Semi related to my posts earlier but kind of a tangent. This is messy but its something that's been eating at me and I don't really know how to move forward.
Yesterday was Transgender Day of Remembrance. There are many names we know and mourn, but there are many more that are never seen. Many names are missing because they could not be acknowledged as their true selves after, or before, their deaths.
The thing that's been bothering me is that the lists most groups will consult, these missing names include those lost to suicide. Known cases of trans people, often young people, are being left out of these lists. Their deaths are not considered part of "the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence".
Every trans suicide is a murder.
Its not a coincidence that minorities have higher rates of suicide. Its the way we are treated, our quality of life, that most influences these statistics. I have seen news of at least one case, a trans man in Alberta, who committed suicide explicitly because of the anti-trans policies his province was set to enact.
Ive seen dozens of articles. I've seen a trans masc's instagram, where the most recent comments are from their friends. On a post where they were celebrating starting hrt, the most recent comment is mourning their loss, that they didn't live to complete their first year on T. I've looked at their posts, I've read their words, I've seen their smile. And they're gone.
Their name was Bekett Noble. They deserve to be remembered.
There's dozens of people each year who share thier experiences and go unnamed. The young man in Alberta, for example, was not named publicly in the article where his death was mentioned. Due to a family connection, I know of at least one instance of a murder of a trans man in western Canada that I have not seen any news of publicly at all. His body was found with his genitals mutilated.
There's many half formed things I could say about these lists when it comes to trans men and mascs specifically but I don't feel my thoughts are solidified enough and it's not what I want to focus on here.
I believe trans suicides should be part of these Remembrance lists. Its a disservice to our community that they aren't.
If you can, please use the site below. They have a database going back decades with a well implemented filtering system.
This site memorialises trans people who have passed away, as a supporting resource for the Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR).
These are the known deaths of trans people in Canada since last year's TDoR. Each name links to a page of information about them and links to where the information was sourced.
As for many things, these lists are a community effort. If you see that a death you know of is missing from the list, please contact them with whatever information you have. The second entry, whose name is still unknown, was added after I contacted them and provided the article in which I'd learned of his death. Since then, the folks running the site have done additional research and added what they could to his info page, including an extensive statement from his aunt, whom he was close to.
This past September, The Trevor Project published a report:
From 2018 to 2022, 48 anti-transgender laws were enacted in the U.S. across 19 different state governments. The study examined the causal relationship between these laws and suicide risk over this five-year time period, using national survey data collected from more than 61,000 transgender and nonbinary youth. Results concluded that, during this time period, anti-transgender laws significantly increased incidents of past-year suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth by as much as 72%.
[...] Across the full sample of transgender and nonbinary young people ages 13-24, an increase in suicide attempt rates of 38% to 44% was observed.
- The Trevor Project
Every trans suicide is a murder.
There will always be missing names on these lists. I don't believe that known instances of trans suicides should be excluded from them. They deserve to be remembered.
