at least 32 transgender People, or who do not identify with their birth sex, were murdered this 2022 in the US according to the annual report of the Human Rights Campaign, cited by the agency efe. The murders of transgender people during the last decade in the country exceed the figure of 300.
The “epidemic of violence” suffered by people with “gender dysphoria” leaves stories like that of Tracy, a transgender woman who did not want to identify herself by her real name and who suffers daily threats against her group by “fascists.” Americans.” “I’m not as interested in trans visibility as I am in trans survival,” Tracy explains to the Spanish agency.
Tracy assures that the threat that prevails in her daily life is the result of the country’s “transphobic legislation”, which allows fascism in the United States to run wild and “blame” transgender people for the problems the population is experiencing.
This harassment results in murders, suicides, and assaults on the trans community, although Tracy points out that, due to her status as a white person and her social class, she does not face the same risk as other members of the group.
Non-white transgender people comprise 81% of the victims this year, since violence “disproportionately” affects African-American transgender women, who account for two out of every three deaths, the report says.
Savanna Wanzer, a black transgender woman, calls for political figures to “get to work” for her safety, because “numbers matter”: “They are killing us, just for trying to be ourselves, living our truth,” she said in a recent rally to honor the victims in Washington DC.
Alex Stitt is a “queer” therapist and helps people in his group deal with traumas that other professionals, either due to “little experience with the LGTBIQ+ collective” or their “binary vision of sexuality or gender identity” do not understand and do not they know how to deal with them.
And it is that transgender people “face a number of unique obstacles that can make it difficult to process a loss,” says Stitt, who, being a non-binary trans person, has experienced the death of different friends and acquaintances.
“When a trans person dies, their partner may still have to defend their name and postmortem pronouns,” Stitt says. Some intolerant families may use the person’s dead name (birth name) on their own grave.”
Stitt emphasizes that this “traumatic” bereavement “leaves a longer shadow” than others, as “shame and internalized ‘cissimo’ and post-traumatic stress disorder can complicate the ability to process the loss.” “Many of us not only experience loss, but also struggle with our own existential traumas and crises,” he adds.
For this reason, different associations work to facilitate the daily life of trans people. This is the case of the CAKE Society Co., which tries to “fill the gap” when health insurance does not cover the necessary health care for transgender people, explains the association’s executive director, Colton Gibbon.
Some of its services include self-defense classes such as a boxing program, which “is becoming very popular,” Gibbon stresses, as well as providing gender-affirming products, such as “wigs, makeup, prosthetics and skin care items.” and hair”, among others.
Precisely during the months of December and January, coinciding with festive dates, the association is calling for people to donate hair and beauty products to help trans people to be consistent with how they identify.
Stitt shares Tracy’s sentiment that often “a big part of being trans is going to funerals,” though he also points out that “a big part of being oppressed is going to funerals.”
“Being transgender is not dangerous. Living in an intolerable society, yes”, recalls Stitt.
He gives as an example the cases in which society attributes a greater risk of suffering health problems such as HIV/AIDS to certain people because of their gender, when in reality it is a consequence of “their socioeconomic status and their lack of upward mobility”.
Stitt believes that there are “stones too heavy for one person to carry”, and this is where the possibility of having a community behind them plays a fundamental role.
The support of a community “is not a delicacy, it is literally a lifeline”, which can be a decisive element in the process of dealing with visits to wakes, tributes and commemorations, he concludes.
Sara Soteras i Acosta/Efe/OnCuba.
