Trans community and allies gather to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance 2023
A candlelit vigil was held in central London on Monday night to commemorate all those who have lost their lives to transphobia.
Organised by the trans advocacy charity Not A Phase, the two-hour long event for Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) saw more than 150 trans people and their allies brave the winter cold to gather in Soho Square Gardens, London. Many attendees were draped in trans flags and held placards that read messages including "Protect Trans Lives", "Stop Killing Our Siblings" and "Lesbians for Trans Liberation".
A two-minute silence took place and singer Jaz Terry performed a rousing rendition of John Lennon's "Imagine".
Kate Litman shared intimate memories of her sister Alice and spoke of the "unbearable pain" of losing her (Mizy Judah Clifton)Danielle St James, chief executive of Not A Phase, spoke first on behalf of Esther Ghey – the mother of 14 year-old trans teenager Brianna Ghey who was found stabbed to death in a Cheshire park earlier this year. Ghey paid tribute to her "outgoing", "confident" and "beautiful" daughter and said the outpouring of support she received from the trans community in the aftermath of the tragedy gave her "the strength to carry on".
She reflected: "When [Brianna] came out as trans, I did have concerns that life would be more difficult for her because of prejudice and hate. This shouldn't have entered my mind, because we should live in a world where everyone is free to be who they are, unapologetically, without worry or fear".
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Also among the speakers was Kate Litman, whose sister Alice had been waiting more than three years for an initial assessment with the NHS Gender Identity Development Service when she tragically took her own life in May 2022. In a moving speech, she too thanked the trans community for their "overwhelming love and support" while highlighting the "vile and vicious backlash" to which her family has since been subjected.
She said: "Transphobes mock Alice's death. They constantly misgender her. They tell my mum that it is her fault Alice died. They accuse us of weaponising Alice's death for our own ends. Weaponise is an interesting word. I'm not ashamed to turn Alice's death into a weapon. I'm not ashamed to turn the weapons of my grief against the parliamentarians and transphobic campaigners who work tirelessly to make trans lives harder to live.
"Each of them should know Alice's name, and it is them who should bear the shame of her death. I don't know how to share her with you. I wish she was here so you could meet her, so I didn't have to make speeches in her memory. I'm so desperately sad that in the end, she didn't feel this world was one she could continue to live in.
"I want us to build the world that Alice should have lived in. A world where trans people do not face threats to their safety, their autonomy, and their happiness."
TDoR became an annual observance in 1999 owing to the efforts of American trans activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith. After the murder of Rita Hester, a Black trans woman who was found dead in her apartment in Boston, Massachusetts on November 28 1998, Smith realised that few in the trans community were also familiar with the name of Chanelle Pickett, another Black trans woman who had been killed in strikingly similar circumstances just three years prior.
Determined to ensure no more names – and lives – would be forgotten, she founded the web project Remembering Our Dead, from which TDoR was later born. In recent years, TDoR has also included those who have died by suicide.
Speaking to the Mirror, Smith said: "Every year, the Transgender Day of Remembrance recognises hundreds of people who were killed due to anti-transgender violence. Each one of those people had a life, they had family, they had friends, they had people who valued their lives, and loved them for who they were.
"It is for us, and for them, that we honour those lost every 20th of November. For each of them, every TDOR will be important. For myself, and for all-too-many others, TDoR will never just be another day on the calendar. Not as long as we still face the levels of hatred and violence we face today".
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