What is Transgender Awareness Week?
Transgender Awareness Week is a week when transgender people and their allies take action to bring attention to the community by educating the public about who transgender people are, sharing stories and experiences, and advancing advocacy around the issues of prejudice, discrimination, and violence that affect the transgender community.
Transgender Awareness Week is a week devoted to raising the visibility of the transgender, non-binary and gender-nonconforming community that is celebrated November 13 – 19, 2020. This year that message couldn’t be more powerful, said Cathy Renna, communications director of the National LGBTQ Task Force.
“Being trans is the third-most-interesting thing about me” is what Renna said she hears from many transgender young people these days. “They want to be seen as multifaceted people – not what they are, who they are. What we are seeing around young people is incredibly inspiring.”
Threats to Transgender rights in recent years:
• Transgender people were barred from serving in the military.
• The words “transgender” and “diversity” were banned in CDC reports.
• There have been challenges at the state level with bathroom bills and religious exemption laws.
• And 2020 saw a sad milestone: At least 34 transgender or gender nonconforming people were killed by violence, most of them Black and Latino women, according to the Human Rights Coalition. (Those deaths will be marked on Transgender Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20.)
But there also have been high points, most notably the election. President-elect Joe Biden, who spoke for transgender rights at a town hall, has vowed to eliminate discriminatory executive orders from President Donald Trump and has made LGBTQ equality part of his platform.
Voters also gave at least eight transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming state candidates victories on Election Day, including tapping the nation’s first openly transgender state senator.
And a Supreme Court ruling in June affirmed protection of LGBTQ workers from discrimination.
“It’s been said that once people see the media stereotypes, tropes, and clichéd portrayals stacked together in DISCLOSURE, it’s impossible to unsee them. For trans people and allies, DISCLOSURE is an important survey of how media has treated trans people, influencing not only how trans people have come to view themselves but also how the world has, with a call-to-action to better understand and support the community–on screen and off” (GLAAD).
