By: Lucaiah Smith-Miodownik, News Writer
Content warning: mentions of violence, transphobia, and suicide.
November 20 marked Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). This year, Out On Campus (OOC) hosted a TDOR event in the Student Union Building ballroom. OOC “is a department of the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) dedicated to supporting SFU’s 2SLGBTQIA+ students and allies.” The event was designed “to sincerely remember the trans people around the world we have lost to transphobic, transmisogynistic, and racist violence.”
Transgender Day of Remembrance began as a response to the 1998 unsolved murder of Rita Hester, a Black trans woman. The media response to this homicide was minimal, with some media outlets misgendering Hester in their reports. This demonstrated “the disproportionate ways in which the death[s] of Black, queer, and trans people are taken up in public discourse,” according to the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Based on data collected from 2017 to 2018 through the National Crime Victimization Survey, the University of California Los Angeles Williams Institute reported that “transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization.”
The lack of attention towards Hester’s case led to an outcry from the trans community and allies, from which TDOR was born. Today, it is an internationally recognized day of mourning and a reminder of the harsh realities that many trans people face. TDOR is also an occasion to “recognize the need to disrupt the violence and oppression that trans people continue to face.”
From October 1, 2023 to September 30 this year, 427 trans people have lost their lives globally — mostly to violence. Since data for TDOR started being collected, the majority of deaths have come from Brazil and have been due to violence. The Peak attended OOC’s event and spoke with SFSS accessibility coordinator Brianna Price and OOC coordinator Jude Mah about their roles in planning the TDOR event and what the day meant to them.
The program was centred around the reading of names of trans individuals who died this past year around the world. “The names are especially hard,” said Mah. “Monday evening to [Tuesday], there was already another name added to the list.” Detailing the intensive emotional labour the event requires, Mah explained how there would be relief if the responsibility for planning the event fell on cisgender people. That said, they recognized a certain importance in TDOR coming from the trans community. The event also included poetry reading, an opportunity for drawing and collaging, and a few moments of reflection using breathing exercises for anxiety led by SFU counsellor Alex Vanderveen.
Price said the most important part of TDOR, which “helps make it feel not hopeless, is seeing the ways in which people in the community come together.” Specifically, she said coming together is “to share in the moment, to care for each other, to find light, and life, and connection out of the pain of the oppression that the trans community faces every day.
“There’s love in every part of this,” she added.
Both Mah and Price were critical of SFU’s response to trans violence locally and on the international level. For one, Mah stated SFU administration likes to “tout that they care for marginalized communities, but they don’t actually step up and show that.”
In 2019, the school faced criticism for an event they hosted called “How Media Bias Shapes the Gender Identity Debate.” In particular, backlash revolved around one of the speakers, Meghan Murphy — an SFU alum who called the trans rights movement “regressive and sexist” and spoke “against a bill that amended Canada’s rights act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender expression and identity.” In response to the backlash, SFU previously stated, “Universities operate on the principle that freedom of expression is a core component of intellectual inquiry and central to the pursuit of knowledge.”
Price detailed another incident that occurred last year in which an SFU lecturer went on an “aggressive, transphobic rant” to his students. She said the professor was subsequently “given one semester of paid leave and is now back to teaching.” The Peak was unable to independently verify this claim as SFU said they couldn’t comment on “individual employee matters.” “It’s an awareness of bigotry that happens and refusing to act on that,” said Price, regarding the school’s response.
Price also mentioned SFU president Joy Johnson’s statement from September 9 this year, in which she said that SFU “must refrain from taking public positions on topics unrelated to the business of the university, including partisan matters and world events.” This decision was “heavily criticized by a lot of the trans faculty” at SFU, stated Price.
“When it comes to disciplining people for aggressive transphobia [ . . . ] the message many students are sent is that as a trans person, this university will not act to make your life easier,” she elaborated.
In a statement to The Peak, SFU stated they are “committed to creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community where all feel welcome, safe, accepted, and appreciated.” They said, “This commitment is reflected in our values and supported by our policies and procedures,” citing they “made gender-affirming care benefits available to all SFU employees” since this summer.
Price concluded by speaking to the support within the trans community at SFU: “Trans students at the school talk and make sure to protect themselves and know whose classes are a concern.”
For those seeking support, Mah and Price are available at [email protected] and [email protected] respectively.
