(This is a guest post by valued commenter Sister Golden Bear.)
As I mentioned in the comments, today is Transgender Day of Visibility, held every March 31, intended to honor and celebrate transgender and gender non-conforming people (GNC) â both those visible and those invisible.
It started a decade ago but only took off a few years ago, and is intended as a complement to the annual Nov. 20 Transgender Day of Remembrance, which honors the memories of that yearâs victims of anti-trans violence â usually always all trans women, the vast majority of them trans women of color, in particular Black trans women. For years, TDOR was the only national/international event for trans people, and while it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, itâs also, needless to say, more than a bit depressing. Hence TDOV, which focuses on the living.
Itâs all too rare that trans/GNC people have chance to celebrate who we are, and itâs also a chance to express our defiance of attempts to eradicate us from public life (the Talibaptists have a literal five-point plan to do so, and under the Trump administration, and red state governments, Â theyâve made significant progress on several fronts).
But perhaps the most important aspect is being visible. These days roughly 37 percent of Americans know someone whoâs trans/GNC. Think you donât know someone trans, well you actually probably do. Thereâs still an unfortunately-huge number of us who never leave the closet, and for those who do, thereâs can often be a desire to fly under the radar, to blend in. For those in red states, this can be a matter of literal survival. But itâs also because â unlike coming out as LGB, which tells who people who you are â coming out as trans, invariably puts the focus on who you were. At least for a binary trans woman like me, i.e. Iâm someone who prefers to be seen as a woman whoâs trans.
Guest Post: Transgender Day of VisibilityPost + Comments (88)