As Alabama Republican Roy Moore uses his opponent Doug Jones’s position that transgender people have rights as a pretext to avoid publicly debating the Democrat who may take Jeff Sessions’s former Senate seat, it is worth noting that the Transgender Day of Remembrance is coming up on November 20. Started in 1999 in remembrance of a still-unsolved murder, the nationwide event pays respect to those murdered for being transgender. 23 transgender Americans have been killed this year; all but two are people of color. 27 transgender Americans were murdered last year, and 21 in 2015. The Human Rights Commission estimates transgender women face 4.3 times the risk of being murder than non-trans women.
TransAction South Dakota is hosting two events in Sioux Falls for Transgender Remembrance Week. On Saturday, November 18, they will screen The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, a movie about a New York City trans-activist who was found dead in the Hudson River in 1992. The film starts at 6 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 300 South Minnesota Avenue. Then on Monday, November 20, TransAction SD hosts a candlelight vigil at First Congregational from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m.*
Remember that transgender youth in South Dakota, along with gender-role nonconformists, face more bullying and exclusion than other young people. In a 2011 report from the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 35% of K-12 students identifying as transgender said they experienced physical assault and 12% said they had experienced sexual violence.
*Update 22:05 CST: Marty Epstein of TransAction SD lets me know the original announced time for Monday’s vigil was incorrect. I have updated to show the correct time and regret the earlier error.
*South Dakota has an estimated population of 814,180 people.
*An estimated 2,150 transgender live in South Dakota (0.26%) of which 35% of K-12 students said they were physically assaulted?
*There are an estimated 150, 778 student in South Dakota K-12 so 392 students in South Dakota “say” they were assaulted who identify as transgender.
The chance of a transgender student k-12 being assaulted is 1 in 384. The chance of being in a violent crime is 1 in 261. Statistically speaking you are much safer being a transgender in K-12 than being a normal citizen in the state of South Dakota. Maybe if most of you started wearing skirts you would be safer.
Old Mr. Sarg, I’ll take my chances as a non-transgendered non-skirt-wearing decrepit old man, but I feel like I’m at a 1 in 2 risk of assault every time I am in downtown Rapid City after dark.
So Old Sarg what are you trying to say to us? That assaults of transgender students are not really important?
While you’re at it look up the disturbingly high rates of suicide of transgender students.
The people who have posed the greatest threat to my physical safety in South Dakota have been angry white purportedly straight men.
Well, there was also that one drunk Indian that one time at the Eagles club, but I’m not sure that, had he chosen to take a swing, he could have aimed straight.
OldSarg trivializes and insults transgender South Dakotans by suggesting violence committed against them is their fault. Shameful.