Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR): Help Us Lower Next Year’s Number!

With a month until Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) – where we honour those lost simply for being transgender or gender non-conforming—this year feels exceptionally poignant. I am calling on organizations and companies to help reduce next year’s number. Yes, you can truly make a difference.

This is a painful era for the trans community. Our rights are being systematically stripped away, yet many onlookers falsely believe we haven’t lost anything.

The Power of Recognition: Two Analogies

In 2004, the Gender Recognition Act introduced vital legal recognition for a person’s acquired gender, allowing them to safely navigate the world and to live their life fully as the person they are post-transition. If they can’t do this imagine how difficult life is. However, recent EHRC guidance has effectively wiped out much of the most important parts of this act. To understand why this matters, consider these two examples:

• Your prosthetic leg will never be a real leg! It’s biology!

If a person has a prosthetic leg, you wouldn’t dream of saying to them “Well, it’s never going to be a real leg.”, claiming “It’s biology”. Despite of course both of those claims being 100% factually correct! Yet, this is constantly said to a transgender person about their gender.

The prosthetic leg allows that person to navigate the world in the same way the majority of us can on two feet. It gives them access to the everyday things that a lot of us take for granted. So again, you wouldn’t take offence at the fact that this leg isn’t biologically a real leg. It serves a purpose, does it well, and we understand why someone would need one.

• Your reconstructed nose will never be a real nose! It’s biology!

Someone with a facial disfigurement might undergo cosmetic surgery, for example if they lost their nose through illness or an accident.

Before surgery they are navigating a world where people stare at them constantly, may ask questions, often the same questions over and over. For the people staring, it’s a split second of their life; a passing moment (for those who have seen me speak it’s a little frog!). However, for the person living without that nose, this is their reality 24/7 (again from my speeches it’s the giant hand! Sadly, a negative one here). Every time they look in the mirror, every time they walk down the road, every stare, every question, every comment is a constant reminder that their face is different. This is a difficult thing to deal with day in day out, for weeks, months, years. Cosmetic surgery can improve their appearance, so they look closer to how they did before and how society expects a face to look.

Again, no one would say “Well, it’s never going to be a real nose.”, claiming “It’s biology”, despite this being 100% true!

Post-surgery when they walk down the road barely anyone notices. It stops the constant stares, and repeated questions. Imagine how that changes that person’s day to day life and what a weight has been lifted from them!

Navigating a Gendered World

Trans people do not believe their DNA or biology changes upon transition. Rather, transitioning—socially, medically, or both—is a highly successful way to alleviate the immense day-to-day burden of gender dysphoria. It harms no one. The issue only arises when society chooses to make it a problem. Which is what’s happening now.

How Rights Are Being Stripped Right Now

The Equality Act was designed to protect minorities, including those undergoing gender transition. Shockingly, EHRC’s current policy does the reverse: it recognizes trans people only by their birth sex and never by their acquired gender. It outlines how to penalize organizations trying to be inclusive.

• A Blanket Ban: Trans people are being stripped of recognition in their acquired gender. This bars them from public toilets, woman’s coffee mornings, gendered chess clubs, grassroot sports, hospital wards., etc, etc. Notably, sports restrictions even target trans men (born female), proving this is not about “fairness in women’s sports.”

** It is the trans equivalent of banning a prosthetic leg! **

• The Loss of Privacy: All trans people have right to privacy, and for those with a Gender recognition Certificate those protections are even stronger.

With the current climate how is this supposed to work in everyday life? Daily life is heavily gendered, something as simple as the fact that every time you leave your house you may need to pee, banning trans people from all spaces that match their acquired gender prevents them living their life normally and forces a cruel choice: use facilities that contradict how they live (socially often not even possible due to effects of hormones), explain their private history to strangers, or even avoid many everyday activities altogether.

Many trans people will decide to avoid everyday activities which effectively pushes us out of public life. Often now, it’s not even a choice, we are excluded from activities in our acquired gender, but also excluded from our birth gender because we don’t present as that gender at all. Providing an ‘other’ for us does not give us recognition as to how we actually live our lives, can feel dehumanising (we all just want to fit in like everyone else), is segregation and it outs us.

We should be able to decide who knows about our trans history, just as we decide who knows about any other deeply personal aspect of our lives.

We cannot have genuine privacy if simply going about our daily lives risks exposing something so personal.

 

Being Trans Doesn’t Make a Person Dangerous

These sweeping rollbacks are often blamed on the need to “keep women safe.” But what makes someone a danger isn’t because they hold a protected characteristic. Just as any man or woman has the potential to be a good person or a dangerous criminal based on who they are as an individual, their sex or gender isn’t what determines their morals or actions. The exact same applies to being transgender—having that protected characteristic does not dictate what type of person you are or how you behave.

Frankly, as a trans person, it hurts to constantly read or hear “We need to protect women” from trans people, as if being trans automatically makes someone (me) a threat. I’m not sure why, for example, an office worker would be perfectly happy sat at the desk next to a trans person all day and yet feel vulnerable washing their hands next to that same person in the restroom.

So, remember

The next time you hear someone say “It’s biology” or “You you’ll never be a real woman/man” with confidence that ‘they know’ for sure they’re right, remember that’s not what we’re trying to achieve when we transition. We just want to navigate the world in our acquired gender, be accepted as that, and keep ourselves to ourselves.

How you can help reduce the numbers for TDOR?

Anti-trans comments often repeat claims about trans people’s lives that are simply incorrect. They may feel factually correct to those making them, but they often stem from a lack of education, understanding or empathy. True education challenges misinformation, changes perceptions and ultimately it saves lives.

If organisations plan an event, or book a speaker to mark TDOR, it’s likely someone in that room will be deeply affected by what they learn. And I guarantee you’ll be helping people understand, which will in turn improve the lives of transgender people. You really can make a difference.

I’d love to share my story with you or your colleagues or employees. If you let me, we can lower next year’s number together……while you learn all about the ‘little frog’.