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International Transgender Day of Remembrance

I've been assumed to be both MtF and FtM at various points, but I am not trans, even if that feels like a narrow miss sometimes.

Certainly, I have seen how angry and vicious people can be when confronted with ideas and expressions of gender that do not reinforce their own identities, and it's scary as shit that constrains us all, whether we know it or not.

From the GLBTQ memorial in Dalinghurst in Sydney, Australia.

It reads:

"We remember you who have suffered or died
at the hands of others,
Women who have loved women;
Men who have loved men;
And all those who have refused
the roles others
have expected us to play.
Nothing shall purge
your deaths from our
memories".

The memorial sits in a park, near Sydney's oldest synagogue, and the park is across the street from the Old Gaol, along the wall of which prostitutes -- mostly male and/or trans -- sell themselves at night.

Darlinghurst was where I spent most of my time in Sydney, for reasons that are complicated and involve pilgrimage. But it was also a beautiful place, that I fell in love with quickly in its own right. I walked along that wall, by that memorial, nearly every day for a month, and it was impossible, let me tell you, not to say those words each and every time.