Back To the Main SiteTransgender Day or Remembrance 2009
This year A Gender Agenda held a candle lit memorial in Glebe Park to commemorate Transgender Day or Remembrance. The event was well attended, and we had a speaker from Amnesty International, and a local transsexual/intersex activist to read the List of the Dead.
Last year I spoke calling for unity among the Sex and Gender Diverse community. This year, I looked outside the community to government, community and medical institutions, calling for them to include and accept sex and gender diversity as a natural part of life.
My speech is behind the jump.
First of all, I’d like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, who are the traditional owners and custodians of the land we meet on today.
Every year, all over the world, thousands of transgendered people gather on the 20th of November to memorialise those of us who have fallen prey to violence in the last 12 months. Every year hundreds of transgendered people are the victims of hate crimes, and have their names added to the ever growing List of the Dead. Every year, hundreds more die unnamed, and are not remembered, because their status as gender diverse was unknown, or was never reported by the mainstream press.
There are segments of the transgendered community who are more vulnerable than others. As a middle-class, white, able bodied non-sex worker, living in one of the most affluent cities in Australia, I have a massive amount of privilege that keeps me safe from being attacked and slaughtered on the street or in my home. I acknowledge that privilege, and ask that everyone here please think for a moment about the structural oppressions that lead to the list of the dead being predominantly sex workers, and people of colour. We also recognise that the violence perpetuated against the most vulnerable members of our community is an expression of the same transphobia that all sex and gender diverse people experience every day.
One of the issues we face with gathering data is the underreporting of discrimination and violent crime against transgendered people. Both in the media, and the trans people themselves approaching authorities. However, there have been several studies of the health and well being of transgendered people that have provided us with invaluable insight into the situation of transgendered Australians.
Beyond Blue have pointed out that 90% of transgendered people have faced discrimination for being trans. A study conducted in 1994 found that 49% of transgendered people have been raped in their lifetime. One third of trans people face discrimination more than once a week. Even though trans people have above average education, most of our community subsist on an income of less than $25,000 a year due to employment discrimination. With statistics like that, Is it any wonder That more than half of us suffer from clinical depression? That the suicide rate of the trans population is 300 times that of the general population?
Thats right. THREE HUNDRED TIMES that of the general population.
We are not trash! We are not garbage! We are not alone! We are fierce, stronge, resilient, brave, proud and beautiful people. We are special, and loved when we are alive, and mourned by our friends and families when we are dead.
We know we’re worth more than the systematic destruction of our lives would indicate. We deserve human rights. We deserve to be full and included citizens of this nation, and fully included members of our community.
We call on the ACT Government to change the legislation that discriminates against trans people, and makes them a target for transphobic attack every time they have to produce identity documents. We demand the right to equality and recognition before the law. We demand the right to privacy. These are basic rights recognised internationally, and supposedly enshrined in ACT Law in the Human Rights ACT. We demand access to marriage, and to civil partnerships. We demand effective anti-discrimination legislation.
We call on the police force to protect and defend the trans population of Australia. We demand that our deaths be investigated, and we be taken seriously when we are assaulted. We damand that we are not outed as trans to violent predators, as happened in NSW and Victoria last year, or laughed off as happened to A Gender Agenda members when reporting a violent crime, just this year!
We call on the medical establishment to stop discriminating against gay and lesbian trans people. To provide much needed medical care and sexual health care to transgendered people. To stop acting as gatekeepers, and start acting as the ‘medical professionals’ you are supposed to be.
We call on the Gay and Lesbian community to start including us as more than a letter on the end of an acronym, but as unique and valuable members of the community in our own right, and on the wider Australian community to open their hearts and minds to the trans people who are your children, parents, friends and coworkers.
Organisations like A Gender Agenda often feel like we are facing an insurmoutable task. Our to do list seems to get longer every day, and the number of people who have heard of us, and contact us requesting help keeps on growing. We call on the government to acknowledge and fund the valuable work that we perform.
The thing that makes our hard work so worthwhile is the strength and resilience displayed by our community. The support offered by organisations that sponsor our events, and help us hold fundraisers. The new friendships that are formed, the young people who will grow up strong, the older people who have finally embraced their life and decided to live to the fullest.
We rest assured in the knowledge that even if we never achieve the legislative changes we so desperately need, we’ll have made a difference for a handful of people, and that the number of demoralised, disheartened, lonely, and depressed is reducing, and that the list of the dead is a few names shorter, because of us.
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