20 November each year marks a day of remembrance for transgender people who have been lost to violence. It doesn’t take a genius to note that transphobia has been front and centre in mainstream and social media, and hateful views pouring out of almost every channel and outlet certainly make for a firm foundation on which acts of hate and violence are built. The knock-on effect on others in LGBT+ communities is keenly felt.
If I had a penny for every time this year I’d heard “First they came…” by Martin Niemöller, well truth be told I’d have about 10p, after all, there’s so much truth in those lines, a tight rope of a truth that I’m walking every day. They have come for my trans comrades: past tense. And I couldn’t stop them, as much as I tried, as much as I cried; a lone voice easily drowned out in the crescendo of hate that swept the nations.
I know others are out there, standing firm in their allyship and solidarity. When I turn to the comments section again, out of some obsessive and morbid curiosity, as if to seek out the hate and check it’s still there, I see the occasional lone voice, shouting out that trans rights are human rights, pointing out that sexual predators alone are responsible for sexual predation, calling out the clear as day misogyny behind almost every hateful argument.
I’m not alone. I think there’s enough of us, you and me, who know that the level of hate expressed across the nations is plain wrong. Many of us have seen it before, if you were born in the 1970s like me, you’ve definitely seen it all before. When gays like me were trashed through the press and made out to be sexual predators, broken and freak shows. Look at me now, 30 years after my Sociology A’ Level taught me that I was a ‘deviant’, most people now don’t even give me a second look, unless I’m using the women’s toilets and then most people still give me a second and third look. Misogyny is still in charge of how one should present oneself in the public restrooms, it seems.
But back to my point – there are enough of us, who do not hate, but our voices are drowned out easily, because those that do hate, tend to hate very loudly, very persistently and very powerfully, and we are too quiet, and too singular in our opposition.
It doesn’t have to be this way though. There are things you can do tangibly to make a difference, to dismantle brick by brick the foundations of hate – biased views. If we disrupt one by one the development of biased views, then the future acts of hatred and future acts of violence have nothing to stand on, and when they can’t stand, they fall.
But if we stay silent in those moments… it’s unthinkable because we know what comes next; history has taught us as much.
This day of remembrance, we may say all those words that are said in remembrance of the dead – one life lost to hate is one too many, gone too soon and never forgotten. But this year, instead of words, choose action, choose allyship, choose life, not death.
Christine Jackson
LGBT+ Co-Chair
UNISON Northern
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