Your Trans+ Officer Yuna Kaye articulates her anger and disappointment around the coverage of trans people in the media, imploring every Salford Student to make a change.
*Trigger warning: Suicide and Transphobia*
If you don’t know, today (Wednesday 20th November) is Trans Day of Remembrance, a day where the Trans+ community and its allies come together to celebrate and mourn the lives of our siblings that have been lost over the past year. It is a hard day for all of us, reminding us that even though we are a family that look out for each other, we are still so vulnerable, and in so much danger. Across the world, we hold vigils, and we swear that not a single one of the names of our siblings will be forgotten.
But for me, as I write this now, it is 9 o’clock on Sunday 17th November. Cal Shearer, a Trans Non-binary student at Oxford who used they/them pronouns, has just had their death released to the newspapers. Suicide, by hanging. And The Telegraph, whose article imparted this heart-wrenching news to me, managed, in their infinite wisdom, to misgender them – both ways in the space of a single article. Such, it seems, is the life of every trans person. Bullied, ostracised, and misgendered in life, then bullied, ostracised, and misgendered in death.
If you think for a second that things have got ‘better’, or that the world is a ‘more accepting place’ now, then you have become willingly blind to the difficulties my community faces. Even in the supposed safe space of the uni, I still fear being called slurs and degraded, or even attacked by fellow students... I see the looks, hear the whispers, though I try so hard to pretend I do not. Never will I be able to understand why strangers take such an interest in how I live my life, when it doesn’t affect them at all. In case it is not obvious from the tone, I am angry, heartbroken and disappointed.
I don’t see how anyone, transgender or cisgender, could possibly not be. Stories just like Cal’s pour through the media week after week after week, too often forgotten and discarded as old news days later. Whether it is suicide, murder, or that repulsive phrase, the ‘trans panic’, thousands of us are dying every year and nobody is doing anything about it. There will be hundreds of names to read out at the Manchester vigil alone. I know, because I’m reading some of them.
I suppose at this point, you will want some comforting news. Maybe something like, say, how the country that is the pinnacle of what we call civilisation has been making leaps and bounds in LGBTQ rights and protections? But you are going to be disappointed.
558 Anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced this year in America, breaking last year’s record of 510. The year isn’t over yet. Closer to home, the Conservative and Reform parties have spent the past year fuelling anti-trans rhetoric, conversion ‘therapy’ has not been made illegal despite promises made by Theresa May way back in 2018, and the government has been found to be directly funding an anti-LGBTQ organisation in Uganda, a country already famous for putting gay people to death regularly. If this seems bleak to you, or even dystopian, then you may be some way towards understanding how it feels for our community.
My sibling, Cal Shearer, killed themselves. My sister, Brianna Ghey, was stabbed 28 times in a park half an hour from here. My brother, Alex Franco, was shot earlier this year. I hope these names are seared onto your brain just like they are mine. Forget them at your peril, and remember that what is at stake here is our lives.
If you hear or see transphobia, you cannot just watch passively and let it happen. I no longer give you permission to stand on the sidelines.
Yuna Kaye, Trans+ Officer