Transgender Day of Remembrance: The Lives We Lost, The Reality We Face, and Honoring Lia Smith

0:00 Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Those of you that are unaware of this day, this started back in 1999 as a candlelight visual that was organized by Gwendolyn Ann Smith to honor Rita Hester who is a black trans female who was murdered in November 1998. Originally this came from the San Fran Bay Area as an annual event to remember all transgender and gender nonconforming people who were lost to violence and since then has been has grown to be an observed day held on November 20th, which is the anniversary of Chanel Pickett's murder in 1995. Now the HRC the human rights campaign, they They obviously advocate for a lot of LGBTQ plus rights So they have some stats here about the transgender community since so since 2013 Seven and ten trans and gender non -conforming victims were people of color eight and ten were transgender women about six and ten were black transgender women. And 71

1:33 % were killed by a firearm. In the last 12 months since the last day of remembrance, 43 .9 % of the LGBTQ plus community, specifically the trans community has stated that they have experienced discrimination based on their sex, gender or sexual orientation. And 57 .6 % said they were less open about their identities compared to a year ago, and 58 .5 % said they were less visible in their daily life than a year ago. So that's a lot. Let me pause right there. Alex, any thoughts or any questions from the chats? I'll wait for questions in the chat. They're on a delay, always behind us. I will say it's always important for us to take kind of a minute. Right. To take kind of a minute to just talk about stuff like this.

2:37 You know, I think it's I think it's an important thing for us to do. I'm glad this kind of lined out well for us. And so, yeah, I think it's it's an important thing to think about. It's often a population that we don't think about. in our daily lives. And again, I think that that when we talk about the greater, you know, topic of violence in our in our country, we need it to take special note of how many trans people experience violence, domestic violence, hate based violence, etc. Yeah. Some other some other stats that I've seen are trans people are four times more likely to be victims of a hate crime. And transgender women have the largest pay gap of any minority in our country. They make about 40 cents less for every dollar than like a cis male. So. The the stats are not they're not great, so. Yeah, it's this day Definitely kind of sucks. Obviously there are websites out there that actually track

4:07 every single person that Has passed away in the past 12 months and kind of honors their their memory. You can learn about them read their story Which is really great. So I kind of urge everyone to do that There is one that I do want to talk about specifically because I found this one I want to say a few months ago or maybe a few weeks ago maybe a month ago this actually popped up on my social media and so this was a post on social media that was meant to honor this person's life I had noticed that there were thousands of comments And obviously I went through the comments and the majority of the comments were celebrating the fact that this person had killed themselves and rejoicing. And it was meant to be like a thing honoring this person's life.

5:06 So I kind of got to know this story pretty well. But diving into it, Leah Smith, she was a double major in computer science and statistics. She was also an advocate for the trans community. She spoke on panels trying to advance healthcare for the transgender community. And until this year's NCAA ban on trans athletes, Leah was a proud member of the women's swimming and diving team. She was active in multiple... college clubs, including the chess club, the Japanese club, and also women in computer science. Leah encouraged other trans trans students and said, quote, There are people in your community that are here for you and care about you. I'm the thing that is really frustrating to me is that this person was obviously very bright. They were trying to make the world a better place, getting a double major, very hard to do. Leah Smith took her life a few months after a transphobic website targeted her. I'm not going to mention the website name,

6:40 but essentially they dead named her, which is when you use that person's like birth name that doesn't match their gender. And then kind of called out and pointed a lot of information out about Leah Smith caused a lot of hate towards her. And then also that went on to social media. And she kind of got bombarded with a lot of hate messages and everything like that. So This group targeted this person a few months later She was found Dead, I believe in a cornfield and her death was ruled a suicide, which is very very sad And this is also a spoiler alert. So next week we are going to be talking about Riley bitchy gains. Wait, that's not our middle name. I'm sorry Riley gains who instead of training more ran her mouth and got fifth, and she will not let the world fucking forget about that. But we're going to cover that story next week. Yes, yes, we are, because, oh, boy, she's she's getting some crap and she deserves the crap she's getting.

7:59 And we don't like her. Jay, thank you for doing that topic. Thank you for sharing those. Again, I think that these are are important. I think it's good for us to take time to do these. And and ultimately, you know. People let people live their lives. This is the thing I think that bugs me the most. I and maybe maybe it's. I don't understand the rightly gains of the world. I just don't. And the reason is, is like, why do you care this much? Right. Like. Like why do you care? Okay, like what's the deal? Oh, I get it. Okay, I fucking know I I've met people like this. I'm I've met them, but I still don't understand why they care this much She's a fucking sore fucking loser. She lost and she's pissed about it, which So this I don't even this is yeah specifically with the right we're gonna cover this next week So I'm only gonna talk with this for a minute She tied for fifth with the trans athlete on her team Which means the person who won? The people who came in first second third and fourth We're all biological women Right all of them

9:32 What do you just alright I'm done with that now We'll talk about this next week. Well, we're going to we'll do that one because it's going to be funny. Yeah. Leave leave some stuff down in the comments below.