At least 12 communities throughout Illinois, and four in Iowa, will honor the 25th anniversary of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, with at least 17 events starting this Sunday and continuing through Nov. 24.
The events include vigils, a community meal, a speaker panel, a community clean-up, marches and more. They will all be part of honoring Nov. 20, which was first declared the Transgender Day of Remembrance in 1999.
Rita Hester, who was violently killed in 1998, is honored in this mural in downtown Boston. She’s also the inspiration for the Transgender Day of Remembrance to be recognized in at least 14 Illinois and Iowa communities.
That’s when a Boston woman sought to call attention to the overlooked killing of her transgender friend, Rita Hester, a year earlier. Gwendolyn Ann Smith sought also to illuminate the repeated use of Hester’s “deadname” by police.
Hester’s murder remains unsolved, reports the Boston Globe in a new article about her, her family, and TDOR.
TDOR illuminates challenging circumstances of living as transgender
In recent years, deaths worldwide of transgender people have dropped from a historic annual high of 375 in 2021. Transgender violence claimed 320 people in 2023, the latest year for which numbers are available. (Forbes)
That includes 32 Americans, according to the Human Rights Campaign, down from 41 in 2022 and 60 in 2021.
Though those statistics have been used in some circles to question the day’s validity, today’s TDOR events have expanded beyond mourning violence, to building empathy for the challenging circumstances under which transgender people as a whole still live.
Here’s a look at some of those circumstances, courtesy of the Kaiser Health Foundation, starting with some basic characteristics of transgender Americans:
• About 40 percent of transgender people identify as nonbinary.
• Only 12 percent identify as transgender men.
• One-third of transgender people identify as straight, rather than LGBTQ+.
• More than half of transgender adults are age 34 or younger.
• About 40 percent of transgender adults are People of Color.
• Unemployment is twice as high among transgender people than the general population (14-18 percent, compared to 8 percent).
• Only 10 percent of transgender adults identify as Republican.
• One-fourth of transgender adults are also caretakers of children — the same percentage as the general population.
Here are some of the unique challenges faced by transgender people:
• Forty-three percent of transgender adults said their mental health was “not good” for at least 11 of the past 30 days — more than twice the percentage of non-transgender adults.
• More than one-third of transgender respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey reported they were living in poverty at the time.
• More than 40 percent of young transgender women reported their occupation as sex workers.
• One-third of the violence against transgender people comes from intimate partners, friends or family members, reports the Human Rights Campaign.
• Less than half of all murders of transgender victims are solved, compared to about 62 percent of the general population, reports the 19th.
Hester was murdered after spending Thanksgiving with both her born family, and her chosen family, which was Allston’s LGBTQ+ community.
The killing and its insensitive public handling became a symbol, says Kara Hayes, a victim witness program leader in the Boston area, to the Boston Globe.
“I think it spoke to a time when anti-trans sentiment and a lot of misunderstanding of trans-identified people was very normative,” she said, “and that is something we seem to be returning to.”
Events from Oskaloosa to Chicago to Carbondale will honor TDOR
Here you can find MainStream‘s calendar of 15 upcoming events to honor the Transgender Day of Remembrance.
They start this Sunday in Aurora, Chicago and DeKalb in Illinois, and Davenport on the Iowa side of the Quad Cities. PFLAG Oskaloosa and the City of Oskaloosa in central Iowa team up for an event Tuesday.
On Nov. 20, the official Transgender Day of Remembrance, find events in Ames, Ia.; and in Carbondale, East Peoria, Grayslake, Olney, Peoria, Springfield and Urbana in Illinois
Chicago’s La Cueva, one of the country’s oldest Latino gay nightclubs, holds a party and celebration Nov. 21 to honor TDOR.
Peoria will honor the day again on Nov. 22; Burlington, Ia., on Nov. 23; and Decatur, Ill., on Nov. 24.
To submit your event to the TDOR event list, head to this form.
