20th November is Transgender Day of Remembrance – an international day to grieve for people who have lost their lives to violence because of their gender. This year, that feels especially poignant.

You may have seen media coverage on the multiple “Reclaim the Night” events that have happened across the country in the last month, in the run up to the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on the 25th November. These events, organised by various women’s rights groups, aim to highlight the gender inequality that puts women – all women – in danger. The message of Reclaim the Night is to demand an end not just to violence against women, but an end to blaming the wrong people for that violence.

The movement pushes back against the admonitions of women because of what they were wearing, how they were acting, or how much they had to drink – and that therefore they should have changed their behaviour to prevent what happened. Why is it so often the case that when a woman is attacked, the blame gets shared around to everyone but the perpetrator? Why are women being blamed for the actions of a few bad men?

As the End Violence Against Women Coalition writes, the facts about violence against women and girls in the UK are stark:

• Almost one in three women will experience domestic abuse, and sexual offences are at the highest level recorded.
• One woman every four days in the UK is murdered by a partner or ex-partner.
• More than 90% of perpetrators of rape and sexual assault are known to their victims. 
• One in two rapes against women are carried out by a partner or ex-partner. 
• One in three adult survivors of rape experience it in their own home.
• Women who can’t access public funds, such as welfare support or housing assistance – due to No Recourse to Public Funds conditions – are three times more likely to experience violence.

You may wonder what this has to do with Transgender Day of Remembrance. Trans people have been talked about a lot in the news this year. After pressure group For Women Scotland convinced the Supreme Court to rule that in the Equality Act every use of the word “woman” exclusively referred to “females”, the lived experiences of trans women – legally “males” – came into sharper focus in the public arena. Some media outlets seized upon this as a strategy to divide people and create in-fighting, with GBNews and TalkTV consistently comparing trans people to predators and perverts, purely because of their gender. Many political groups used this debate to form policy during election campaigns. It has furthered a culture war, with these loud voices trying to convince the general public, without evidence, that trans people are dangerous monsters.

As a direct result of this rhetoric and the culture war around women’s rights, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the group responsible for protecting the rights of all people in the UK, have ruled that despite the above figures, the real danger to women is not men known to them or ex-partners, as the facts clearly show, but transgender women that they might encounter in women’s spaces. For a while, the people in power seemed to have unilaterally decided that the only thing they need to do to “protect women” is to segregate trans women, and that would be enough. Without doing anything at all about domestic abuse, violence against women and girls would be solved.

In August this year, the EHRC released guidance that says that all trans women should be banned from women’s spaces – including those women’s spaces that could help trans women themselves escape violence – because trans women should be considered to be “males” and some males perpetuate violence. Once again, women are being blamed for the actions of a few bad men.

This Transgender Day of Remembrance, and on International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we ask you to keep in your hearts all of the women who have lost their lives as a result of their gender – whether it was the gender they were born with or not.

If you agree that trans women are not the enemy, or you would like to learn more, please consider reading the open letter from NotInOurName.org.uk