Torrey Peters

IF YOU ARE a trans girl who knows many other trans girls, you go to church a lot, because church is where they hold the funerals. What no one wants to admit about funerals, because you’re supposed to be crushed by the melancholy of being a trans girl among the prematurely dead trans girls, is that funerals for dead trans girls number among the notable social events of a season.

How many times will a family member deadname or misgender the deceased from the pulpit, unabashed about it in his grief, peering out at this sea of weirdos who showed up unexpectedly to what he considered a family event? Did their son—er, daughter—really have all these friends? Which nice white cis person will remind the assembled mourners—a high percentage of whom are trans women themselves—that everyone must do more to save trans women of color, who are being murdered (murdered!), although this particular highly attended funeral is, of course, a suicide, because that’s how the white girls die prematurely.

Funerals remind Reese not to kill herself