The People I Remember On This Trans Day Of Remembrance
Elisa Shupe, Lia Smith, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, and so many more names are worth remembering today.
Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day when someone like me—who reports on transgender news every day—cannot help but stop and think. In this work, I am constantly speaking with transgender people who are harmed by the systems I cover. Too often, some of those people do not make it out alive.
I wish I could show certain politicians the weekly suicide notes that reach my inbox, or the death threats that so many of us in this space receive. I wish they would care. I can’t make anyone care, but I hold onto the hope that those of you who read my work can help make this world more bearable by being the ones who do.
On this Transgender Day of Remembrance, I want to talk about the people who have been crushed by these systems and by the politics and hate that have targeted transgender people in recent years. I want to write their names again so they do not fade into the static that tries to swallow all of us in this atmosphere of vitriol and abuse. I want to name those in power who seek to drown us, and I want to hope for something better.
Here are those I am remembering today:
Lia Smith was a transgender student at Middlebury College in Vermont, a swimmer with a promising future and a passionate advocate for transgender rights. She was a double major in computer science and statistics, a member of the Chess and Japanese clubs, and an exceptionally kind presence to those who knew her.
Lia saw a world marked by injustice and did what she could to push back. When anti-transgender activist Leor Sapir appeared on campus, she joined a counter-panel of transgender students sharing their lived experiences. “We’re not trying to get into women’s spaces to be perverts. We’re just being ourselves. We don’t mean any harm to anyone,” she told the audience. She closed with a simple plea: “Know that there are people in your community who are here for you and care about you.”
Lia also became a target of anti-transgender harassment. One account, “HeCheated,” listed her diving competitions and later celebrated when her name disappeared from the Middlebury roster, deadnaming her in its posts. In that February panel, she spoke candidly about the pain she carried: “It’s really hard putting on the suit every day if you are obviously an outlier. It’s also really hard going in a locker room where you’re not welcome, and there’s really not a clear space that I should be going to.”
In October, Lia Smith took her life.
Elisa Shupe was a transgender veteran and former detransitioner who was exploited by people eager to weaponize her story against all transgender people. In early 2021, she reached out to me and several other journalists with a landmark revelation: she held 2,600 emails from some of the most influential figures in anti-transgender politics and was preparing to retransition while exposing the coordinated plan to ban gender-affirming care nationwide. Those emails became some of the clearest evidence linking far-right Christian nationalists to the founders of pseudoscientific groups like SEGM, revealing the playbook those actors used to launder religious ideology into public policy.
Elisa also struggled under the very system she helped expose. Transgender veterans routinely face barriers accessing gender-affirming care and basic support, and in the current administration those struggles have only deepened, with transgender service members targeted for removal from the military and veterans threatened with losing their care altogether.
“I don’t want to be buried anywhere on American soil. I don’t want any military honors or ceremonies to mark my death. I don’t want my ashes to be stored on American soil,” she wrote in her suicide note. “My death as a member of the third gender and transgender population does not mean you won…. You cannot erase non-binary and transgender people because you give birth to more of us each day.”
In January, Elisa Shupe took her life while draped in a transgender pride flag in the Syracuse VA parking garage.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy was a legend among transgender people. Her spirit of resistance stretches back to the Stonewall riots themselves, where she was present on June 28 and fought back as police arrested LGBTQ+ people at the bar, ultimately spending that night in jail. That spirit never dimmed—she went on to found numerous public-benefit organizations, including Angels of Care, which connected trans women seeking work with gay men with AIDS who needed support, and the House of gg, a major retreat where transgender people could gather to learn, live, and organize together.
She was also an unflinching critic of transgender erasure within the Stonewall narrative. As she wrote in her book, “I don’t give a shit whether they acknowledge or know about me, but those gays and lesbians were ashamed to be seen with us, and they still want us erased. So for my gurls, it’s as if Stonewall never happened because it didn’t change anything for us.” Trump would go on to erase all mention of transgender people from Stonewall National Monument this year.
Miss Major passed away with her friends and family in October.
There are countless more transgender people who are no longer with us today who were here when this year began. So many more deserve to be remembered—people who changed us, supported us, and made their mark on our lives. Every transgender person, I would guess, can name at least a few who are no longer here. It’s a grief we carry together. But we also carry their light. My hope is that we hold onto that light, remember them fiercely, and use what they left behind to guide us toward something better.
Sherrie James. Died of stomach cancer some 6 years back, had never told her father. She found welcome and friendship at our church, though. Even one who had dead-named her in life, used her chosen name after her death. One small step. I'll not forget her grace.
I am crushed on this day every year. My daughter doesn't even want me to acknowledge it to her because she is young and finds it painful and terrifying. That's ok, I will remember by myself for now because it helps keep me focused on keeping her and her friends alive. God let all of these children and adults make it through this time of horror and oppression by having us surround as many as we can with love and care. Thank you, Erin, for your thoughtful observance.