TDOR: disturbing memories, getting worse

Today, November 20th is Transgender Day of Remembrance, or “TDOR”. As an openly transgender woman, the arrival of this day each year is a somber, unsettling, and profoundly sad occasion, as I participate in the annual ritual of reckoning with the long tally of transgender persons in this country who have lost their lives in the past year– simply because they were being authentic to their gender identity. Being yourself really ought not to matter to anyone else; certainly no one should lose their life because of who they are. And, while it should not still have to be said in 2023, being transgender is not a choice.

Every year the most egregious cases of anti-transgender violence and fatalities in the United States affect transgender women of color, and the reasons for that are made more complex and deadly by the intersecting burdens of poverty, sexism, and racism. On TDOR, we particularly need to remember these women, and reflect on the harsh realities of the lives that they were forced to endure and the violence that ended their time among us.

It isn’t getting better. This year at TDOR events, we can expect to read aloud a similar but even longer list of those transgender persons who lost their lives to the bigotry, hatred, self-righteousness, misogyny, sexism, cruelty, and astounding ignorance of the perpetrators of these crimes. Ironically, many such offenders will never be prosecuted, given that violence against transgender persons in many jurisdictions remains a low priority for law officials.

What will make this year a heartbreaker for me, in my reflection back over the past twelve months, is how transgender Americans, especially transgender children, have become the centerpiece of the right wing’s culture war. Bombastic legislators in more than 20 Red states, having unilaterally anointed themselves authoritative experts on transgender issues, callously dismissed the expertise of the leading medical experts and ignored the love, care, wisdom, and parental rights of supportive parents of transgender children in their states. By passing laws to end the use of gender affirming care (hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers) for children who have been diagnosed by experts as being transgender, these children will be needlessly forced to undergo the wrong puberty.

That’s not a trivial matter. Trying to undo all those changes in one’s body later, after a transgender child moves across the threshold of adulthood at 18 or older, will entail enormous pain, expense, inconvenience, and hardship – with only modest success. In many cases, such adolescents will face a lifetime ahead of being misgendered on the telephone and stared at when they speak in public spaces because transgender women’s vocal cords were stretched by male puberty, and (other than undergoing very expensive and difficult voice therapy), that will not change once their body chemistry is finally corrected. Women with male voices are not treated well in America.

Many transgender girls and young women will be very tall, with very male body stature – all of which could have been avoided by puberty blockers. They also will need to undergo very painful and expensive procedures to rid themselves of facial hair. Transgender boys and young men will face years of painfully binding their breasts to achieve a male physique, before they become old enough to pursue (costly and painful) top surgery. In short, forcing transgender children into the wrong puberty will result in a lifetime of dissonance, crushing expense, discrimination, insecurity, pain, and misery – all of which would have been safely avoidable through puberty blockers. So much for “saving the children”.

TDOR this year, therefore, should also be a time to remember the sweeping cruelty and hardship being self-righteously imposed on transgender children – among the most vulnerable of all Americans.

Looking back, the litany of transgressions against the dignity, rights, and integrity of transgender persons has become worse, not better. All those years of sharing TDOR reflections and tears have been unable to open the minds, eyes, and hearts of those who find it politically opportunistic to target us. We as trans people continue to face enormous challenges in getting and keeping decent jobs, in accessing equal public services as those enjoyed by cisgender persons, and in avoiding being the butt of cruel, stigmatizing, humor. Too many people still see us as stereotypes, not as fully dignified human beings. The past twelve months reminds us that transgender lives are filled with enormous ups and downs, and hardships that cisgender persons are unable to relate to or simply fail to concern themselves about.

While I have lost three different jobs in my life simply due to my gender identity, I am hardly representative of what most transgender persons have confronted. I had the support of a loving family, and the bedrock acceptance from my Quaker community. I also had the remarkable honor of being the very first openly transgender political appointee in any of the federal foreign affairs agencies (State Department, USAID, Peace Corps, Millennium Challenge Corporation, and others), when I served at USAID under President Obama ten years ago.

That appears to have been a “one off”, sadly. Since I left USAID, there has never been another transgender political appointee in any of these federal foreign affairs agencies. While that was to be expected under the Trump years, the failure of the current Biden administration to lift up similar exemplars among the transgender population is worth remembering on TDOR. We need to do better in messaging our government’s full acceptance of transgender persons by using the mechanisms of political appointments.

This isn’t to suggest that there haven’t been any noteworthy transgender political appointments under President Biden. The highly qualified Admiral Rachel?L.?Levine?now serves as the 17th Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), becoming the very first transgender appointee who made it through Senate confirmation, on a vote of 52-48. Only Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins joined with all Democrats to confirm her. We need to remember that vote on this TDOR, and what it said about how many in right wing America view transgender folk as categorically unworthy.

As we head into the upcoming election year, former President Trump has vowed to make the roll-back of transgender rights in America a high priority and a clarion call of his campaign. His appeal to the promotion of hatred would include, were he to be elected, the punishing of doctors and hospitals who provide gender affirming care. He has promised that teachers or school officials who "suggest to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body" would face "severe consequences". I shudder at this possible future, and what our TDORs of such coming years would be characterized by if this comes to pass.

I’m an ethicist. On TDOR I always remember that, among transgender persons, I remain an exception. I know of no other transgender person who accessed advanced education in moral philosophy and applied development ethics at some of America’s best universities. Those many years of diligent and hard academic pursuits, culminating in a doctorate, place me now in a uniquely powerful position to challenge the profound immorality that pervades the anti-transgender movement in America and around the world. Today, and on each TDOR, I recommit to remembering who I am as a transgender woman – what it feels like, what it means, and how blessed I am to have the gift of being myself. I will continue to do whatever I can to honor and remember those transgender persons who lost their lives or who have faced crushing discrimination during the past twelve months because of their decision to live honest, authentic, meaningful lives. And I will mourn the national psyche of so many Americans whose ?hatred and cruelty of transgender persons made life impossible for every name on that list.

?