Today is the International Transgender Day of Remembrance – a day devoted remembering the many people who are killed each year simply for being transgender.
You can find this year’s memorial list here. It isn’t obvious from that list as few of the entries give more than the basic cause of death, but many of those killings were executions. And I don’t mean state executions like the one in Iraq, I mean vigilante executions carried out in cold blood by people who believe that transgender people do not deserve to live.
Unfortunately things are unlikely to change in the short term. Social attitudes take a long time to shift. There are still too many people in the police who can’t be bothered investigating the killing of transgender people, and too many people in the judiciary and on juries who are happy to let the killers off if a case comes to trial. But we can at least spread the word. If you care about this issue, please make a post of your own today. The more people who speak out, the quicker social attitudes will change.
I’m a bit late with this, but the news was actually very appropriately published yesterday and I thought you might be interested in this:
A while ago the vicar of the city of Imatra came out and announced he is transgender and plans to undergo treatment to become a woman.
This naturally raised a bit of a ruckus, especially as he said he’d been pressured by the church to leave his job (most of the reporting and comments I’ve seen has been positive, though), but yesterday the bishop of his region (Eastern Finland) publicly announced that the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran church supports him and that after he returns from his leave of absence (for the surgery and other treatments), her job will still be there waiting for her.
Thanks Tero – I did actually notice that story. It has a long way to run yet. Transition is hard.
I was so proud of the common people of Imatra who simply said in the interviews of the main news that the operation is removing neither the professionality of their vicar nor the personality.
She also told that there are altogether five other collegues who have contacted her telling they have been considering the same decision.
It seems that Finland has really changed a lot during the last couple of decades – thanks for a long long work of many courageous people.
ipa