This year, March 31st marks Trans Visibility Day – an annual awareness day meant to celebrate the lives and accomplishments of transgender people, and to raise awareness of transphobic injustices and the work needed to achieve justice for trans people. This includes all non-binary and binary transgender people, as well as intersex folks who identify as transgender.
Begun in 2009, Trans Visibility Day was recognized worldwide in 2014, and last year, Joe Biden issued a formal presidential proclamation acknowledging Trans Visibility Day – the first US President to do so.
Unfortunately, there is still a great deal of open hostility towards transgender people in the United States. Anti-trans politicians are waging a full-on attack against transgender Americans.
2021 was a record year for anti-trans legislation signed into law, and 2022 is shaping up to be even worse. Much of this legislation has targeted youth, most commonly banning them from participation in school sports according to their gender. Some laws also prevent youth from accessing gender affirming health care, from pursuing gender transition in general, and even prohibiting name changes. And some are astonishingly harmful, such Idaho proposing a ban on gender affirming care for minors – even making it a felony to transport youth out of state to receive such care, and a Texas law attempting to rip trans children away from their supportive parents.
Bigoted politicians have chosen transgender Americans as their newest scapegoat, opportunistically exploiting public misinformation about trans people and trans youth to further their own anti-LGBT and anti-woman agendas.
It’s up to you and me to stop this wildfire of transphobic hate being codified into law. Trans youth cannot be legislated out of existence, and misguided politicians’ attempts to do so will only result in broken families and broken lives.
Together, we will educate ourselves about the lived realities of transgender, non-binary and intersex people. We will speak up and speak out against transphobia. And we will choose politicians who value trans lives. Our legislators should not be actively working to make the U.S. a more deadly place for transgender people.
We must turn this trend around and make our country a safer and more welcoming place for trans, non-binary and intersex people.
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