Speech By Trans-Angel Sculptor, Svar Simpson, TDoR 2023
Welcome everyone. Here we all are today, for Trans Day of Remembrance – which is a day that remembers those Trans and Gender-Fluid-People who have been victims of Homicide. Firstly, I’d just like to say something personal about my own remembrance awareness – I started my transition over 25 years ago, and I tell you, I have experienced many traumatic Transphobic attacks, especially in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.
When I was making the Trans-Angel last year, I felt it was my responsibility to create something deep enough and powerful enough, to be worthy of the sculpture’s significance, and the job it had to do with its material existence here in Crossbones Cemetery. I learned more and more about the horror and terror inflicted upon all those people who lost their lives to violence for being Trans. I was working in my studio, in a constant state of high – very mixed – emotion: Anger, Grief, Bewilderment, but above all PRIDE… I am so proud of all those who have lost their lives in the effort to go ahead and express their Trans-Gender-ness in dreadful precarious life situations. The making of the sculpture intended to encapsulate and reflect these emotions, but also somehow transcend them to express a protective calm power. The sculpture has thrived in its first year. This Trans-Angel has certainly found their place.
Along with my assistant Lola, (who can’t be here today, but sends “big Trans-Femme love to each and every one of us”) we praised their courage and vowed to always remember their contribution to our Trans Revolution.
The Trans Revolution is happening now, it is gaining momentum, and it can no longer be silenced.
It all started in 1999 by transgender advocate and Transgender Day of Remembrance founder Gwendolyn Ann Smith, as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998.
“Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people — sometimes in the most brutal ways possible — it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice.”
I want to relay some information about this years’ murders… Since monitoring began 15 years ago, there have been nearly 5000 recorded deaths. When I started writing this reading last week, it was 320…it’s now 327 transgender peoples’ lives have been lost to anti-transgender violence since November 20th last year. The vast majority of those killed were trans women or trans-feminine people, and a high percentage of those were black. Many of the victims were young. The age group with the most victims was 19 to 25 years old. Overall, those between 19 and 40 years old made up 79% of those reported killed. Almost 73 % of those tracked happened in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the epicentre of the problem being in Brazil, where nearly one-third (31%) occurred. There were also murders in Armenia, Belgium, and Slovakia reported for the first time.
In the U.K., the high-profile murder of young 16-year-old teenager Brianna Ghey in Glasgow is included. She would have turned 17 last week. This year, the number of deaths is down from 2021’s peak of 375 murders, but up from last year’s 273.
Reading the data and name list, the violence against the victims is stark. Though almost half (46%) of victims were shot, and many were beaten, stabbed and burned afterwards. This report is compiled by Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide. It was released last Monday 13th to mark the beginning of Trans Awareness Week.
The vigil now commemorates all the transgender people lost to violence since Rita Hester’s death and has become an international annual tradition.
We continue to demand increased and accurate media coverage of transgender people in their lives and in death. There are too many names of victims we know of whose lives have been taken due to anti-transgender violence for me to read out, and its important that these crimes are often are misreported, go underreported, or are not reported at all.
I’m going to finish with a poem by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Titled “The Moon is Trans”
The moon is trans.
From this moment forward, the moon is trans.
You don’t get to write about the moon anymore unless you respect that.
You don’t get to talk to the moon anymore unless you use her correct pronouns.
You don’t get to send men to the moon anymore unless their job is
to bow down before her and apologize for the sins of the earth.
She is waiting for you, pulling at you softly,
telling you to shut the fuck up already please.
Scientists theorize the moon was once a part of the earth
that broke off when another planet struck it.
Eve came from Adam’s rib.
Etc.
Do you believe in the power of not listening
to the inside of your own head?
I believe in the power of you not listening
to the inside of your own head.
This is all upside down.
We should be talking about the ways that blood
is similar to the part of outer space between the earth and the moon
but we’re busy drawing blood instead.
The moon is often described as dead, though she is very much alive.
The moon has not known the feeling of not wanting to be dead
for any extended period of time
in all of her existence, but
she is not delicate and she is not weak.
She is constantly moving away from you the only way she can.
She never turns her face from you because of what you might do.
She will outlive everything you know.
Speech By The Outside Project LGBTIQ+ Centre Manager, Laurel Uziell, TDOR 2023
Among the many that were lost to us this year, there is at least one notable absence for those of us attending this space from The Outside Project today. Jay Gabriel, who was a regular attendee of our LGBTIQ+ Centre, passed at the end of 2022. Jay was an integral member of the Outside Project community, and the wider trans community as a whole, and his death left a mark on us all. As a trans person, and as a black trans person especially, his early death conforms to the patterns of a social order we know too well, and confirms many of the worst feelings about the world we live in. Yet, his passing was by no means inevitable, and I believe we owe it to his memory to not let this drive us into despair, but rather to commit to holding one another in a world which can seem so hostile. Nothing will make his passing fair, or even make it make sense, but we have to continue to fight to make life liveable for the future and to care for each other in the present.
Our lives as trans people may seem fragile, to be unfairly and unevenly exposed to the coldness of the world, but as a community we know that we bring a strength and beauty that can’t be crushed. I would like us to take this time to remember Jay, and all those we lost who we knew, or knew of, or didn’t know at all, but also to hold space in our hearts for those currently being killed with the most indifferent brutality in Palestine.
One of the first lessons I learned as a trans person was how my freedom, as much as my suffering, is bound up with that of others, however far away and however abstract they may seem. And one of the lessons I learned as a Jewish person was that remembering always has to be bound up with a commitment to the future. The world can be different for trans people, for Black people, for colonised people, for disabled and mad people, and as much as the richness of the lives of those we miss, this is one thing we have to remember, in our heads and in our hearts.
