Celebrating Transgender Awareness Week
Every once in a while, we like to create content to inspire our clients to deepen their commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice. Here are some specific ideas to get you started with celebrating Transgender Awareness Week! If you have feedback on these ideas, or need help executing them at your organization, let us know. We’re here to support you!
It’s Transgender Awareness Week! From November 13th-19th, people and organizations across the country spend time raising awareness of the transgender community; their joy, history, culture, and challenges. Transgender Awareness Week culminates in Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), an annual observance on November 20th that honors the memory of the transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.
Why celebrate Transgender Awareness Week?
With the increasing onslaught of anti-transgender legislation flooding the United States and other parts of the world, it’s important now more than ever to educate the people in our networks and help build understanding. As of 2021, roughly four in ten Americans claimed to personally know someone who is transgender. However, knowing a transgender person may not be enough to combat the misinformation that is being intentionally spread by politicians, conservative organizations and figureheads, and by multiple major news outlets as well as social media influencers. Taking the time to learn more about the history of prevailing issues faced by the transgender community and sharing this information with those around you can drastically help curb transphobic rhetoric and sentiment, and thus create safer conditions for the trans people in your life to live openly and authentically as themselves.
Here are some ideas to help you get started celebrating Transgender Awareness Week both internally and externally in your organization.
External:
Public Statement
Writing a public statement that goes out to the community is a great start to setting the stage for intentional conversations about transgender identity and safety. Providing some history about Transgender Awareness Week and Transgender Day of Remembrance as well as some facts about the ongoing struggle of transgender people in society can help illustrate the need to take this week of celebration seriously.
Some points to get you started:
Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) was started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence since Rita Hester's death and began an important tradition that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. The week leading up to TDOR is known as Transgender Awareness Week, which serves as a celebration of transgender identity, history, and community.
While there is much joy and reason to celebrate transgender culture and achievements, it is impossible to ignore the socio-political attacks that have been carried out against the transgender community in recent years that have led to increased hostility and violence towards individuals, schools, hospitals, organizations, and more.
This year alone, the Human Rights Campaign has reported that at least 25 transgender and gender nonconforming people were killed. 88% were victims of color, and 52% were Black transgender women. 48% were misgendered by authorities or the press. 47% of victims with a known killer had their lives taken by someone close to them. 72% were killed with a gun.
Though transgender adults make up roughly 0.5% of the population in the United States, transgender people have been found to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault, at a rate 4 times higher than their cisgender counterparts. Trans women of color are particularly susceptible to violence and are disproportionately targeted in comparison to white transgender people.
Using data from the U.S. Transgender Population Health Survey, it was found that 81% of transgender adults have considered suicide, and 42% of transgender adults have attempted it. Similarly, transgender people report disproportionately high levels of psychological stress, and have noted high levels of discrimination while seeking health care.
The United States has seen a new wave of anti-trans legislation being proposed and passed. In the current 2023 legislative session, 543 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced at the state and federal level.
In addition to violence, mental health concerns, and political attacks, transgender people have been found to experience prejudice in the workplace, housing, and health care, all of which leads to economic disparities. It has been found that transgender people face homelessness and housing instability at rates disproportionate to their cisgender counterparts, and that those numbers are expected to continue to increase in the coming years. This can make transgender and gender-nonconforming people particularly vulnerable to violence and encounters with police enforcement, with or without cause.
Many places in the U.S. are not safe for the transgender community, and as an organization committed to gender equity and justice, we must take the step of showing these individuals that their pain and struggles are recognized, and that their losses are grieved and remembered.
Social Media Posts
As mentioned above, while there are many reasons to mourn and become outraged by current attacks targeting the transgender community, there are also many reasons to celebrate our culture, history, achievements, and leaders.
While names like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson have become more familiar to the general populace, consider uplifting the work of contemporary leaders in the transgender community, the more local the better!
Trans femmes of color such as Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Anjali Rimi, Cecilia Chung, Merrique Jenson, Donato Fatuesi, among many others have been doing incredible work on the ground. Not sure who your local trans leaders are? Reach out to your local LGBTQ+ community center and start asking around!
Public Events
Consider holding a vigil for Transgender Day of Remembrance at your organization! Typical TDOR ceremonies will involve reading the list of names of those killed in the past year, but many organizers will come up with ideas to tie in their organizational goals with the theme.
For example, some organizations centered in providing services for incarcerated folks will include supplies for writing letters to incarcerated LGBTQ+ people, especially those who are transgender. Some resources on how to organize letter writing can be found here.
Consider having the community participate in the setup of the event by creating artworks to display at the vigil. Some organizers will build altars that can be decorated in order to celebrate the lives of those lost.
Additionally, educational films can be shown at the event to help foster more communication and understanding. Some top choices are: Disclosure (2020), Framing Agnes (2022), and The Stroll (2023).
Internal:
Internal Communications
While points can be taken from the list of facts made for a public statement, internal communications should center around supporting and uplifting transgender identity and safety in the workplace.
If your organization has a specific Employee Resource Group (ERG) for LGBTQ+ individuals, sharing their contact information and resources is a great idea to help connect workers with the support they may need. Additionally, internal communications should open space for anyone who wishes to learn more about transgender identity and issues as well as encourage employees to take care of themselves while considering heavy topics such as transphobic violence.
Trans Lifeline is a great resource for transgender people struggling with mental health concerns, and offers microgrants and educational pieces in addition to their crisis hotline.
Internal Events
Transgender Day of Remembrance can be a heavy day for many folks in the transgender community, and so taking a specific day to celebrate transgender joy this week may help to balance some of these more intense feelings.
Celebrating transgender joy can look like sharing cultural aspects of transgender community, such as the works of transgender artists, poets, and musicians. Some top picks are Alok Vaid-Menon, Chella Man, and Big Freedia, but finding specific individuals local to your area is highly recommended in order to foster a sense of immediate community and connection.
Additionally, while you may be tempted to hang a transgender pride flag in the office for only this week, consider finding a permanent spot to show your support year round.
