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.

…to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.

30 trans individuals were killed this year (that made the news, anyway), which is obviously a horrible number.

But I’ve been thinking about the TDOR all week, and am realizing how disconnected I feel from the whole concept, and from the larger trans (and even larger GLBT) community.

I started thinking about this last Sunday, when I attended a TDOR event at the Center on Halsted, Chicago’s “GLBT Community Center.” Except that, when we were using space there to rehearse during this mentorship project, they (the staff and the general environment) were very uninviting, constantly screwing up our space reservations and generally being surly – not a very inviting ‘community center.’ The event on Sunday was a general TDOR reception (which I missed) and a open-mike-ish performance “celebration of the trans community,” which I did make it to.

The open mike (I’m not really sure what to call it, since it wasn’t open at the event, but seemed to be open to anyone who had asked to perform) made me uncomfortable for a couple of reasons. First, on a purely superficial level, the tech was really poorly done: the lights were mishandled, the follow spot was rarely on target, there were audio issues, etc. This wouldn’t, in and of itself, be a huge deal but it just reinforced the perception I’d received while working at the CoH during the mentorship program, of an organization that had been handed this beautiful huge building and was just not using the space well at all. (Their black-box theatre, where the event was held, is great but they clearly couldn’t run the tech at all.)

More importantly, I felt little connection with most of the performers. Basically, most of the acts were sexualized lip-syncing, either by trans women or by men in drag (I’m not sure of the breakdown, but I know there were at least a few of each). Ignoring the arguments about whether or not drag should be included in the “trans community” to begin with (something I’m conflicted about and should really devote another post to), that type of performance just makes me very uncomfortable.

I think, ultimately, it has to do with my discomfort with seeing myself as a woman, and having a similar discomfort when presented with others who are fitting societal sterotypes of what it means to be trans or in drag. That is, I’m still uncomfortable claiming my identity as trans (and even more as a woman) so I have trouble viewing others who clearly don’t have any such issues. (That’s, again, seperate from not caring for some of the music choices and/or some of them just being very bad at lip-syncing.)

Which isn’t to say all of the performers were bad (or even just not my cup of tea). There was some good musical performances (people actually playing music…) and some solid poetry, including some by a woman who was also at the Julia Serano talk I went to a while back. (Who gave me the address to her blog, which I have to hunt down. It’s somewhere on my desk…)

(Performance side note – by my count, three trans men and four or five times as many trans women does not a ‘trans community’ make. What’s up with that?)

Speaking more broadly about the TDOR, I guess I still feel a bit closeted (the very very ‘out’ performances this weekend notwithstanding…) and, while I can definitely work up intellectual rage about so many trans individuals being killed, I can’t get emotionally invested for some reason. I read statistics about the huge number of trans women who are harrased and such and think about myself, where the worst I’ve gotten is dirty looks. Obviously, living fulltime as R will (unfortunately) change that, and not for the better, but speaking from the experience I’ve already had, the worst response I’ve gotten was a cousin who pretended I didn’t exist at a family dinner. Literally did not speak or make eye contact.

And so I have trouble relating to a community where the threat of violence or death is very real, even though I’m attempting to find identity as part of that community.

-R