trixter-i-am:

It’s Transgender Day of Remembrance.

2018 has become the hardest year ever for transgender people of the world.

Traditionalist politicians, religious fanatics and far right movements arise to bring our lives to hell and panic.

By mid-October of this year 368 transgender people worldwide

have been killed or beaten to death because of their gender identity. Today, on November 20th, Transgender Day of Remembrance, we mourn for Nikki Enriquez, Christa Leigh Steele-Knudslien, Viccky Gutierrez, Zakaria Fry, Nino Fortson, Keisha Wells, Celine Walker and all other transgender folks who were murdered in 2018 all over the world.

Here in Ukraine we mourn for our transgender movement as a whole. This country still doesn’t have proper statistics of violence against trans*people, but we encounter it every day. The Transgender Rights March was planned on Sunday, November 18th, but it was disrupted by far right groups. Around 100 participants of Transgender rally have been pushed back to the subway by police officers “for protection”, as they said, and were forced to stop the action and go home. Several allies who came to the march to support trans*folks, were attacked with pepper spray and got injuries. There were journalists among them, including a Canadian reporter.

All we need is freedom to be ourselves. Why is it so hard to give?

We can’t wait for 50 years for our society to change, because we’re already born into this world and we want to live today.

We are your customers and partners/employees. Every day we shop in your stores, and every day we order food from you. We are your students and teachers. We pay you for the lessons and teach your children. We study with your children. We pay you salaries. We help earn your income. We help your grandmothers and your grandmothers, we treat you and your children, and you get awards and recognition when you successfully treat us. We make clothes for you. And you sell yours to us. We write books that you read, create music and movies that you perceive as art. We create art. And you do it too.

Together we make a common contribution. We go to concerts and cinemas together. Together we go out for a run. We are your neighbors, relatives, fellow citizens. We walk the same streets and breathe the same air. We and you make a single society – inseparable, linked together by many factors, conditions and stories. The place we all belong to is planet Earth. And the only thing we can do for the common, inevitable future, is to understand that we all want to find fulfillment in our own way according to our own desires, and live; and stop interfering with each other’s ways to happiness.

We all make one society. And the sooner we take this truth, the sooner we will overcome all our problems that have become barriers to healthy and peaceful coexistence.