Transgender Consciousness Week and Day of Remembrance | Naming the Days

Transgender Consciousness Week, devoted to honoring the lives of and obstacles confronted by the transgender group, covers the seven days earlier than November 20, Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDR). At the present time started in 1998 after the demise of Rita Helser, a transwoman killed due to her id. Initially meant as a vigil deliberate by Rita’s pal Gwendolyn Ann Smith, TDR blossomed into an annual day to honor lives misplaced to violence towards trans folks.

Charges of violence towards trans people are extraordinarily excessive, with one out of each 4 individuals who establish as transgender having skilled some form of bias-driven assault. Every year over two dozen transgender people are killed on account of this violence, with black and Latinx transwomen going through the brunt of it.

Throughout this week, organizers around the globe maintain vigils to boost consciousness of this actuality. The vigils are simply the place to begin for the work accomplished by the LGBTQ+ group to cut back ranges of violence and create a extra welcoming society for trans folks.To start at the moment, we invite you to mirror upon two quotes, discover e-book and movie suggestions, and do the non secular practices.

To Title this Day:

Quotes

• I, he, she, we.
  Within the backyard of mystic lovers
  these aren’t true distinctions.
  — Jelaluddin Rumi in Love, Soul and Freedom by Denise Breton and Christopher Largent
• I see God in lots of locations and actions at the moment, together with these three overlapping contexts: (1) world efforts towards peace-building and non-violent resistance; (2) the wrestle for liberation of all girls, gays, lesbians, bisexual, transgender, and different queer folks; (3) our studying collectively easy methods to look after the earth and its many various creatures.
  — Carter Heyward in God within the Stability

Movies

• Household in Transition is an intensely intimate profile of a transgender girl and her remodeling assist community.
• A Unbelievable Lady weaves a transferring story concerning the non secular journey of a grieving transgender girl.
• Rising Up Coy follows the story of a landmark case concerning the worth of state antidiscrimination legal guidelines to guard the rights of transgender folks.

Books

• It Feels Good to Be Your self is a kids’s e-book that explores the probabilities and vocabulary that comes together with transgender identities. Writer Theresa Thorn’s remaining paragraph superbly states: “We want extra books with trans protagonists. The trans inhabitants is as numerous because the human inhabitants, and no variety of books may maintain all our tales. Expensive reader, it is as much as you to proceed this work, rewrite these definitions, share your tales, and construct a future extra expansive than we are able to think about. You’re the future we’re preventing for.”

Religious Practices

• Make some extent this week to study extra about methods to get entangled each day of the yr to honor trans lives and work to cut back violence motivated by transphobia.
• To watch Transgender Remembrance Day, arrange or be a part of a vigil in your group.
• Use the next “Prayer of Queer Thanksgiving” at house or at a group gathering. It was written by The Rev. Micah Bucey, minister at Judson Memorial Church in New York Metropolis.

