Making Meaning of Transgender Day of Remembrance
Filed by: Guest Blogger
November 19, 2010 3:00 PM
http://www.bilerico.com/2010/11/making_meaning_of_transgender_day_of_remembrance.phpEditors' Note: Guest blogger Jaan Williams is a policy assistant with the National Center for Lesbian Rights. He's also a friend of mine and one incredible guy.
It was 2004, and I had volunteered for my school's Queer Straight Alliance to type the individual names of transgender women and men who had been murdered on cards for Transgender Day of Remembrance.
I sat in the computer lab at school, silently typing the name of each person, where they died, details of their murders, and learning with each key stroke about the violence that claimed their lives and how unsafe it is for trans people to simply exist.
The following summer, I realized, I too was transgender, setting off a stream of emotions that were far from the joy and relief I should have experienced in finally understanding who I was.
