, or the extraordinary courage to leave indelible proof of their true selves for us to mourn. So many unknown and uncounted people remain that even years from now we will learn the names of people in our community who died this year without the recognition they deserved. 

Many voices and discussions contributed to defining this list and the parameters for inclusion. The very first lists in 1999 included those in the transgender community who were lost to violence, which is to say physically violent crimes. The losses of Rita and Channelle to such clear and vicious anti-trans hatred and so immediately forgotten, began a movement to ensure that hate would not win and that our memories would endure. In the intervening years – and as more lives have been claimed–we recognize many levels of violence. Stochastic terrorism against the trans community has increased and become a regular tool in politicians’ campaigns. The effects of bullying and harassment on mental and emotional health are less stigmatized and more fully understood. Lack of access to affirming or even competent healthcare, employment discrimination, housing and food insecurity, disparate policing, and isolation from community all create measurable impacts on the health and mortality of trans, nonbinary, and nonconforming people. We recognize all of these as forms of violence. 

NCTE also recognizes that too often a white, western, colonizing perspective on gender identity and expression has controlled the narrative of belonging. As the wave of “drag bans” sweeping the country have displayed, hatred does not concern itself with nuance in its oppression; any act subverting established cisgender norms is a target. It is long past time for that narrative to change. We believe all members of our community deserve to be memorialized in their authentic identity as they experience it. We also recognize that while some people experience a fixed gender identity, it can also be a journey that many on our list were only beginning to explore or express to the world. In addition to transgender and nonbinary victims, we also recognize two-spirit, agender, and other identities outside of or expanding on gender binaries, as well as those who are gender nonconforming, gender fluid, intersex, or drag royalty. 

In addition to the many forms violence takes, and the many ways gender is expressed, institutional failures impact the decision of who to include in a list. Apathy, discrimination, and unconscious bias from investigative agencies means that some deaths get investigated more vigorously than others, and some disappearances are taken more seriously than others. Assumptions about a person’s life, perceived value, or the elements of a crime mean that for purposes of the law, some victims’ deaths get misclassified. The purpose of this TDOR list and report and publishing our numbers is to recognize the lives lost and make the scope of this crisis impossible to ignore. Everyone deserves recognition of their true and whole selves. Everyone lost was someone valuable. NCTE believes that, for the above reasons, expanding the list to include all those we have passed does not diminish the work Gwendolyn Ann Smith began but continues it. We are stronger when we live, work, fight, and mourn together. All of us.

An apocryphal story of the first anthropological signs of civilization points to evidence of a broken and healed femur. Civilization began when in the midst of a hostile world people chose caring for others over apathy or self-preservation. While the story is apocryphal, the lesson remains. Any measure of society must include the value it finds in protecting its most vulnerable from harm and healing the wounds they have already suffered. The youngest name on our US list was 14 years old; on our international list–11. By this measure of society, we have much to answer for. Though our society has far to go, we have also come far. Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole spoke of American democracy but could easily have been speaking for so many of us in the fight for trans lives: “I hope that what we have is just the beginning of what it is that we can become. Because what it is that we say and what it is that we do, must absolutely come into greater harmony.” 

Transgender Day of Remembrance has never been so important.