“I sing praises to this little boy, not more than seven or eight,
Who simply pranced proper as much as me and interlaced his personal tiny, nail-polished fingers
With my very own, and cried out, “Twins!”
I sing praises to his alternative of glittery inexperienced,
Which completely enhances my shimmery purple.
I sing praises to his guts, his gumption, his presumption
That I’m a pal, a well-recognized, a fellow fairy — household —
Although we’ve by no means met.
I sing praises to the road that brings us collectively
And to the fabulous whomever he, she, they’ll turn out to be.
“I sing praises to the well-coiffed mom, effervescent over and teary-eyed,
As she exclaims, “He noticed you all the way in which throughout the road and simply needed to say, ‘Hiya.’”
I sing praises to the baseball-capped father, trying on with quiet satisfaction,
As he asks, “Do you paint your self or do you will have them professionally accomplished?”
I sing praises to the grandma and the grandpa, holding arms and smiling large,
As they give the impression of being each other within the eye and have fun what their love has made.
“I sing praises to the handfuls of witnesses to this household reunion,
Those who hurry by and those who decelerate,
Those who lookup from their telephones to look at historical past being made,
Those who put aside their cynicism for one, temporary, shining second,
To allow them to be a part of within the smiles,
Be part of within the connection,
As I squeeze the tiny fingers of this seven-or-eight-year-old unicorn and proclaim: “Twins!”
“And I sing praises to the cloud of invisible witnesses that surrounds us,
And within the singing and the praising, I really feel them seem round us.
That is fantasy, however that is actual.
That is fantasy, however fantasy is what painted our nails within the first place.
“I see Marsha, brick in hand, able to take no shit,
And Sylvia, microphone primed, able to take us to process.
I see Christine, accomplished up and glamorous, no hair misplaced,
And I hear Marlene and Sylvester and David, crooning as Billy tickles the ivories.
I see Langston and Lorraine and James and Oscar, scribbling away,
As José and Eve and Michel critique and queer and complicate.
I hear Divine and Sweet and Jackie and Andy and Hibiscus whispering,
“Don’t be so critical. Let this simply be the foolish factor it’s.”
I really feel the breeze as Alvin twirls by,
And I really feel the squeeze as Alan computes the logic of all of it.
I see Harvey and Audre and Michael and Harry,
And Gordon and Edie and Jane and Dick,
Glad and nonetheless nudging, content material and persevering with to battle.
I hear Leonard and Howard composing a success,
As Michael choreographs a gaggle quantity,
And Frida traces us all up for what is going to absolutely be a kooky portrait for the ages.
“I really feel the forces, see the faces of the well-known and the international,
And the cloud opens wider to disclose our mess of martyrs.
I see Matthew and Brandon and Roxana and Joan,
I see faces I’ve by no means seen earlier than,
I hear names I’ve by no means identified,
I hear voices I’ve by no means heard earlier than, shouting, “Twins! Twins! Twins!”
We’re nothing alike and we’re every thing alike,
We’re on the road collectively and we’re greater than worlds aside.
“We’re a rainbow and we’re a cloud,
Born of shade and tears, of triumph and tragedy,
Feeding the arc of an ethical universe that has trampled us,
Whilst we enhance the rattling factor and train it easy methods to bend.
We’re critical and sassy, glittery and grim,
Livid and full of worry that fools itself into fabulosity.
We’re every thing I describe and nothing I describe.
We’re every thing I see and a lot I don’t see.
We will select each other on the road,
And we could be strangers in the identical parade.
We’re greater than matches inside our ever-expanding initials,
And we’re solely as a lot as we enable ourselves to be.
We’re a rainbow and we’re a cloud,
Bending and bursting, lovely and terrifying.
And I sing praises to the rainbow and I sing praises to the cloud.
I sing praises to the colourful progress,
And I sing praises to the storm that shouts, “Progress is a delusion.
Cease appearing so small. You’re the Universe in ecstatic movement.”
“I sing praises to the Universe that we’re,
To the rainbow that we’ve been, to the cloud we’ll all turn out to be,
And I really feel that phrase fizzing up inside me, although it typically frightens greater than frees:
“Household.”
I sing praises to this household
That claims me for who I’m and gently shoves me into who I can turn out to be.
“I sing praises to the saints who don’t need to be saints,
To the martyrs and the heroes who ask for not one of the notoriety.
I sing praises to the cold ties that preserve us afloat till the blood ties catch up.
I sing praises to the clouds that cry out, “Households belong collectively,”
And know that it means a lot greater than what some need it to imply.
“I sing praises to this fleeting second on the road,
A second that begins between two nail-polished folks,
After which prisms out, extending the rainbow, creating the cloud.
We’re twins and we’re nothing alike.
We’re in search of a tribe and we’re extending the tribe.
We have now a lot to show and now we have a lot to study.
We have now everlasting praises to sing and now we have everlasting thanks to present.
“Our biggest reward is the sunshine of our shade and the salt of our tears,
As we acknowledge each other like kids on the busy avenue and demand on saying,
“Hiya. I see you. I really feel this between us and I can’t fairly clarify it.”
“I sing praises to our reward of household recognition,
And till all households bend to the love of distinction,
Till this nation bends to like of household,
I sing praises to this rising familial cloud,
Rainbow saints portray paths for his or her craving kids,
And I pray not with my very own arms clasped collectively,
However with my polished fingers interlaced with some other baby I can acknowledge.
Amen.”