Caitlyn Jenner poses for the cover photo of the July 2015 issue of Vanity Fair. Photo courtesy of vanityfair.com

Transgender awareness is critical in today’s society, due to the vast amount of hatred directed towards the transgender community. In an effort to combat this negativity, November is transgender awareness month. This is a time for people to take the initiative to learn about how they can be more supportive of  the transgender community.

I am a daily browser of social media like most young adults, so I am saddened by all of the transphobia I see being posted. I remember logging onto Facebook after Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair photoshoot and reading various posts about her on my homepage. People I went to high school with said she wasn’t a real woman and some people were misgendering her or saying vulgar things in the comments.

Tumblr is one website that still surprises me with the amount of bullying I see. Tumblr is a social media site where you can create a blog and post personal things like pictures or write about anything you want. I frequently check in on a friend of mine who lives across the country and is transitioning. I’m not joking when I say he gets hate filled messages daily.

Some of the comments range from “You don’t look like a guy, you just look like a freak” to “How does your girlfriend think you are a real man?”

Some people would tell him to just turn off the anonymous question function, but so many people dealing with transitioning go to people like my friend for advice or applaud him for how far he has come. By turning off this function, he would be losing a huge support system.

But my friend isn’t the only one getting hate from people. Out of all the blogs I follow that have transitioning individuals, I have seen them all receive at least one hateful message.

This bullying leads to suicide, ignorance and in some cases, murder. How would you feel if you were born into the wrong body and had to deal with the anxiety of just trying to live your life as the person you want to be on a daily basis?

Comments from some GOP presidential candidates don’t help raise awareness either. According to the Huffington Post, Ben Carson stated “transgender people should get their own bathrooms because they make everyone else uncomfortable.”

Comments like this only add fuel to the fire for transgender safety. According to transgenderstudent.org, the rate of murder for trans women is one in 12.

It is truly sickening how many transgender individuals are murdered. If you go to tdor.info, you can see a detailed list of the individuals who have been murdered, including their age, location and how they died. The list as of Saturday, Nov. 7 is at 73 individuals.

Reading through the list, a lot of transgender women were murdered in Brazil this year. Some statistics shocked me to the point where I had to take a break from writing this article. One woman was murdered by decapitation and another woman was killed by the Brazilian police.

What made me the most angry was seeing all the young victims who were under 18 years of age, the youngest being 13. I believe there are some transgender men on the list too, but due to the language barrier in some of the articles it was hard to find out the exact information.

However, Brazil isn’t the only country at fault — some of these ghastly murders happened closer to home. Out of the 73 murders, 14 happened in the United States.

UND is participating in transgender awareness month by holding a candlelight ceremony in remembrance of the transgender individuals who have lost their lives this past year.

It will take place at Christus Rex at 8 p.m. on Nov. 16. At the ceremony, a candle will be lit for each victim while their name and age is read aloud.

While this event will be undoubtedly emotional, it is important to remember these people lost their lives simply because others didn’t agree with who they wanted to be.

Acceptance of the transgender community needs to happen sooner rather than later, because not one more person should lose their life because they were born in the wrong body.

Becca Devine is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected]