Trans 100 Honoree Laverne Cox recently penned an Op-ed as part of a series on Trans Rights in the New York TImes Opinion Pages.
She mentions the Trans 100 as a group of people that should be seen for their excellence in working towards the improvement in the lives of Trans people.
She notes:
There are some prominent trans voices speaking to the issues that affect us, and they inspire me to do the work of making the world more just for trans people. Jen Richards and Toni D’orsay, founders of The Trans 100, to name some of those trans folks more of us should know.
The Trans 100 is proud of the work of such amazing and incredible people as those in the Trans 100. You can learn more about them by checking out their entries in the PDF: The Trans100.
Ms. Cox’s pos topens with a clarion call of great import:
At the heart of the fight for trans justice is a level of stigma so intense and pervasive that trans folks are often told we don’t exist – that we’re really just the gender we were assigned at birth. We’re told that if we embrace our authentic selves, we should risk violence and the loss of our jobs, housing, health care and dignity. Trans identity is so stigmatized that even the people we love and date – at least those who are cisgender, meaning they identify as the sex they were assigned at birth – often don’t want to have anything to do with us in public. Trans identity is so stigmatized that many of our gay, lesbian and bisexual brothers and sisters want nothing to do with us either. This stigma is so intense that many trans people don’t want to claim a trans identity publicly. It is a state of emergency for trans and gender-nonconforming people in this country, but the emergency remains almost invisible since the trans population is relatively small and our identities are constantly disavowed, our voices silenced.
We at the Trans 100 agree fully.
Her fellow Trans 100 honoree is also a part of the Op-Ed team: Dr. Susan Stryker, an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Arizona and the director of its Institute for LGBT Studies, is co-editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, forthcoming from Duke University Press in spring 2014.
Her Op-Ed is here.
She notes:
All along, however, many non-trans gays and lesbians considered transgender issues to be more marginal, more deviant, less respectable and less important. Some find us threatening to their own sense of self, express open hostility, and disparage us as weird, sick or misguided. The “T.” has thus had a fraught relationship with “L.G.B.,” never more so than in 2007, when a gay congressman, Barney Frank, stripped protections for transgender people from the proposed federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act. That was a divisive, short-sighted move that put Frank on the wrong side of history. After that slap, I and many others concentrated primarily on trans-specific issues, while welcoming any and all allies.
The trans movement has taken huge strides since then by putting its own particular concerns in the foreground. For example: influencing the removal of “gender identity disorder” from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association; overturning laws that require sterilization as the price of government recognition of gender change; and securing passage of protective legislation, like Argentina’s recent law establishing gender self-determination without requiring medical intervention.
Nominations are open for 2014’s Trans 100. You can nominate Trans people for Excellence here, on the Nominations page.
