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Trans Day of Visibility
2024
Usually, this time of the year, a lot of what we do within the trans community is to say their names, those who have died because they were transgender, be that from suicide or due to hate crimes.
This year's Transgender Day of Visibility, Trans Haven sheds a light on what life is like as a transgender person in the world and in the current political and medical climate. This topic ties directly into the rates of suicide and hate crimes that we face as a community.
Throughout the world, transgender people face unimaginable hurdles. Discrimation, laws against us, and hate crimes being only a small part of what we, individually and as a community face regularly.
Some of us come out and lose their home, are being disowned, or even killed as a result. Other's end up being targetted by employers, hate groups, and the media.
We are being belitteled, forced through dehumanizing processes, and have to explain our very existence. All this simply because we suffer so much that we finally have to make the decision to live in our true identy. We weigh the harships awaitung us against the suffering we experience.
For many, the only choice to have at least a small chance to stay alive, is the choice to come out and go through all of the above.
"Why are you doing this to yourself?", you might wonder. We are not doing this to ourselves! Society is doing it to us. We have no choice in the matter of whether we are or are not transgender. The only choice we have is to either suffer in silence or chose to be ourselves. Doing this in a society where education lacks on all levels, be it a basic understanding of "transgender people exist" or having to deal with uneducated medical professionals, is still a choice we must often make because we will not survive if the only option is isolation and suffering quietly.
In a world that politicises the existence and care of a minority group, transgender people are being used as political pawns in order to devide nations.
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Did you know that we have been legally discriminated against in many countries that you might usually not even consider when thinking about transgender issues?
Here are some example.
The shocking truth is, that even countries that do not by law discriminate against transgender people, and even countries that have explicit legal protections for transgender people, we still face discrimnation and are often disproportionately targeted under some laws.
And while the situations in some or all of the above mentioned countries might have changed in more recent years, social discrimination never ends. Hate speech and hate crimes never end.
Even when protective laws exist in any given country, and a crime is committed against a transgender person AND the perpetrator is known, we are in no position to trust that the law will be applied fairly.
Worse, if a trans person has to go to jail for whichever reason, they face lack of medical care, unwanted detransition, abuse by prison staff, rape and beatings by fellow inmates, and social isolation.
Where laws are not used to protect us and/or local society sees us as unnatural and threatening, we face more violence and killings.
In a society where all the above is possible, where perpetrators get off on things such as a "gay panic defense", where honour killings happen, where people receive vlogging for being trans under religious laws, we are in no position to ever feel save.