Several UNM groups collaborated with the Albuquerque community to honor all the transgender people who have been victims of hate crimes during the past year.
The fourth-annual National Transgender Day Remembrance celebration, held Wednesday at Civic Plaza in Downtown Albuquerque, was celebrated nationwide in 85 cities and seven countries in memory of the 27 transgenders who have been murdered since the last day of remembrance on Nov. 20, 2001.
The day was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder in 1998 kicked off the "Remembering Our Dead" web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999.
According to Jane Landis, the event coordinator and utilization review coordinator at UNM Hospital, "what we're really memorializing is the acts of violence against transgenders."
Landis said that transgender is an umbrella term for individuals who don't comply with the normal gender roles and presentation. These individuals have a medical condition called Gender Dysphoria, in which they do not identify with their bodies or the expectations they live under.
According to the National Transgender Advocacy Web site, the word "transgender" encompasses a diverse sexual world comprised of everyone from cross-dressers and drag queens to transsexuals (those who have had sex-change operations) and "intersexes" (those who have sex organs of both genders).
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"We're born this way," said Mekah Gordon, a nationally known transgender and activist. "It's a chemical imbalance that happens in utero. This is scientifically proven."
Gordon is the director and founder of Sensitivity, Understanding and Respect through Education, a national organization that helps family and friends of transgenders to deal with the situation.
Some of the more pressing issues affecting transgenders include loss of jobs, loss of family and friends, loss of status, loss of academic status, denial of restroom access or use of facilities.
"As women we have to work harder, buy more accessories and face more discrimination," Lanis said. "Transexuality is not a choice, transition is the choice. We choose to live in our truths."
"We're not being murdered because we're transexuals. We're being murdered because of hatred."
Students at UNM also suffer with gender identity issues through the open bathroom situation in many of the dorms on campus.
There is no policy at UNM that grants specific priority or accountability for transgendered individuals on campus.
Jeremy Jaramillo, the director of UNM's Students Educating Peers About Sex, said that the program has limited resources on transgender issues.
"We see this as an opportunity to acquire information and bring it back to UNM," Jaramillo said.
The most recent and public hate crime committed against a transgender was in Newark, Calif. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, on Oct.17 Gwen Araujo, 17, had been living in her preferred gender role for over a year. It was revealed at a party that she was male and three individuals beat her, dragged her into a garage and strangled her. Araujo's body was found in a remote location about 150 miles away.
