Trans Awareness Week

By Lily Bresette

The term Transgender is used as an umbrella term that means a person gender identity is different from their assigned sex at birth. In the US there's about 1.4 million Americans who identify as transgender. They are an important part of the LGBTQ community who have had to jump through twice as many hoops to get to the same place as someone else in there community Each year in the month of November, Trans Awareness week is recognized and used as a learning tool to inform and educate communities about the history and challenges transgender individuals have faced, along with creating visibility by sharing stories of individuals. It’s also a prerequisite to Trans Remembrance Day where we remember victims of trans related violence. It’s an important week and important day. What I’m hoping you get from this is that you learn a bit more around history and how to be a better ally, while encouraging you to go out yourself and read more stories and future educate yourself .

There are so many things you can do to help be an ally to trans people in general, like vote and push for change, while educating yourself, but you can also make small changes, with your behavior and educating yourself. normalizing starting pronouns is a very good place to start individually, it’s a small change in your basic introduction that harms no one and helps normalizing starting pronouns. An example would be: “How are you, my name Lily and I use she/them.”. Some main ones are she/her/hers: Him/he/his: Them/they/theirs. Some people use two like She/them, while some might not even prefer while others might use some uncommon ones, there are multiple sets if you want to look more into it, google is your friend here. You can also ask people what their pronouns are if they don’t mention it, kind of the same thing as before just a quick “remind me what your pronouns are?”. These small changes in behavior help create a more welcoming atmosphere along with avoiding discomfort on both ends of a conversation. With pronouns it is also good to mention that you shouldn’t call someone “it”. Plain and simple is just degrading. When you call someone “ it” , you are stating them as something that is not human, that’s not normal and that’s just really hurtful and harmful. There could be an instance where you might not know someone’s pronouns and it might not be a good time to ask but you should not use it in its place , them/theirs pronouns could be used, or you could also just use their name.

While talking to someone and they come out to you as transgender or it’s known, you should also remember a few things. It’s not your business to know about their medical needs around it like surgery or hormonal, it’s not your business to ask about their private parts and what’s there. It’s not your business to ask about their dead name if they have one, and quick note in deadnaming, dead naming is basically using a name that doesn’t match up with that person’s current gender identity and is not the name they go by. Some people when they transition decide to change their name or go by something else to feel more comfortable in their body. It’s important to them and you should respect that. And probably the most important it’s not your business to share to other people that they are transgender unless you have been give clear consent to do so. It could be unsafe for them if you tell them about their gender status, it could make them feel uncomfortable if you tell people they didn’t want knowing, and it’s also just not your place to share that type of information.

Another area to learn in is history. Transgender people are in a lot of history around the world, they are present in so many cultures and have been apart of so many important events, especially in the 20th and 21st centuries. Transgender people are such and important part of queer history, especially trans people of color- they were at the fore front of so many things, from protests to ballroom culture.

They were and are pillars of the gay liberation movement and equal rights acts today. Silva rivers and Marsha p Johnson are great examples of Trans and gay activists. They were both at stonewall and were strong voices in the 70s against the transphobia within the gay liberation movement. They also created STAR, a trans friendly movement within the gay liberations movement that focused on advocating for trans rights along with supporting trans youth in New York. In the 80s, Trans people were also vocal during the AIDS crisis due to being heavily affected by it and helped set up some of the largest protests like the Stop the Church sit in. They also created so much queer culture that is appreciated today- like the vogueing scene from the 70s and the ballroom scene from the 80s and 90s. Drag was and still is heavily influenced by these individuals and the night culture they created. There is so much more history than these few events but 1- not enough time to cover it all, 2- a lot of it is hidden or just isn't known. I would heavily encourage reading about it more or watching about it. There are a lot of great documentaries and Tv shows that either talk about these issues and history or revolve around the stories of a certain scene. Netflix has a few good documentaries like Disclosure, where people in the film industry talk about their experiences and talk about how trans characters and stories depicted and how that affected culture. Others would be The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, its a crime documentary about her murder while also going over how she affected the gay liberation movement in New York. Paris is burning is another one on Netflix and it goes into the Ballroom culture and drag scene. Pose on FX is another great tv show, while it is a fictional show it plays off real people and real life events, it's around New York ballroom scene in the 80's, and most of the main and supporting characters are trans and are played by trans actors (side not it's one of my favorite shows). You can also read articles and websites online, good places to go would be GLAAD´s website. They have so many resources and articles that you can deep dive into, they share a lot of stories, resource kits, anything and everything under the rainbow, The Trevor project is another good one. Links will be under this if you want to look at more places. Also Wikipedia is a pretty solid place from an information point of view, they have plenty of pages around so many things around Trans history or activism.