Trans Day of Remembrance honors 375 murder victims

Colin Stewart is a 45-year journalism veteran living in Southern…

A total of 375 trans people worldwide, including 53 in the United States, were killed in anti-trans murders during the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring project.

The grim toll is tallied in conjunction with the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is held each year in November to honor the memory of transgender people whose lives have been lost in acts of anti-trans violence.

Nov. 20 is Transgender Day of Remembrance, in the United States.

The records that the Trans Murder Monitoring project keeps include relatively few murders in nations with anti-LGBT laws (Pakistan, 11; India, 10; Myanmar, 3; Malawi, 1; and Russia, 1). Most of the murders represent anti-trans violence that isn’t connected to official criminalization of LGBT people.

Countries without anti-LGBT laws dominate the list. Brazil remains the country that reported the majority of the murders (125), followed by Mexico (65) and the United States (53).

The Trans Murder Monitoring project noted that the total of 375 murders between Oct. 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, represented a 7% increase from the previous year, which was a 6% increase from the 2019 figure.

A total of 4,042 trans and gender-diverse people were reported murdered from 2008 through Sept. 30, 2021.

The project reported:

96% of the listed murder victims globally were trans women or transfeminine people;
58% of murdered trans people whose occupation is known were sex workers;
Murders of trans people in the United States (53) have doubled from last year.
People of color accounted for 89% of the trans murder victims in the U.S.
43% of the trans people murdered in Europe were migrants;
70% of all the murders registered happened in Central and South America; 33% in Brazil;
36% of the murders took place on the street and 24% in their own residence;
The average age of those murdered was 30 years old; the youngest being 13 years old and the oldest 68 years old.

Since 1999 the Trans Day of Remembrance, also known as Transgender Day of Remembrance, (TDoR), takes place every November. It is a day on which trans and gender-diverse people who have been victims of homicide are remembered. Starting in the US, TDoR is now held in many parts of the world.

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