Tamara Dominquez. Thirty-six years old. Cause of death: run over by a vehicle several times.
Mercedes Williamson. Seventeen years old. Cause of death: beaten.
All three women identified as transgender.
These acts of violence will be addressed Friday in the Indiana Memorial Union as part of Transgender Day of Remembrance.
“I think it’s worth noting that transgender people face an incredibly high — disproportionately high — amount of violence, and that includes domestic violence but also just violence for being themselves in public,” said Jamie Bartzel, office supervisor of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Student Support Services.
Transgender Day of Remembrance is an annual international event memorializing victims of anti-transgender violence.
This year’s local event was organized by two student groups: Gender Warriors, which deals with transgender awareness and activism, and Stop the Kyriarchy, which focuses on several social issues, including race, LGBT rights and disability.
The annual event began in 1999, a year after the death of Rita Hester, a transgender woman whose murder still hasn’t been solved, according to the event’s website.
Andrew Branham, treasurer of SKY who identifies as non-binary and prefers they and them pronouns, said they think it’s important for the transgender community to have this space to address the violence they face, but said they think the experience also benefits the general community.
“But also I think it’s important for the larger community, not just the trans community, to see that there is a list of over 270 names,” Branham said. “This is a problem that’s affecting people who live on campus, who live in the community, who are your friends and neighbors.”
This year’s event will begin with speakers at 6 p.m. Friday in State Rooms East and West in the IMU.
Participants will then march to the courthouse for a candlelight vigil where the names of victims of transgender violence will be read.
A representative of Indiana Queer Prisoner Solidarity, a project that connects volunteers to LGBT individuals in Indiana prisons, will also speak, according to the website.
“In addition to high levels of violence, trans people are also subject to high rates of incarceration, sometimes because they’re profiled, sometimes because people are violent toward them, and then they respond and then they’re the ones that are arrested,” Bartzel said. “In some areas, the only jobs trans folk can find are as sex workers, where it’s easiest for them to find work, and since sex work is criminalized in the U.S., then sex workers are criminals.”
Josie Wenig, an IU junior and member of Gender Warriors, helped plan the event. Wenig identifies as non-binary and prefers they and them pronouns.
“We really try to have the event focus on the systems that make it possible for so many people to die every year, how oppression is interpersonal but also is something that happens on a larger scale,” Wenig said.
Wenig said they hope people won’t just focus on how sad the event is but on how to solve the problems transgender people face.
“I don’t want people to come out to the event and be like ‘Oh, that’s so sad. That sucks that trans people have to deal with that,’” Wenig said. “I want people to come out of it feeling like they’re invested in changing these systems even if they aren’t transgender."
This article uses they/them pronouns to respect the gender identity of Andrew Branham and Josie Wenig.
