The 2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People reports on the experiences of nearly 6,000 students, faculty, staff and administrators in all 50 states. It shows significant harassment of students and a lack of safety and inclusiveness, even among those supposedly “welcoming” institutions.

The article goes on to discuss the stats generated from these reports, including the high number of LGB and T folks experiencing harassment. LGB and T is counted separately, which I think is a good thing: it highlights how being trans places people at an even higher risk of harassment than being lesbian, gay, or bi.

I wasn’t particularly ‘out’ at college, and only began taking hormones shortly before I graduated. As such, I (fortunately!) don’t have much personal experience on being harassed while at school. Or, indeed, much at all. (Again, fortunately.) I’d like to say that Northwestern would have been a great community in which to transition, but I guess I’ll never know.

I mentioned last year that I felt really disconnected from the TDOR, and I’m not sure my feelings have changed.

QueenEmily at Questioning Transphobia wrote a post, the drowned and the saved, today in which she said

There was an Italian atheist Jewish writer called Primo Levi who wrote about his experience of Auschwitz, over and over.  In his last book The Drowned and the Saved, he drew up a distinction between “the drowned” (those who died) and “the saved” (those who lived).  He argued that only the drowned could give true and full witness to the horror of the Shoah.

I’m not comparing the murders of trans people to the Shoah directly – the murder of trans people, which horrific, is not institutionally organised towards genocide in quite the same way.  But what I want to point out is the structure of witnessing.  Even Levi, a man who lived through the camp, at the end of his life felt inadequate to witnessing, unable to have fully experienced the violence he wrote about.  Even his proximity was not enough.

She goes on to say that, even with her own experiences of transphobic hatred, it is impossible to properly give witness to those murdered, particularly across cultural or racial lines (most of those murdered this past year where latino or black, and in Central or South America). But that we should try, anyway, because it is our duty and responsibility to the dead.

I agree, but feel even more like I shouldn’t be the one (or one of the ones) charged with this task of remembrance. I haven’t experienced transphobic behavior directed at me, and don’t have close friends who are trans to share in their experiences. I’m worried that my disconnect, my privilege, makes me unable to and unworthy of finding a personal meaning in the TDOR. (See my comment to Bond about antisemitism, where I put my foot in my mouth due to a similar, privileged, disconnect.)

To use a term often linked with how true to their “roots” Jewish people are perceived to be, it makes me feel very assimilated. Something which, on the one hand, I’m obviously happy about – I don’t want to be harassed. Beaten. Raped. Killed. At the same time, such harassment is linked – at least, in my mind – with the “trans experience.”

More broadly, it speaks to my socioeconomic privilege when compared to much of the trans population. Due to my family’s support, my liberal work environment, my kickass friends, I’ve never worried about not being able to pay rent or find a good job due to my status as trans.

Linking back with what Bond and I discussed, concerning antisemitism, I find myself in a similar position of having this horrible thing – transphobia or antisemitism – be removed from my life to the point of being unable to find common ground with my of the respective populations, trans or Jewish. I completely agree with queenemily and others that the TDOR is important and worthwhile, because transphobia and trans-targeted violence are both important issues; I’m not going to escape harassment or violence if someone perceives me as trans, even for all my privilege elsewhere.

But more importantly, the trans community has a responsibility to not sit idly by, but to call  attention to the violence directed at trans men and women. And trans men and women like myself, who feel disconnected from all this transphobia and violence, have a particular responsibility to help remember the dead, because we’re privileged out of luck and chance, not some innate better-ness about us. Even if we can’t do justice to the dead, we owe it to them to keep them from being forgotten.