The nation’s leading pioneer trans rights organization, the Society of Trans Women of the Philippines (STRAP), alongside political organization Ladlad Partylist 2 and advocacy group Verde Creatives, announced a crucial roundtable discussion on November 17, 2 PM at Dark Roast Coffeehouse located in 107 Maginhawa Street, Teacher's Village, Quezon City, addressing the devastating role of media misgendering and sensationalism in reporting cases of transfemicide.
Titled "MEDIA, MISGENDERING, AND MEMORY: HOW STORIES OF TRANSFEMICIDE ARE TOLD," the event, strategically timed during Transgender Awareness Week (November 13–19), just prior to the global Transgender Day of Remembrance (November 20), calls for an immediate halt to journalistic practices that reinforce judicial impunity. The coalition asserts these practices are enabled by the Philippine government's decades-long failure to pass comprehensive legislative protections.
The Crisis of Post-Mortem Erasure
The roundtable is necessitated by a severe crisis of anti-trans violence, with advocates noting that at least 50 transgender or gender nonbinary individuals have been murdered across the archipelago since 2010, a number believed to be significantly higher. STRAP highlights that the media's consistent use of former names and incorrect pronouns — known as deadnaming and misgendering — in reporting these murders constitutes a final, systemic act of violence and historical erasure.
"Every time a transpinay is murdered, the refusal of certain media outlets to use her affirmed name and gender acts as a second, systemic execution," stated a representative from STRAP. "It is the final act of erasure, enabled by the lack of Legal Gender Recognition (LGR) in this country. Our roundtable is a demand to end this dehumanizing practice, ensuring that when we honor our sisters on TDOR, we recognize their truth and hold the systems that failed them accountable."
The Call for Legislative and Journalistic Overhaul
The systemic failure is traced directly to the legislative inertia in Congress. The Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) Equality Bill has been pending for over 20 years without passage. This decades-long delay conveys a message of institutional indifference that allows discrimination and violence to flourish.
The lack of LGR legislation is specifically identified as the root cause that allows official state misgendering in police and court documents, which the media then adopts, thereby institutionalizing the erasure of the victim's identity.
Ms. Bemz Benedito, Chair of Verde Creatives and a trailblazing transgender leader and former congressional nominee for Ladlad Partylist, emphasized the political cost of inaction.
“We should not be defined by our bodies nor should our sexual orientation and gender identity define our capabilities, skills and strengths. Yet, when media sensationalizes our deaths, they strip us of that dignity. The violence we face is a direct consequence of a state that refuses to pass the SOGIESC Bill. The death toll demands immediate implementation of protective laws and a complete overhaul of how trans lives and deaths are treated in the public sphere.”
By convening during this critical week, the coalition aims to reconnect the fight for modern trans rights with the nation's indigenous history, citing the pre-colonial reverence for gender diverse spiritual leaders like asogs and babaylans, whose acceptance was suppressed by colonial forces. The fight for ethical reporting is thus framed as a fight for cultural recognition and decolonial justice.
THE COALITION DEMANDS:
The Society of Trans Women of the Philippines (STRAP), Ladlad Partylist, and Verde Creatives issue the following non-negotiable demands to the Philippine Government and the Media Industry:
To the Government and Legislature:
1. Immediate passage of the SOGIESC Equality Bill to criminalize discrimination based on SOGIE.
2. Enactment of Legal Gender Recognition (LGR) legislation for trans and intersex people.
3. Inclusion of trans women in Anti-Violence Against Women and Children (VAWC) laws and initiatives to ensure access to gender-based violence protections.
To the Media Industry:
1. Mandatory adoption of ethical reporting guidelines that require the use of the victim’s affirmed name and pronouns, prohibiting deadnaming [Image].
2. Cessation of sensationalism that focuses on graphic or irrelevant details of the victim’s personal life, instead directing coverage toward systemic failures and accountability.
Transgender rights are fundamental human rights. This truth is absolute. When we commemorate those among us whose lives were stolen by bigotry, our purpose transcends grief — it becomes invincible action. Through the ages. like all victims of systemic oppression elsewhere, we forge our collective rage into strategic decisions, into unstoppable mobilization.
To our allies: Our demands are yours; join us in this struggle and you always do, and fight shoulder-to-shoulder with us.
To those in power: Your choice is simple: acknowledge our truth, implement justice, listen and act now, or we will dismantle every obstacle you build each time you create them.
"We are not asking for a future where every transgender person can live freely and authentically. We are taking it. We will secure that victory. And we shall prevail."
