Day 2: Transgender Issues
I’m queer. I’ve known that since I was 14 years old and accidentally came out to my parents during an episode of Queer as Folk. Four years later I was lucky enough to go to college at one of the most queer-friendly campuses in the country. My first semester I took a seminar on Communicating Transgender Issues, reveling in the freedom to learn about GLBT issues.
I spent a semester studying Kate Bornstein and Leslie Feinberg and S. Bear Bergman. I learned about the technical definitions of “sex” versus “gender,” and how gender is infinitely more than the biological parts people are born with. I read about the Michigan Womyn’s Festival and helped organize the first ever Tranny-Fest for my university. I also met Adam, a geeky gay boy who spent more time ditching class than anyone I’ve ever met.
Time passed, and one day I got a Facebook friend request from a girl I didn’t know, named April. The message said she’d been a friend of mine from college, but I couldn’t remember her. I accepted the friend request anyway.
Days later she posted a link to a YouTube video diary about taking hormones. And that’s when I realized that April used to be called Adam, and instead of being a cute, geeky gay boy, she’d transitioned into a cute, geeky straight girl. Over the coming months I followed April’s video diaries and heard her first hand struggles with passing, hormones, voice lessons, fashion lessons, sexual orientation, and, unfortunately, with violence.
April’s been attacked more than once for daring to live openly as a transgender woman. She’s been brutalized and raped, forced to drop out of grad school due to violence and harassment. She’s in a safer place right now, but she’s not sure how long she can stay there or where she’ll go next. She doesn’t know the answer to a lot of questions--where she’ll go, what she’ll do next. She’s living life day by day, instead.
She said to me once, before the attacks, that there are Gay and Lesbian pride marches, pride festivals, parades. But for transgender and transsexual people there’s a Day of Remembrance. A day to memorialize and remember the people who have been hurt and killed because of their gender identity; a day to focus on something that most transgender and transsexual people already have to live with on a daily basis. It’s not a celebration of pride, but a memorial of loved ones lost. And that needs to change.
So, please take a minute to look at some of the informative links and authors I've listed below. It is by NO MEANS an exhaustive list but its a place to start. And then sometime in the next year, please pass the knowledge on. Education can help make sure there aren't more names to memorialize on the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Education can and does make the difference.
Thank you.
GenderPAC -- http://www.gpac.org
American American Educational Gender Information Service -- http://www.gender.org/aegis
S. Bear Bergman -- http://www.sbearbergman.com/
Kate Bornstein -- http://katebornstein.typepad.com/
Leslie Feinberg -- http://www.transgenderwarrior.org/