laura_seabrook | Transgender Day of Remembrance, 2012

It's this year's Transgender Day of Remembrance today. Here in Australia just west of the dateline, I have an early start on this, but I also get to see posts about it from other countries for up to a day after.

I always get a bit depressed leading up to this. I first heard of the event back in 2006 when I was working on my Honours Fine Art project - a Tarot deck about gender transition. I already had a "death card" which in this case was about suicide, but I added one about murder as well. I was (and still am) particularly outraged by the abduction, torture and killed of Gisberta in Portugal. She was featured on that extra card, and also as a Webcomics Project page as well.

At times I feel fortunate living in Australia. I read about the discrimination, harassment, assault, and murder of trans persons overseas and it seems like a very dangerous place for someone like me. Not that we don't have the same here, but the murder of trans persons here seems much less frequent. WE have suicides here of course, but there are issues over reporting that accurately for LGBT folk in general. Much remains hidden.

And I have to ask myself - if I lived overseas, in some place like Brazil or the USA, would I be dead by now?

It's easy to think "that doesn't happen here" but it does. I've been hounded and assaulted and discriminated in the past. As much as it "shouldn't", the risk comes with the territory - the territory of living as myself, as a trans woman. Almost all the names on the lists I've never known, never met, never corresponded with, but I feel the pain of their deaths anyway.

When I was young I never thought I'd live beyond 30, and here I am this year at 55, and 18 years as Laura. I spent years hiding away in the public service and in other pursuits denying a core truth about myself until finally I did something about it. Because of that however, I had money to buy (most of) a house, and had money put aside for reassignment surgery as well (though both came from my superannuation prematurely). I count myself fortunate in having both. Other's aren't so lucky. They come out and maybe get thrown out by their family, friends and community; are forced into low paying or risky work; are seen as easy targets of hate and violence. Others seek the false security of "stealth" which promises a form of acceptance but has its own risks, and embraces a shame that we need not own.

Yeah, I'm fortunate. But others aren't so "lucky", their journey ending in murder and suicide. And it doesn't matter that I didn't know them personally. What matters is that I understand what drives them to be different, to be who they are. "That could have been me" is the feeling I have every time I hear or read of a trans murder or suicide. And for all I know, it could still be one day, even here. So let us remember those who've fallen. Let us mourn their deaths, but in doing so acknowledge that their lives, no matter how brief, were in some way and in some part, lived on their own terms.

Let us remember the fallen.