In the days leading up the the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance—commemorating transgender people who lost their lives violently during the past year—members of Congress are hoping to draw attention to those deaths and start searching for better ways to prevent them.
“Everybody would assume this has been a really good year for trans people,” says Mara Keisling, executive director for the D.C.-based National Center for Transgender Equality. After all, visibility is up, Hollywood’s plot lines are more respectful, Caitlyn Jenner is receiving awards for courage, and states like Indiana have been pressured into amending policies that critics called anti-LGBT.
But there have also been more transgender homicide victims in America this year—at least 21 so far—than any since advocates began recording them in 2006, not to mention several suicides that have wrenched hearts in the LGBT community. “This has been,” Keisling says, “as traumatic a year as we can remember.”
On Nov. 17, three days before the memorial day, Congress’ LGBT Equality Caucus will announce the creation of a Transgender Equality Task Force, chaired by California Rep. Mike Honda. It will aim to better understand the reasons why transgender people suffer inequalities like more family rejection, harassment, poverty and homelessness than the general population, and work toward policy prescriptions. All of these factors, advocates say, put them at greater risk for violence.
A lack of support from families, for instance, can lead transgender youth to live on the streets at an early age. Harassment at school can lead them to drop out. And a lack of antidiscrimination laws can leave many transgender Americans little recourse if they lose their job or apartment for reasons they believe to be related to their gender identity. Struggles finding traditional employment can lead to forays in the dangerous worlds of sex work and drug dealing.
The caucus will also hold a forum on violence against the transgender community (like a hearing but without the official sponsorship of any House committee), which advocates and aides are hailing as proof that this marginalized community is getting some of the political attention it deserves. Likely to testify will be survivors of hate crimes, policy experts and representatives from groups like law enforcement.
Photos: 25 Transgender People Who Influenced American Culture
Laverne Cox has used her growing celebrity as a star of the critically acclaimed Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, to become an outspoken leader of the trans rights movement, addressing crowds of thousands at schools and other forums around the country.Jason Merritt—Getty ImagesWith her brother, Andy, Lana Wachowski has co-written, produced and directed Hollywood blockbusters like the Matrix triology, V for Vendetta and Cloud Atlas.Michael Sohn—DPA/APKye Allums became the first openly transgender athlete in NCAA Division 1, the top level of college athletics, when he played on the women's team at George Washington University in 2010.
John Lamparski—Getty ImagesCaitlyn Jenner, made famous as an Olympic gold medalist in 1976 and later as a reality TV dad, appears as a woman for the first time on the cover of Vanity Fair's June 2015 issue, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. Vanity FairChelsea Manning is an Army soldier who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act, after she leaked hundreds of classified documents to Wikileaks. U.S. Army/APBrandon Teena was an American trans man who was raped and murdered in Nebraska in 1993. His murder was a catalyst for a lobbying effort for hate crimes legislation and his life and death were the subject of the film Boys Don't Cry.APThe electronic musician Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Bach in 1968, which won three Grammy awards and became one of the first classical albums to sell 500,000 copies. She went on to compose notable scores for films like A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Tron.
Ebet Roberts—Getty ImagesSince coming out publicly in a 2012 Rolling Stone article, the musician Laura Jane Grace has been a vocal advocate for trans acceptance. In 2014, her band Against Me! released the album Transgender Dysphoria Blues.
