One of the rules in business is never to criticise your competitor. But today, I will condemn the Gender Criticals, many of whom treated the Trans Day of Remembrance (#TDOR) with contempt and disdain.
They seemed to think TDOR was a day designated to trans people in the UK who never got murdered. Nothing could be further from the truth.
TDOR was launched back in 1999 after the gruesome murder of Rita Hester. She was a trans woman who lived in Boston, Massachusetts and TDOR has grown to an International event when we remember lost trans people across the globe. Yes, many were murdered, but many more took their own lives because of the extraordinary pressures of ‘being trans’ – many of whom could not get decent healthcare.
In the United States, a record number of trans people have been murdered this year, and figures from other countries, such as Brazil, are pretty awful too.
Those facts did not appease the British gender crits who wrote some truly awful tweets that I will not repeat in this piece.
However, one GC referring to trans women wrote “men killing men” while many more went down the well-worn track that a woman gets murdered by a man every three days.
I know.
I write about a woman getting killed by a man every three days on our #EveryThreeDays campaign.
The GC camp seemed to revel in the fact that natal females got murdered at a higher rate than trans women in the UK.
Seriously?
This disgusted me.
I never called it out on the day; who wants “words” on such a solemn day?
Well, perhaps the GC camp did.
Is it so surprising that trans women dont get murdered at the rate of cis women, after all, we invariably dont associate with men!
We reject masculinity, often live alone without partners, and when we do have partners, they are more often than not women. Yep – I am a trans lesbian, and no, I dont force ANYONE to have sex with me!
No men partners or ex-partners – no murders, it is as simple as that.
Or is it?
Well, actually, no, it is not, but we should bear in mind 95% of women murdered are killed by men they know.
Firstly, lets consider there are around 34 million cis women in the UK but just 30,000 or so “openly” trans women. Many trans women live in “stealth” purely because of the hate poured on open trans women. In essence, openly trans women are outnumbered by cisgender women at a ratio of over 1000 to 1. Working on this basis statistically, one ‘open’ trans woman should only get murdered every five years. In reality, the figure averages one every two years.
By living in stealth, a murder is not going to be reported as trans – quite simply we fade into women’s statistics. Trans women are indeed women, the GC just do not know about them!
But murder rates pale into significance when we look at suicide rates again, an issue the GC pour scorn on.
I am not going to go there but just to say, there are official figures from various countries that prove trans suicide rates are seven to ten times higher than cis ones.
Taking one’s own life is a subject that we rarely talk about – like it is some guilty secret that could prompt some desperate human being to be tipped over the edge.
My co-ed at Steph’s Place, Julie, works within the charity sector for trans people and has lost two trans friends to suicide.
I have lost one – Martina, who took her own life Christmas 2019 and that dont count the Twitter follower we lost this year. Her death to fresh to mention in this gender-crit condemnation.
Between Julie and myself, we know of many serious attempts of trans folk taking their life. I know a young trans man who has made multiple attempts – his mum is a nurse, scared to go to work and leave him alone. Knives and medications locked in a drawer, for which only she has a key.
So gender-crits, yes, keep throwing those bricks if you must, but for the sake of decency, please dont jump on our graves. Trans Day of Remembrance is special – we remember them.
Authored by Steph @PlaceSteph
