Laura Seabrook's Ramblings

Who's going to contribute to this year's TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE WEBCOMIC PROJECT?

DETAILS
Just what is the Transgender Day of Remembrance Webcomic Project (TDOR WCP)? As you probably know, TDOR is heald annually on 20th November. As the "About page" of The INTERNATIONAL TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE WEBSITE puts it...


Participating contributors of the WEBCOMIC PROJECT draw and publish a relevant webcomic or image for the day (or equivalent date, depending on schedule). The main thing is to educate the readership of each person's webcomic or blog about the issues listed above. You don't have to be transgendered to join, just appreciating the tragedy of the lives lost that are memorialised here is enough. What you do need is a suitable visual artwork that appears on a site (webcomic, blog, Deviant Art type site, Facebook, Live Journal et cetera) read by others. What matters is sharing your concerns in an artistic fashion, so that others can hear of the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

WEBCOMIC PROJECT ARCHIVE
It is a fact that webcomics are often a more transient medium than their paper equivalents. There are numerous reasons why a webcomic may no longer be available on the web: websites and authors disappear; urls change and domains get deleted; the creator themselves might lose interest, move on, or just be unable to access or update their webcomic. Circumstances change, and with them sometimes the ability to view older works. Because this is the case, it makes sense to have an archive of each year's entries to the Transgender Day of Remembrance Webcomics Project.

SUBMISSIONS
If you're doing something for this year (or have done a comic or image for previous years and it it isn't in the archive) we'd like a copy of it for the Archive. If that's too complex, then a reply to this email with a URL of the submission's fine (but if you include details that'll make sure I'll get them right).

Because it takes time to process each submission, I usually don't upload the current year's submissions to the archive until November 30th.

Links:
INTERNATIONAL TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE WEBSITE

TDOR WCP ARCHIVE

TDOR WCP SUBMISSIONS INFORMATION

November the 20th is also THE TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE, and annual event in which those transgendered persons either murdered or driven to suicide in the last 12 months are remembered. Events are organised around the globe to commemorate this. One of those events is the Transgender Day of Remembrance Web Comic Project.

Participating contributors draw and publish a relevant webcomic or image for the day (or equivalent date, depending on schedule) with links to other contributors and/or the archive. The main thing is to educate the readership of each person's webcomic or blog about the issues listed above. In the past these have come from webcomics, submissions on DeviantArt, Blogs and forums, and elsewhere as the participants determine appropriate.

This year is a bit different from previous years because a number of social networks, such as Facebook, Google+ and DeviantArt, have added tagging to posts in their network, bringing them into line with networks such as Twitter. This is usually a hash symbol (#) followed by some text (withoutspaces) as a tag. For example, #transgender.  This means that if you're posting (without or without an image) about the Day of Remembrance, you can now add tags to make finding that post easier for people who are looking for it.

Here are my suggestions for tags relating to the Transgender Day of Remembrance:
   #transgenderdayofremembrance
   #tdor
   #tdor[year]  (e.g. #tdor2014)

Adding each of these to a post will help others find it, whether they're looking for a particular year, or in general.
Just a suggestion.

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.

Participating contributors draw and publish a relevant webcomic or image for the day (20th November or equivalent date, depending on schedule) with links to other contributors and/or the archive. Participants don't have to be transgendered to join, just appreciating the tragedy of the lives lost that are memorialized by TDOR is enough. What they do need is a suitable visual artwork that appears on a site (webcomic, blog, Deviant Art type site, Facebook, Live Journal et cetera) read by others. What matters is sharing your concerns in an artistic fashion, so that others can hear of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Don't forget to send your contributions to the Webcomic Archive as well!