Ignore Stonewall: Britain is a tolerant country for trans people like me

Today marks Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR). Every year on 20 November, clusters of people gather to remember the hundreds of transgender people whose lives were cut short by violence in the preceding year. In 2020, like everything else, the candles, the readings and the list of names will be Zoomed across the aether. But who are these people? It’s true that they were trans but overwhelmingly they were disadvantaged and living on the edge – often in prostitution – and mainly in the global south. It’s a far cry from the experiences of many trans people living in the relative safety of Britain.

Of the 350 people who died in the year to 30 September 2020, 82 per cent were from Latin America, including 152 from Brazil and 57 from Mexico. The stories are heartbreaking in their brevity: ‘Two people arrived riding a motorbike and one of them shot her indiscriminately while she was with a friend.’