Tag Archives: Transgender Awareness Week

Transgender Awareness Week: Transgender Rights and Transgender Lives

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Transgender individuals are much more likely to have attempted suicide.

Wednesday November 16, the Massachusetts Senate passed the Transgender Rights Bill. The vote, timed appropriately during Transgender Awareness Week, is an important step towards offering the transgender members of our community equal standing under the law and protection from violence and discrimination. This legislative victory isn’t the result of one week of awareness, though—it is the result of years of hard work by organizations like the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition—and the journey towards full legal and social equality for the transgender community is far from finished.

While the debate over transgender equality is often framed in sensational and misleading ways, at the core of the debate is the right to lead a happy, healthy life. Discrimination based on gender identity or expression prevents our transgender friends, family, and neighbors from enjoying that basic right; and the cost can be high.

In a survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, 41% of transgender respondents had attempted suicide. 33% of respondents in Massachusetts reported a past suicide attempt. Among transgender people of color, the numbers continue to climb. 44% of Hispanic respondents, 45% of African American Respondents, and 54% of multi-racial respondents had attempted suicide. Transgender people with lower income and levels of education were also significantly more likely to have attempted suicide.

To put this in perspective: the percentage of people in the general population who had attempted suicide nationally at the time of this survey was only 1.6%.

Saving Our Lives: Transgender Suicide Myths, Reality, and Help brochure produced by the Transgender Suicide Prevention Working Group

Being transgender doesn’t make you suicidal; but compounding issues of major life changes, discrimination and the resulting difficulty finding stable housing or employment, and other health inequities takes a toll on many transgender individuals. This is one of the reasons why the Transgender Rights Bill is so important to our community.

This week, community organizations are also addressing the issue directly. Tuesday, the Transgender Suicide Prevention Working Group, in which Fenway staff have been participating since its inception, released a video series on suicide warning signs. The brochures on which the videos were based are available online and have been named to the Best Practices Registry of the national Suicide Prevention Resource Center.

Also, this weekend, Fenway is co-sponsoring a training for counsellors who would like to work with transgender clients. The workshop will educate behavorial health providers in transgender/genderqueer identity and standards of care.

Hopefully the awareness raised and rights gained this week will spur further progress in transgender equality, care, and mental health. 

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Transgender Awareness Week: Why it matters and what you can do

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Members of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition sharing information earlier this year. Photo Credit: flickr.com/rachelzall

The third week of November has become one of the most special weeks in my life in recent years. It’s not because it’s shortly after my birthday or right before Thanksgiving—or because I really love hot apple cider and scarf season. Within the past few years, this week has come to signify Transgender Awareness Week.

Transgender Awareness Week

There are so many events happening for Transgender Awareness Week, and I urge you to attend as many as you can. Last night, a fabulous trans organization, TransCEND held a movie screening for the incredibly moving film Cruel and Unusual; and today (Tuesday, November 15), is the highly anticipated Transgender Suicide Prevention video launch. Thursday, Fenway’s Violence Recovery Program is hosting a free screening of the film Two Spirits. Fortunately, the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition lists them all—which is great because it shows how strong our community is becoming and how our allies are really stepping up.

Why this is important

The end of this week is marked by a very solemn event, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, recognizing the many transgender and gender variant individuals who have been murdered due to their gender identity and expression. Each year, we remember the numerous—sometimes dozens or even hundreds—individuals, many of whom were transgender women of color, we’ve lost in the past year while we continue to mourn thousands lost before. If you really take the time, you’ll quickly see how much our community hurts from the grotesque overkill murders, assaults on us in public spaces, and spates of biased killing clusters across the country like in Puerto Rico and our nation’s capitol.

It’s not just violence that our community experiences. A recent report on transgender discrimination showed high levels of discrimination in health care settings, in employment, in housing, and virtually all aspects of life for trans people. I don’t know a single trans person who hasn’t experienced some blatant discrimination in one form or the other; and without explicit protection of trans rights, some will see no reason not to discriminate and will be able to get away with it.

What to do now

Show your support for legislation to protect the rights of the transgender community.

Fortunately, there are some things you can do. Apart from raising awareness, advocating, and organizing for trans rights in your workplaces, local businesses and service providers—which are other great ways to show support—one of the most important and time sensitive actions is to call your representatives in Massachusetts to support a bill that would protect transgender people in the state in employment, housing, hate crimes, education and credit. It’s really easy to do this. Just go to this link which will tell you exactly what to say and direct you to who to call if you don’t know your Reps. This bill could be voted on as early as today, so the reps need to know that their constituents see this as important!

It’s very easy to tack “T” onto “LGB” and claim support, but to show tangible support is as easy as making a few phone calls to advance rights the trans community in Massachusetts deserves. Make the call and ask your friends to do so too. 

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