On 20th November each year, vigils take place across the world to remember those lost to anti transgender violence every year. This year the list stretches to more than one person for every single day. 375 trans people have been killed since November 20 2021. It’s grim reading. So many are in their 20s. These are not just names on a page. They are people with feelings, hopes, dreams whose lives were taken from them as a result of prejudice and discrimination.

Transgender Day of Remembrance started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith to remember Rita Hester who had been killed the year before.

A good few years ago now, I was in London with some young people and, at their request,  spent a rainy Saturday evening that we could have spent in a warm theatre standing in Trafalgar Square in the freezing rain at a hate crime vigil.  Not long after that, one of those young people came out as transgender.  He was under no illusion about the prejudice he faced, yet he knew that the only way he could have a fulfilling life was to be open about his true self. That takes incredible courage and requires our sensitivity and support. Every time we open our mouths on this subject, or get ready to hit our keyboards, we need to think about the human cost of our words. If in doubt, be extra kind.

In the UK today, trans people face a barrage of prejudice and discrimination wherever they turn. Anti-trans activists dominate newspaper columns and broadcast interviews while complaining of being silenced. Helen Belcher wrote about the current climate on this site the other day.

Of course, what’s striking in this “visibility week” is the complete absence of trans people. Instead we had to rely on folk like Sal Brinton and Brian Paddick to do the heavy lifting in the Lords – which they did superbly, as they always do.

The net effect – well, we see that in the numbers for the Trans Day of Remembrance. While murders of trans people in the UK are infrequent, they still happen. But killings of trans people across the world are at an all-time high. Normalising language that demeans others always results in increasing violence against those others.

One of the reasons Liberal Democrats exist is to create a society where:

in which all people share the same basic rights, in which they live together in peace and in which their different cultures will be able to develop freely. Upholding these values of individual and social justice, we reject all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, ethnicity, caste, heritage, class, religion or belief, age, disability, sex, gender or sexual orientation’ and oppose all forms of entrenched privilege and inequality.

When we see a group of people under attack simply for being who we are, it is imperative that we strive to make the world better for them. We have to pick a side. Standing by and watching a deeply damaging and abusive “debate” in which the world gets progressively less safe for trans people is simply not an option.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings