Elias Renaud, seen outside St. James Cathedral in Chicago on Nov. 12, is a transgender male and has drawn up a living will.
As the death care industry grapples with changing cultural attitudes and questions on how to respectfully lay to rest those who identify as trans or nonbinary, a South Side-based LGBTQ community center called the Brave Space Alliance is set to launch the final portion of its Dignity Project this month, completing an umbrella of services that aim “mainly for violence prevention, and to perpetuate dignity in our communities,” said interim CEO Jae Rice, whose pronouns are he/they.
“Deadnaming refers to when you refer to a trans or a nonbinary person by a name that they no longer go by. Often this is their birth name, or it may be their legal name. And this happens either on purpose or accidentally — intention sometimes doesn’t matter,” said Aster Gilbert, manager of training and the public education institute at Center on Halsted, a community center that advocates for LGBTQ health and well-being.
In 2021, the Illinois Vital Records Division of the state health department added a new option to its system: an “X” gender marker in death certificates, which prints as nonbinary. “Many funeral directors will go with the family of origins’ wishes, which often means that a trans person is misgendered, deadnamed, dressed as the gender that they did not identify with during their viewing and listed like that in their obituary,” Kelley said. “So one of the things that my work is trying to do is to normalize thinking about what you want your death and after death to look like.”
it's nice that we live in a society where someone using your old name is the worst thing about your day. like, you aren't worried about starving or walking 5 miles for clean water, just terrified that someone might call you tony instead of tina. 😱
Gender dysphoria is treatable.
Really sick of hearing about the 'hard knock life' of gender dysphorics.