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Durango marks Transgender Day of Remembrance

Group hopes to raise awareness about transgender discrimination
Dr. Jude Harrison speaks at the Transgender Day of Remembrance on Saturday evening at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Durango.

The memory of all the transgender people who have lost their lives was honored Saturday at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.

A group of about 25 people gathered at the church to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance, a national event.

“Light is returning, even though this is the darkest hour,” the group sang.

Since last November, about 270 members of the transgender community worldwide were lost to murder and suicide, said Dr. Jude Harrison, co-facilitator of Four Corners Support for Transgender People, Allies and Relatives. Within the United States this year, 22 transgender people were murdered.

The total number of murders is likely low because Russia and Asia did not report any deaths, Harrison said.

This year, the local event focused on making the world safer for transgender people and understanding how to make them feel respected.

A transgender person is someone whose birth sex is the opposite of the person they know themselves to be inside, Harrison explained.

“Understanding what’s it’s like is hard, especially if you have never met a transgender person,” he said.

But there are ways to help them feel more respected by accepting the person’s gender whether it makes any sense to you are not and using the pronoun the individual prefers.

“Every time someone calls me ‘he,’ it’s this mini celebration,” said Harrison, who is a transgender man.

It is also important not to disclose whether someone is transgender without permission.

“It’s not always safe to be out as being transgender,” he said

For Peter Dybing, coming to the event was about standing in a place of compassion.

“All that one has to do to be in that place is to be willing to be uncomfortable,” he said.

This event and others like it are evidence to Colleen Collins of the progress American society has made over the last 15 years, since a documentary about her son’s transition from female to male called “Just Call Me Kade” was made.

“Things have really gone fast. Not to say there is not a lot of territory to cover,” she said.

Suicidal thoughts are a common struggle for many transgender people, and the suicide attempt rate for transgender people is about 42 percent, Harrison said.

Kade was no different, but he found peace when he was about 16, Collins said.

The discrimination that transgender people face contributes to the problem. When being transgender becomes a nonissue, the suicide rate will become that of any other population, he said.

mshinn@durangoherald.com



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