Trans Day of Remembrance 2024

Each year on November 20th, we publish a statement to commemorate the annual Trans Day of Remembrance (TDOR). We mourn those who we have lost to anti-trans violence, whether that violence was enacted by individuals or by policies and institutions.

For our TDOR statement last year, HTHC expressed solidarity with Palestine. This is relevant to our work because colonization harms all gender diverse people, both here on unceded or stolen Indigenous land, and in occupied Palestinian territories.

It is important for HTHC to express this solidarity to explicitly speak out against pinkwashing. This is the practice of using queer identities, pride symbols, and appeals to Western 2SLGBTQIA+ communities to depict the Israeli state as progressive and Palestine as queerphobic. This erases queer and trans Palestinians, the violence they experience from the occupation, and anti-2SLGBTQIA+ activity enacted by the Israeli government’s policies and practices.

Last month, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report that states: 

Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.  

As an organization dedicated to healthcare access for a marginalized community, this intentional obliteration of healthcare infrastructure and the ongoing assault on healthcare providers is particularly abhorrent.  

As this has intensified over the past year, there have also been escalating attacks against gender-affirming care and trans youth here. Most recently, through the three anti-trans bills introduced in the Alberta legislature that are expected to become law.  

This observation is not intended to draw direct comparisons between exterminatory violence and anti-trans legislation, but to highlight that they are both rooted in colonial and eugenic rhetoric that dictates who is dehumanized, who is erased, and who is valued. The language of ‘protecting’, ‘preserving’, and ‘balance’ appears repeatedly in the propaganda used to justify both anti-trans legislation and the occupation of Palestine.  

Whose suffering counts and whose is normalized? Whose suffering is framed as a regrettable but necessary consequence that is ultimately in the best interests of ‘everyone’?     

We fight for gender-affirming care and for trans youth to have the freedom to live their lives on their terms – while standing in solidarity with Palestinians – because these struggles are inextricably linked.  

About Transgender Day of Remembrance 

TDOR was created by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, to honour Rita Hester, a Black transgender woman who was murdered in 1998, and whose murder remains unsolved. It is a day for trans and gender diverse communities to come together and grieve those that we have lost to anti-trans violence and bigotry.

TDOR in Hamilton 

These TDOR events are happening in and around Hamilton: 

Gender-affirming care is an integral part of primary care.
email us at info@hthc.ca — find us as hamtranshealth on Instagram and Facebook