TDOR 2025

[Trigger warnings: transphobia; physical/psychological/emotional violence; death.]

Today is Trans Days Of Remembrance. 

This year, given the actual war that the fascist Trump administration is leading against our community, it is a sadder and more important day than ever to remember. 

I’m one of the lucky ones — at least, for now. I live in a State that allows me to choose my gender-marker on personal ID/driver’s license and protects my rights to gender-affirming care; I can often not only compete as an openly trans nonbinary athlete but be recognized & awarded fairly, too — partly also thanks to my own grass-roots activism & advocacy, which I can fortunately do here without too much risk of personal harm. I even got my “sex change” approved by the Italian authorities. 

I am keenly aware of, and grateful for, my good fortune and privileges compared to other trans (& queer in general) folks. 

This good fortune, though, did not come for free. It came at a high cost. Like for many other trans (& queer in general) people, it came at the cost of leaving a lot behind, of moving far away, of being rejected & estranged from my own family of origin. 

Yesterday, I had one of the rare phone calls with my mother, returning her call from last week for my birthday. It was going quite well until she misgendered me, using “she” pronouns. I let it go a couple of times, but at the third or fourth iteration, I gently interrupted her and reminded her that I use “they” or “he” pronouns”, telling her she could pick whichever was easier for her between “they” or “he” but definitely not “she” pronouns. Despite me having told my mother about my pronouns and gender journey for the past four years or so — or, at least, told her what I could considering how she ostracized the topic every time I brought it up — she still tried to justify her mis-gendering blaming me for having told her (& my sister) “out of the blue”, blaming me for not having shown her/them the process “from A to Z”, as she put it. She even said that she & my sister are afraid that I have been “brainwashed into being trans” (her words).

At that point, I lost it. I tried to remind her of all the signs that had been there since I was a child, throughout my youth, about me being, or trying to be/show myself as, a boy. But she refused to acknowledge any of it. Instead, she started blaming me for not being present when my father was ill and dying. That’s when I had to hang up on her and block her on my phone (again). 

The thought that my mother & sister think I’ve been “brainwashed into being trans” is appalling and shocking to me for several reasons. 

First of all, from an objective viewpoint not related to myself, it makes me really worry about the sources of (dis-)information that my mother & sister are drawing upon — are they reading/listening to the bullshit that transphobic people like JK Rowling spit out? And what is even more concerning is that my mother & sister are two intelligent, highly-educated women with university degrees who live in big, cosmopolitan cities, speak several languages and have been to many countries: if intelligent, well-educated, worldly people like them can believe the bullshit of folks being “brainwashed into being trans”, then where can we even start to fix things? 

The other reasons why my mother’s comment upset me so much yesterday are intensely personal. On the one hand, it’s once again proof of her not seeing me and of her never having seen me for who I was (& am): she ignored all the signs, always. And while I grant that neither she nor anyone else (including me) had the tools when I was growing up to understand specifically that I was (& am) trans, she (& most people in my family of origin) tried their utmost to change me into their idea of what I, as a girl/woman, should be. Even if they, or none of us, could really understand or name that I was trans, loving me truly should have led them to let me be me — which they ostracized for decades and my only solution was to escape. On the other hand, my mother’s (& sister’s) worry that I had been “brainwashed into being trans” shows how she/they still cannot see me as an intelligent, fully grown, independent, discerning adult. My mother (& sister) is/are, yet again, infantilizing me — which is a typical weapon of the oppressors against the oppressed and marginalized. 

My mother’s (& sister’s) continuing refusal to see & accept me for who I really am is a way of trying to kill my transness. So, while I am keenly aware of the stark difference between physical vs. psychological/emotional harm, I do want to remind us all that violence and oppression come in many different forms. Not recognizing our transness, or our queerness, denying our capacity to self-define ourselves, erasing our civil rights (chosen/correct gender-markers, access to gender-affirming care, recognition to compete as athletes, etc.) are also ways to try and kill us. When we are fighting for these rights, we are truly fighting for our lives.