Nov. 20 crept up on me this year. I opened up my phone this morning to social media posts about Transgender Day of Remembrance and the lives that were lost this year. This brought about a grim reminder of just how negligible the lives of me and my siblings are to some people and groups. 

Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day to acknowledge and honor the memory of those who were killed each year by anti-transgender violence. According to GLAAD, it was started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith. Smith sought to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998, and to commemorate all transgender people lost to violence since her death.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, 33 transgender people have lost their lives to anti-transgender violence since  Nov. 20, 2022. To many critics, this seems like a small number, but keep in mind that these are only the homicides reported; there are sure to be some that were not filed as a death, as a result of a bigoted killing, or that weren’t reported at all. 

According to HRC, “the stories detailed in this report very likely undercount the number of transgender and gender non-conforming people who were killed.” HRC also mentions how data collection is often incomplete or unreliable when it comes to violent and fatal crimes against the trans community, as the information for their yearly report is gathered from the FBI. 

Even with that apparently low number, any amount of death and hate is too much. 

There’s a saying that goes around quite a bit around this time: “honor the dead and fight like hell for the living.” Today isn’t just a day to mourn those lost, it’s a reminder not to become complacent with the injustices that we are undergoing. 

It’s a necessary day. It’s necessary to remind us of why we fight for equal rights and also to mourn the loss of those who may be missed in their local communities. It just makes me extremely depressed that such a day is even needed.