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Things We Saw Today: It’s International Trans Day of Visibility, and We Love These Wonderful Twitter Posts

By Mar 31st, 2021, 6:13 pm
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March 31st is International Transgender Day of Visibility, an annual day of awareness that began in 2009 and was sparked by Rachel Crandall-Crocker, a trans woman in Michigan. “I wanted a day that we can celebrate the living, and I wanted a day that all over the world we could be all together,” Crandall-Crocker said of the day’s inspiration. International Transgender Day of Visibility is meant to celebrate transgender and gender nonconforming people, while also working, as GLSEN writes, to further highlight what “still needs to be done to achieve trans justice.”

Today, social media abounds with posts from transgender and gender nonconforming people and allies, often tagged with #transdayofvisibility. Attention to the day should serve as a call to both honor these communities and to push back against transphobia. And this year, President Biden issued the first Presidential proclamation on Trans Day of Visibility. (You can read the proclamation in full from The White House here). It begins:

Today, we honor and celebrate the achievements and resiliency of transgender individuals and communities. Transgender Day of Visibility recognizes the generations of struggle, activism, and courage that have brought our country closer to full equality for transgender and gender non-binary people in the United States and around the world.

Their trailblazing work has given countless transgender individuals the bravery to live openly and authentically. This hard-fought progress is also shaping an increasingly accepting world in which peers at school, teammates and coaches on the playing field, colleagues at work, and allies in every corner of society are standing in support and solidarity with the transgender community.

The proclamation further states, “The crisis of violence against transgender women, especially transgender women of color, is a stain on our Nation’s conscience,” and writes of the necessity of passing the Equality Act, which will “provide long overdue Federal civil rights protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Biden declares that “Vice President Harris and I affirm that transgender Americans make our Nation more prosperous, vibrant, and strong. I urge my fellow Americans to join us in uplifting the worth and dignity of every transgender person.” New Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III also tweeted about the updated departmental policy of once again allowing open service and recruitment of transgender people in the military, after the Trump administration’s insidious anti-trans military policies.

This is all a huge and welcome public shift in America’s political leadership from the awful transphobic rhetoric and discriminatory policies of the Trump administration. And it means that Trans Day of Visibility, which originated in a Facebook post from Crandall-Crocker encouraging people to organize their own celebrations, is now officially proclaimed by the U.S. President—as well as present worldwide in gatherings, parades, protests, parties, and in our very landmarks as skyscrapers and monuments are lit up in pink, blue, and white trans pride colors.

But as Ms. magazine points out, despite The White House leadership change, this year’s Trans Day of Visibility arrives at a fraught time in America for transgender and gender nonconforming people:

This year’s Transgender Day of Visibility comes at a particularly trying moment for gender diverse people in the United States. More than 80 anti-trans bills are pending in state legislatures, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Most of those bills would limit trans youth from playing sports and accessing affirming medical care.

The Human Rights Campaign calls out those states that have pending anti-trans legislation:

We want to showcase some of the important and celebratory posts we saw on Twitter, though there are, wonderfully, so many that any proper article on Trans Day of Visibility’s social media impact would stretch out for miles and miles and miles. It’s especially great to see all the fantastically talented transgender and gender nonconforming artists who are sharing their beautiful work.

You can check out the hashtag #transdayofvisibility on Twitter for many more posts, and the tag is also in use on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and more.

There are also lovely and numerous messages from allies (as well as advice as to how to be a better ally), and celebrities, public figures, brands, and politicians joining in to further promote the day.

There’s such a dazzling outpouring of posts that you can spend hours scrolling through the hashtags for International Trans Day of Visibility. It’s vital—and wonderful—to see so much positivity and visibility for transgender and gender nonconforming people today, but we must all work toward this being the case every day of the year.

(image: VALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty Image)

Here are some other stories that we saw:

  • Young witnesses took the stand today in the trial against Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. (via HuffPo)
  • “Goddamn, Xander Harris Was the Absolute Worst.” Yes, yes he was. (via Pajiba)
  • New York has legalized recreational marijuana, with a bill that ties the move to racial justice and economic equity. (via The New York Times)
  • “A Modern Feminist Classic Changed My Life. Was It Actually Garbage?” (via Slate)
  • America’s Sweetheart (and mine) Randall Park will make his directorial debut with Shortcomings, based on the acclaimed Asian American graphic novel by Adrian Tomine. (via The Wrap)
  • Trump apparently wants to start his own social media network. Good luck with that! He’s never ruined a business before. (via Fox News)
  • Happy birthday, Mr. Feeny. Boy Meets World actor William Daniels is 94. (via EW)
  • The Louvre has digitized 482,000 artworks! (via NPR)

What did you see out there today?

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Author
Kaila Hale-Stern
Kaila Hale-Stern (she/her) is a content director, editor, and writer who has been working in digital media for more than fifteen years. She started at TMS in 2016. She loves to write about TV—especially science fiction, fantasy, and mystery shows—and movies, with an emphasis on Marvel. Talk to her about fandom, queer representation, and Captain Kirk. Kaila has written for io9, Gizmodo, New York Magazine, The Awl, Wired, Cosmopolitan, and once published a Harlequin novel you'll never find.
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