One of the most important things for a trans person is their identity. We live in a world that is constantly, doggedly, trying to strip that away from us. We face pressure over this throughout our lives — and often end up losing that battle after death.
In 1993, a transgender woman named Lauren Diana Wilson took her life. Her family claimed her body, and later held a funeral. From what I was able to learn about it, she was buried in male clothing, with her hair clipped. Her parents listed her as male and under her birth name — known in trans circles as one’s “deadname.” They kept the event private, so that no one in her life could attend.
Those of us who were her friends held our own memorial, and still do not know where Lauren was laid to rest by a family that did not care for the person she became.
I wish I could say that Lauren’s story is an uncommon one, but I have heard all-too-many tales of trans people buried by families under birth names and dressed in attire matching their birth gender, let alone the even bigger issue of newspapers and police reports stripping away the identity of the deceased under the guise of “accuracy.”
I recently ended up at a discussion about transgender people, our “deadnames” — that is, the name we were given at birth and may have long-since given up — and obituaries. The panel revealed some of the biases within the nature of obituaries and other reporting on transgender deaths.
So often, when a newspaper tells the story of a transgender person after they pass, they rely on police reports and immediate family to provide details of a person’s life. As you can imagine from the example of Lauren Wilson’s life above, the story of a trans person’s life can often be stripped away, with our lived experiences and preferences stripped away by those who may not have had our best interests in mind.
Likewise, police reports may be only going by available resources: a piece of legal ID, a set of fingerprints, and so on. They may not be privy to the whole story of a person when they report on our passing. This is especially true in the more-violent stories that permeate trans society.
To me, it becomes an issue of accuracy versus truth. It may indeed be accurate, for example, to include the name I was born under, answered to, and used on legal documents until I was in my early 20s — but this isn’t exactly my truth. That surely isn’t me, and isn’t my identity now. It’s not the person who pens these words, or has been under this name and gender for the more than half of this life.
Of course, I am mindful that an obituary — indeed much of what happens after one shuffles off their mortal coil — is no longer for the husk of a body left behind, but for those who survive. In this discussion of obituaries, an argument was put forth: How someone who knew me in high school would know that I passed, given the name in the yearbook is so very different form the one I wear now?
To me, that’s largely irrelevant for one big reason: Those who knew me then — and who I still may maintain at least a nodding acquaintance — are aware of my transition, and know who I am now. Those who somehow missed the memo are not likely to be the people I would care to know about me alive or dead: That bully from freshman year who is now spending time in San Quentin State Penitentiary, for example.
I’m not sure there’s a complete answer, but I do know that if someone were to try and pen what I’d consider a truth obituary of a transgender person, it would be just as easy to discuss their transition in language that makes it clear that whatever gender or name they were born with is not the “accurate” one.
To be trans is to reveal deep inner truths, and shed an erroneous gender assignment. Who we were seen as by others up to a given part of our lives is not the sum of our lives, and in my opinion misses the whole point of being transgender in the first place.
We are the authors of our lives, and our identities matter.
Gwen Smith is who she is. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith.com.