Gary Miller—Getty ImagesModel and actress Carmen Carrera vaulted to reality TV fame after appearing on RuPaul's Drag Race. Nearly 50,000 people have signed an online petition asking Victoria's Secret to make her the company's first transgender "Angel."Danny Aarons—Newspix/Getty ImagesChristine Jorgensen, a former soldier, became a nationwide media sensation after having sex reassignment surgery in Denmark in 1952.Fred Morgan—New York Daily News Archive/Getty ImagesThe American jazz musician Billy Tipton became famous after his 1989 death when it was discovered that he had been assigned the female sex at birth.APThe American public grew up knowing Bono as the daughter of entertainers Sonny and Cher, before he came out as a transgender man in 2009. Bono, who first came out as a lesbian in ’90s, has been an active LGBT rights advocate for decades, writing and making films about his experiences and using platforms like reality show Dancing With the Stars to talk about LGBT issues.Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/Getty ImagesCandis Cayne was the first transgender actress to play a recurring transgender character on a prime time series, as love interest Carmelita on ABC's Dirty Sexy Money. In past decades, the majority of transgender characters have been played by non-transgender actors and often been portrayed in negative roles, like psychopathic killers or dead prostitutes.Charles Sykes—Invision/APThe pioneering computer scientist and engineer Lynn Conway influenced a generation of computer chip designers and has worked at Xerox PARC, IBM, and DARPA. Caroline Cossey is a British actress best known for her role as a Bond girl in the movie For Your Eyes Only.Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesBefore she came out in 2014, the Serbian-born model was already blurring lines in the fashion world as the androgynous male model and muse for big names like Marc Jacobs. In 2015, Pejic became the first transgender model to appear in American Vogue.Nicholas Hunt—Getty ImagesThe LPGA removed a requirement that golfers be "female at birth" after trans woman Lana Lawless sued for the right to compete in 2010.Ben Margot—APFallon Fox became the first openly transgender fighter in mixed martial arts history when she came out in 2013.Sally Ryan—Zuma Press/CorbisBeatie went public in 2008 as America’s first “pregnant father,” undergoing artificial insemination after his former wife proved infertile. The transgender man captured the nation’s attention after appearances on shows such as Oprah, setting off cultural conversations about the social and legal status of transgender people in America. He has since had three children.Chris Jackson—Getty ImagesJanet Mock, a transgender advocate and writer, published a best-selling memoir about her transition, Redefining Realness, in 2014 and hosts a MSNBC web talk show about pop culture.Fernando Leon—Getty ImagesVeteran LA Times sportswriter Mike Penner announced he was a "transsexual sportswriter" in a 2007 essay and wrote under a new byline, Christine Daniels, for nearly a year. After struggling with the challenges of living as a trans woman, Penner abandoned the name in 2008 and returned to living as a man, before committing suicide in 2009.Los Angeles Times/APThe pro tennis player Renee Richards won a landmark decision for transgender rights in 1977 when the New York Supreme Court ruled that she could compete in tournaments as a woman.Larry Busacca—Getty ImagesSylvia Rivera was present at the Stonewall uprising and remained a tireless advocate for trans people of color, as well as gays and lesbians, who were marginalized as the LGBT movement became more mainstream.Valerie Shaff—Sylvia Rivera Law ProjectGeena Rocero was already a successful model before she gave a viral 2014 TED talk in which she came out publicly as transgender. “All of us are put in boxes by our family, by our religion, by our society, our moment in history, even our own bodies,” she said. “Some people have the courage to break free.” Her advocacy organization, Gender Proud, works to empower transgender communities around the world.Santiago Felipe—Getty ImagesJenna Talackova fought a legal battle to become the first openly transgender candidate to compete in Miss Universe Canada in 2012, after initially being rejected because of her gender status.Aaron Vincent Elkaim—AP
And the panelists will not lack for statistics. On Friday, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Trans People of Color Coalition (TPOCC) released a report, Addressing Anti-Transgender Violence, which tells the stories of people who have lost their lives this year. Among them are people like 20-year-old Lisha Walker, a black transgender woman from North Carolina whose car was found burned out and abandoned two weeks before her remains were discovered in a “crude grave” miles away.
The report lays out the few statistics that are known about the phenomenon, like the fact that transgender women of color appear to be by far the most vulnerable. “Transgender women of color are facing an epidemic of violence that occurs at the intersections of racism, sexism and transphobia,” HRC President Chad Griffin writes in the report. Transgender women are more than four times likely than other women to be murdered, the report concludes.
But alongside those numbers, the report highlights that one of the most basic and bureaucratic problems that needs to be solved is the lack of data about the transgender community. Because gender identity is not something people answer questions about on any census, there are only rough estimates of how many transgender people there are. The authors of the report argue that because transgender victims of crime are often cataloged by their birth names and sex, and because many jurisdictions do not outlaw or report hate crimes on the basis of gender identity, there’s no clear sense of how common violence against transgender people is either.
“Nobody’s studying the problem to find out how big it is, exactly what it is,” says Keisling. “A lot of us feel like we’re going to vigils and demanding that this stop now but we’re not getting the support to figure out how to do that.”
Most of the deaths described in the report are not being considered as hate crimes. Advocates argue that much of this is due to poor reporting or a lack of investigation. Keisling makes another argument: that because of how disadvantaged transgender people are in many spheres of life, their gender identity is always a partial factor in these violent deaths even if it wasn’t the killer’s actual motivation.
“Imagine fearing for your life every day. That nightmare is a reality for far too many transgender women, a nightmare that deserves national attention,” Griffin said in a statement to coincide with the announcement of the task force and forum. “This hearing will bring together a coalition of families, advocates, lawmakers, and other leaders to address the realities that conspire to put transgender people at risk.”
