Trans Day of Remembrance 2022
Full Statements from Gender & Sexuality Center Staff
Statement of Assistant Director of the Cultural Centers, Dan Perez-Sornia (They/Them)
Today the Cultural Centers staff remembers and honors the lives of transgender people whose lives have been lost as a result of anti-transgender violence, discrimination, and systemic oppression. This sentiment comes in the wake of yet another heinous act against our LGBTQ+ community, in Colorado Springs.
This year has already been deemed by the Human Rights Campaign as the deadliest year for trans and gender non-conforming Americans since tracking began in 2013. This violence does not exist in a vacuum, and is the result of intentional negligence and discrimination in all facets of transgender life from socialization and stigma, to healthcare, governance, and labor discrimination. In the last four years alone, more than 400 anti-trans bills have been written to directly target transgender people across the country, and more continue to be written.
As we discern the sheer scope of this continued attack, the needs of our community, the Cultural Centers remains dedicated to receiving all transgender, gender non-conforming, and gender questioning students with open arms and compassion.
Dan Perez-Sornia, Assistant Director of the Cultural Centers - Gender & Sexuality Center
Statement of Trans & Non-Binary Community Intern, Nia Ratliff (They/Them)
It is frightening that trans people are often only remembered in relation to strife. It is frightening to think of the violence our community is subject to, and why this day is necessitated.
When I became the Trans and Non-Binary community intern, I was uncertain of my identity and place in this community as a non-binary person, and what being in community looks like. Since then, I’ve been grateful to get to know the TNB community at USF–to find that it is filled with artists, poets, intellectuals, to hear their stories, to learn from them, to grow here.
It should be recognized that the intersections of trans identities with other marginalized identities increases the likelihood of victimization: between Oct. 2021-Sept. 2022, over 300 trans and gender-diverse people have been murdered, of which 65% were people of color, and 95% were transwomen and transfemmes. At a time when we are consuming a great deal of information, and are hyper-tuned into the global news cycle, it may be easy to become passive or hardened when reading about violence–after all, we see numbers not bodies. We ask that you reject this passivity and remember that behind each statistic is a face–a loved one.
We live in a culture rife with exclusivity, judgment, and often most cruelly, indifference to the violence faced by our most vulnerable. We ask that this TDoR, you do more than swipe through a few stories, like a few infographics, and move on like any other day of observance acknowledged only through a screen–we ask that you take time to acknowledge and listen to the trans people in your communities, uplift their voices, work to understand their struggles, and to celebrate their lives. Trans people are not fraught, imaginary statistics, archetypes, or complexities–Trans people are your people; loved ones, friends, colleagues, siblings, and neighbors in every community. Trans struggles are not independent of any community’s struggle for liberation and should never be mistreated as such.
Nia Ratliff, Trans and Non-Binary+ Community Intern - Gender & Sexuality Center
Additional Information for Transgender Day of Remembrance
Remembering Our Dead
"The site is intended to act as a supporting resource for anyone involved in Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) events and is intended to be used alongside the official data collated by the Trans Murder Monitoring Project and published by Transgender Europe (TGEU) in early November of each year." (Remembering Our Dead, 2022)
GLAAD Trans Day of Remembrance: In Memoriam
A compiled list of the names of those who have been lost to anti-transgender violence.
Transgender Specific Resources Compiled by the GSC
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.
Gwendolyn Ann Smith, creator of Trans Day of Remembrance, 1998