NC State is celebrating Transgender Awareness Week to raise visibility of transgender and gender nonconforming people, address issues that transgender individuals face, educate the public and advocate and take action. 

Events on campus include a “Cultural Values about Gender and Violence in the Trans* Community” workshop, Transgender Day of Remembrance which will commemorate transgender individuals who were murdered during the past year and a film screening that discusses gender identity and sexuality in indigenous communities. 

The Transgender Day of Remembrance is the pinnacle of the week. It is a vigil where the names of the transgender individuals who lost their lives are read and remembered by those in attendance.  Transgender Day of Remembrance was started in 1999 by trans advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman of color who was brutally murdered in Allston, Massachusetts on Nov. 28, 1998. 

“The Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence,” Smith said, “I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people — sometimes in the most brutal ways possible — it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered and that we continue to fight for justice.” 

Hester’s death also inspired a web-based project called “Remembering Our Dead,” a site dedicated to honoring murdered transgender individuals due to transphobia.