So, my day-job (office temp) currently involves working for a subsection of the federal government that is designing a social-networking site for government employees. People sign up for an account, make a profile, and then they get a combination of facebook, twitter, and LJ. More or less. With the idea being that they can make posts about work-related stuff and get input from people who may or may not be directly related to the project in question. (The Government of Canada is all silos, with not a lot of cross-communication going on, and the idea with this is to get the different areas actually *talking* to each other. Believe me. This actually *is* revolutionary).

At this point, I realize, you may be wondering why the hell I’m talking about my admin job on a kinky, poly, sexuality-and-gender blog that will never, EVER be brought to light where I work (at least that’s the theory).

The reason is this. Today is November 20th. Which, as most of you probably know, is international Trans Day of Remembrance.

I used the blog option of this particular bit of social media to make a post about How To Make Your Organization Accessible and Safe for Trans* Individuals. It was work-related. It was fairly impersonal. It didn’t talk much about how many people have been killed this year (over 160, which works out to more than thirteen in a month, more than three every single week). As such… it felt kind of weird.

Who do I think of on TDoR?

I think of my friend, whose husband found her body in the bathtub. My friend, whose family never accepted that she was a women, who had to go in boy-mode if she wanted to see her mother, and whose name I’m not saying because her death, officially, was caused by an anti-androgen-related heart-attack OR undiagnosed cancer (depending on who you talk to) and whose actual cause of death I’m not supposed to know.

And I think of my girlfriend, whom I love and who is very far away, and whose job as a sex-worker makes her that much more likely to be a target of transphobic violence. It scares the fuck out of me that one of her clients – maybe one of the good ones, the regulars who she likes to work with – might hurt her because he suddenly couldn’t live with his own desires and decided to take his fear and self-loathing out on her. It’s one of those things that we both try not to think about too much.

But, of course, I can’t post that stuff on a profession-themed blog. It wouldn’t be “appropriate”. So they got the jaunty post about inclusivity.

You get the post about what this actually means.

So. Because this is The Links Post, and because other people are more eloquent than I am, have a look at what’s being said here:

From International Transgender Day of Remembrance:
Some of the People Who Have Died

From Shakesville:
Transgender Day of Remembrance

From This Ain’t Livin’:
Transgender Day of Remembrance

From Goodbuytjane:
Day of Remembrance

From FWD/Forward
International Transgender Day of Remembrance 2009

From The Curvature:
Transgender Day of Remembrance 2009

From TransGriot:
Never Forget the People Who Died

From Bird of Paradox:
11th International Transgender Day of Remembrance, 20th November 2009

From Yes Means Yes:
Remembrance

From Salon:
Transgender Day of Remembrance

From Questioning Transphobia:
The Drowned and the Saved

Related Links:
Suicide Ends Transgender Lives, Too,
How Do Transgender People Suffer from Discrimination?
How to Mourn,
AND
How to Check Your Cis Privilege.

I burn myrrh for dead, and candles too, on my altars to Maia the healer whose province includes gender and sexuality, and to Maaka of the cross-roads, whose province includes the land of the dead but also includes liminality and transformation.

Watch over those I hold dear, and also over those I don’t know.

Transgender Day of Remembrance