International Transgender Day of Visibility ......

Today is the third annual International Transgender Day of Visibility. The event started the year before in 2009 when one Rachel Crandall, head of Transgender Michigan, was inspired to create a day that celebrated transgendered people, to balance the more somber Transgender Day of Remembrance that focuses on those in the transgendered community who have died.


Visibility can be a double-edged sword for the transgendered. Certainly, the more transgendered men and women are public and open about their situation, the more exposed others will become to the issue and hopefully the more understanding and accepting they will become. However, this visibility, while great for the cause at large, can come at a great personal risk.


Transgendered people who are out (voluntarily or not) can face bigotry, violence, and harassment. They are often discriminated against in the workplace, abandoned by friends and family, and even barred from public places. Further, they have to deal with people who never accept their gender identity, believing instead that the gender a person was assigned at birth is the only real truth. Some even goes as far as to equate being transgendered with being dishonest.


Transphobia leading to invisibility and transphobia by default similar to the biphobia by default from our own limp wristed JFLAG advocates is another matter all in itself with a small number of them self identifying as trans in fear if ridicule and being misunderstood.

We have our share of violence towards trans persons where a preoperative Male To Female (MTF) individual's throat was slashed and she was beaten when men approached her thinking she was female only to discover her male genitalia still in tact and inflicted their version of punishment describing her as a battyman. JFLAG's acronymn although covering trans and allsexuals only give lip service to the name to sound good and this has been only happening in recent times following the attention paid to trans issues from bloggers like myself.


There are Transgendered persons who wish to conduct their treatment and surgeries but very little help is known to have been extended to these persons worse yet no financial assistance at all in some cases one major trans figure was homeless at one point for several months and her counseling sessions were discontinued by the powers that be sighting her uncooperativeness in effect.

Then there are the more visible issues of possible transgendered persons living homo-normative lives probably really unaware of their own identity and caught up in the burlesque world of drag, forced or rigid feminization with no psycho social help to bring them over into their rightful place, but not to bore you with a litany of woes let us as Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people from the other parts of the umbrella group also respect the right to life for our transgendered friends and be tolerant of them too as they have their own issues that they need to sift through as we have ours.

Be yourselves my Trans peeps.

Peace and tolerance

H