This article includes descriptions of anti-trans violence and may be triggering for some readers. Those seeking support my contact Education on Queer Issues Project (EQuIP), and Yellow House, Empower Me, and TELUS Health One. For those seeking immediate assistance, Campus Security & Emergency Services can be reached at (613) 533-611.
In times of mourning, art acts as solace for the transgender community.
To honour transgender lives lost to anti-trans violence, Queen’s Education on Queer Issues Project (EQuIP), TransFamily Kingston, and ReelOut YGK collaborated in organizing the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), held in Market Square on Nov. 20.
Transgender activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith started the tradition in honour of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was murdered in 1998. TDOR is time to mourn transgender people who lost their lives to violence, homicide, and suicide. The day is a commitment from the community to protect trans community members.
Shannon Gendron, a 2SLGBTQ+ psychotherapist at Queen’s and speaker at the event, emphasized trans hope, imagining a world where hate no longer cuts short the lives of transgender people.
“Trans hope tells us someday there will be a world where trans love stories will outnumber obituaries. Where trans eulogies will be filled with all the fullness and magnitude and beauty of a life so fully lived and not cut short by the punctuation of hate,” Gendron said.
“I could never do justice to contain all the wild depths and magnitudes and inner universes of our lost trans beloveds.”
Gendron encouraged attendees to remember loved ones by tenderly whispering their names. Trans lives deserve to be remembered with reverence Gendron told the crowd.
For Ren Challacombe, director of the Spectrum Voices Choir, the day is significant. Challacombe reported carrying the weight of trans lives lost to violence, and hoped the day demonstrated the need to act. Challacombe personally celebrates trans lives through art.
“I see trans lives being celebrated, a lot of it is through art. It’s through acts of self-declaration, that can be anything from an outfit that makes you feel amazing or changing your name in a way that makes you feel like you for the very first time and having the people around you love and embrace that,” Challacombe said.
Challacombe learned to express themselves through singing. They set out to develop the Spectrum Voices Choir, a group for 2SLGBTQ+ singers to uplift the voices of queer people in the Kingston community.
Hope for transgender people is at the centre of everything for Challacombe.
“Trans hope is in everything we do. It’s in every celebration of a birthday, or of somebody sharing a new name with you,” Challacombe said.
“I believe that trans hope is falling in love making art and laughing with friends. I think that trans hope is also our survival, that we need things that make life worth living, not just fighting for survival,” Challacombe added.
Hill Werth, an artist and teacher at the Kingston School of Art, couldn’t predict the significance art would have on their life.
“I truly believe that if it wasn’t through creating and through my art, I don’t think I would be here at this point in my life,” Werth said.
The need to navigate everyday microaggressions is challenging and exhausting. The constant need to educate people takes a toll on Werth but doesn’t stop them from building a community.
One of Werth’s personal favourite works, “Hate Has No Home” is prominently displayed in several window fronts on Princess St. The piece promotes a safe space for all members of the Kingston community.
“I thought it was a step beyond putting a rainbow sticker or rainbow heart in the window. Because it’s all-encompassing to marginalized groups of individuals,” Werth said.
Werth intends for art to help people recognize and celebrate their similarities rather than focus on their differences.
“As much hate as there is going around, there is a lot more love,” Werth said.
Tags
ally, Lives, Remembering, Trans
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