Today we honour the lives of all the trans and non-binary people who have been killed by anti-transgender violence and discrimination.
jane fae shares her thoughts with the social work community on this day of remembrance.
What’s the absolute must have accessory for trans folk in 2025? Rainbow scarf? Leatherbound copy of the collected works of Judith Butler? Or, as we are sadly coming to realise, none of the above?
Increasingly de rigueur in online forums and on social media is the ‘go bag.’
For those unfamiliar with the term: it is a bag (or rucksack, suitcase, etc.) packed with essential items, and held ready against the possibility you might need to leave your home in an emergency. They are last line of defence against natural disaster. If you live in an earthquake zone, for example, or in a region prone to flooding. Because, when the warning siren goes off, you don’t want to be frantically searching for your passport and birth certificate, as the apocalypse barrels down on your home.
A growing number of demographics, of minorities, have taken to maintaining go bags over the last few years.
Women, always, if they have any concerns about their relationship. If red flags start to appear. Or even if they don’t. Some groups recommend all women keep a go bag up to date and hidden somewhere – much to the indignation of #notallmen.
In many countries, being the ‘wrong religion’ or being identified as having the ‘wrong ethnicity,’ makes you a target for communal violence. Again, the ‘go bag’ is very much a necessity. Wider still, being LGB, being ‘queer,’ and, of late, being trans or non-binary makes having one essential. Of course, twas ever thus.
But, being a privileged, white, middle class white woman in a relatively prosperous and progressive country, it never felt like I needed one. The very thought! The mere mention of such an idea to many of my cis friends was met with incredulity; or suspicion; or accusations of ‘snowflakery.’ For a while, I hesitated. Because bad things like a clampdown on LGBTQ+ people only happened in far off countries with second-rate economies. Like Russia. Or Kenya. Or Hungary.
A lot of people in the UK think that violence against trans people; the murder of trans people; that doesn’t happen here. Until it does.
This year, Remembering Our Dead, a resource site for those committed to commemorating Trans Day of Remembrance (TDOR), reports 418 trans individuals murdered globally in the 12 months to September 30 2024.
That’s on a par with figures from the last few years – but significantly up on pre-2018. Hardly surprising. The latest wave of anti-trans sentiment gained momentum with the elevation of Trump to a first presidency in 2017, and snowballed quickly thereafter. Red state after red state has now introduced repressive legislation around gender, sex, and sexuality. According to location it might be a criminal offence to cross-dress, to be trans, to talk about being trans or to provide medical support for trans people.
People in those states are afraid. Very afraid. The go bag industry is in overdrive.
Back in the UK, we have seen attitudes deteriorating for some while. But they got a lot worse very fast over the past couple of years; through political rhetoric; through government policy; and are showing few signs of improving with a new Labour administration.
The last couple of years have seen hate crime broadly declining for almost all groups. Except for trans folk and people of faith.
For trans people, hate crime went up 16%… and then another 11%, two years later, in 2023.
But fear not. Evidence from more recent surveys suggest the bottom dropping out of that figure. Not due to a reduction in transphobic hate crime, but because UK-based trans people are increasingly reluctant to trust the state, the police, the authorities for anything. Why waste time reporting a crime that if you don’t expect it to be followed up?
And, full circle, talk of ‘go bags’ has now well and truly crossed the Atlantic. Fewer and fewer trans people see a future for themselves in the UK.
Increasing numbers fear that transphobia may bite with such suddenness, such viciousness, that they need to be ready to run at a moment’s notice.
Pause, there.
Consider, for just one moment, what that says about this country.
Perhaps the fear is overdone. Trans joy giving way to trans paranoia. Except, it was not there five years ago. Barely there three. That says much about the ability of this country to tolerate difference, diversity.
It is brilliant that the SWU remains solid in its support for the UK’s trans community. Good, too, that it is aware of and commemorates TDOR.
Not so good – an issue that needs to be tackled in 2025 – the fact that parents supportive of their trans children have found themselves on the receiving end of visits from social services and police, accused of abuse.
The UK is not getting better for trans people. In fact, it is getting quantifiably worse. There is a long way to go. But together, let us work for a world in which the need for anyone to prepare a go bag is well and truly gone.
jane fae is a writer and a director of TransActual. She has recently published a book, Transitions: The Unheard Stories, that tells the stories of trans people transitioning.