Therefore, my second lesson is that we are far from being done.
Second lesson: There is still a long way to go While the TDoV brings the beautiful opportunity to take a step back and see how far the trans community has come, it also becomes apparent how much work remains. It is celebrated that society is slowly starting to question the prevailing cis-normativity, as well as traditional gender roles that legal steps have been taken to make gender recognition easier in a lot of places, and that since 2018, “transsexuality” is no longer listed as a mental disorder by the World Health Organisation. The community celebrates successes such as structural developments that allowed the trans community to establish support networks for themselves and their loved ones, ever evolving networks for activists in the scene who are connecting with each other, reaching not only members of the community but also the political scene. Therefore, I am happy to share four main lessons I took from my research for the essay, as well as my observation and perception of this year’s TDoV.įirstly, since its initiation by Rachel Crandall, a trans activist from Michigan, the 31st March has been taken as an occasion to look back and reflect on the path transgender individuals and their rights have gone. However, this year’s TDoV, as well as an essay I wrote for my Responsible Activism and Global Health course last term about the influence of the transgender rights movement on German policy-making, have led me to reflect more on what these struggles include specifically and how they affect rights anchored in constitutional law such as the right to self-determination and human dignity.
I have been aware of the struggles of the trans community generally for a while now. Usual events that take place on TDoV are panels, Q&A’s, and support group sessions for trans people and their loved ones. It includes (but is not limited to) transgender, non-binary, and genderqueer individuals. In this context, I use the adjective trans as an umbrella term to describe people whose assigned sex at birth does not fit their gender identity partly or wholly. It is a day where trans people and allies come together, show solidarity and find support among each other. Since 2009 in the United States and since 2014 internationally, the 31st March has been celebrated as the Transgender Day of Visibility (TDoV).