Yesterday was the Transgender Day of Remembrance in Amsterdam. The official day is today but it was held yesterday in order to get noticed as much as possible. Which is still needed. A big part of this day is remembering the dead but it’s also to make the people more aware of us and especially the lack of rights we have all over the world.

People were to meet at the COC in Amsterdam at 3pm and at 4pm we were to leave to a memorial monument. Everyone who wanted to could grab a white helium-filled balloon that had a string with a tag attached. On those tags were the names of the transgender people that were murdered in the past year, their place of birth, their age, and their cause of death… If known, as not always all data was properly reported.

The deaths were often brutal. The ‘mildest’ ones were where people were shot in the head, but others died from multiple stab wounds, being burned alive, dismembered, decapitated, ran over and smashed with a block of concrete. It’s pretty horrific to realize that every other day this still happens somewhere in the world, and those are only the ones we know of. It’s a frightening thought. While I realize I live in one of the safer parts of the world (there are no reported trans hate crimes in The Netherlands since 2007) it is still a thought that lingers in the back of my head.

Once everyone had arrived at the monument there were several speeches held by people invested in the trans community. There was someone from the city council, the leader from the trans rights movement in the Philippines, and more but I cannot really remember who they all were right now but their words affected me greatly. A point was made to tell everyone to please become more visible to make people know we exist and deserve the same rights as any other individual. I cried during most of this which only got worse when the part was reached where everyone would go to the microphone, one by one, recite the information of the victim listed on the tag of their balloon, and let it go into the air. There were a lot of them. Too many. And as was made clear, they weren’t even from all the victims of the past year, that number is even greater.

The sadness was overwhelming but I’m still glad I went. I’m also glad my boyfriend was with me because there is no way I could have gone through all of this on my own. It definitely left an impact.

We left early to avoid traffic problems, it starting at such an awkward time, so we ate something there and looked around a bit before heading to the hall we were all supposed to meet. I didn’t expect a lot of people to show up but I was mistaken. There were quite a few people there, both transgender and relatives.

There was coffee and tea for everyone and shortly someone came to usher us into an adjacent room which looked very much like a movie theater. Well, at least we were comfy. :) After a brief introduction the first guy started doing his slide ‘n speech thing. He spoke kinda softly so I don’t think my dad missed the bigger part of it, but the guy really only gave a general overview of the process in its entirety, from diagnosis to hormones to surgery.

The second guy was a lot easier to understand, it was an older man, bearded, that made the occasional joke. His main focus seemed to be around the hormones and how it would affect you. He also talked about the danger in acquiring hormones from the internet, and the poor quality thereof even if it is a valid drug.

When he was done we were told there was someone from TransVisie who wanted to say a few things. She was a transgender herself and I assume talked about how TransVisie is there to help both transgers and their relatives deal with issues or just find other people to talk to, beyond the more official places to go to. I say assume because she was so nervous about talking in front of people it was very hard to hear her and between every sentence there was this very awkward silence. It was a very sad display, she may have needed to practice this first.

Then it was breaktime and Lynda and I took this time to go back to the restaurant and find us something to drink besides tea. We decided on Dr Pepper and bought some chocolate too.

When it was time to go back there was one more person going to talk, which was a surgeon who, naturally, talked about the surgical procedures and everything surrounding that. They mentioned having been to Thailand recently and altering their technique somewhat. It was asked by someone if they also saw Dr. Suporn, one of the most well-known surgeons in this field but they said they haven’t been to his practice yet.

While I already knew most of the topics talked about it was still nice to hear it from the actual official source and it was of course also nice that both my parents now have a better idea and understanding of what to expect