There are only two “special days” in the Western calendar dedicated to recognizing transgender people: one to show our visibility and the other to remember those we lost in the past year. We commemorate Transgender Day of Remembrance on Saturday, when trans people in cities and towns around the world come together in dark vigils where the names, ages and locations of trans people who were murdered last year are read aloud. .

To be a member of the trans community is to be intimately familiar with death. When I first became trans in 2016, I quickly became friends with a young trans woman who later committed suicide. The risk of dying or losing a friend or loved one seems to be ever present for trans people, and this year a record 47 trans people have been lost to violence.

The number of murdered trans people has increased every year over the past decade. At the same time, we are seeing a growing number of anti-trans objectors trying to crack the statistics.

A common anti-trans refrain includes a makeshift calculation that takes the number of murdered trans people and divides that number by estimates of the size of the American trans population to infer that statistically trans people are actually safer than the last. general population.

This argument collapses when one considers that most trans victims of violence are not initially flagged as trans in police reports, with many departments instead using language like “a man in disguise as a woman” in the press releases. hurry. This adds an extra layer of verification from local news outlets when confirming the identity of trans murder victims. Although improvements in this reporting have occurred in recent years (and are probably the main cause of the increase in confirmed reports of trans victims), the elimination of the local news infrastructure means that the full extent of anti-trans violence will probably never be fully realized. .

Another anti-trans argument points out that we can never know if a murder victim was actually killed because she was trans or for some other reason. That’s true, at least in part, but lacks the full picture. We know that trans people are much more likely to live in poverty than the general population. Trans people are chronically unemployed or underemployed due to discrimination, and poverty is a strong predictor of violence risk.

But both of these arguments fail to capture the full significance of trans lives and our experiences of violence. In my town of Washington, DC, one of the most liberal places on the planet, a trans woman was beaten and stabbed by a man and two women at a laundromat. The attackers took turns punching and kicking him. Numerous trans women have been murdered in recent years in Greater Washington, and in 2019, an armed man threatened three trans women outside a Washington LGBTQ shelter that largely served trans sex workers. (Accommodation services were drastically cut earlier this year after the city refused to renew a grant.)

It’s right in my town, which is supposedly one of the safest places for my people, having long had protections against discrimination enshrined in law. Combined with a protracted conservative media campaign against trans people in general, the end result is an America where trans people not only feel welcome, but also in danger.

That is, ultimately, the whole point of anti-trans activism, even those who do the math deep in the envelope to deny the statistics on trans murders. None of this helps trans people in any way. Instead, trans people need protection, both in life and in the law.

The equality law, which would include trans people under the current federal civil rights law, would go a long way in protecting trans lives. He is currently dead in the Senate because Democrats lack the votes to break down a threat of filibuster.

On Transgender Day of Remembrance, transgender people and their allies should take the time to remember the dead, then pick up a phone and call their Senators.