Transphobia and Allyship on Trans Day of Visibility
March 31 marks Transgender Day of Visibility around the world. It was founded in 2009 by Rachel Crandall-Crocker, who used a Facebook post to encourage people to celebrate the rights and dignity of transgender people, instead of mourning them. At that time, Transgender Day of Remembrance, which marked the victims of murder, was the only formal day recognizing the community. In 2021, President Joe Biden issued the first-ever presidential proclamation marking Transgender Day of Visibility.
Today, the right-wing culture war that has taken aim at “wokeness,” the right to an abortion, and the teaching of history in schools has also targeted LGBTQ folks, and especially transgender people. There are currently at least 340 state-level legislative attacks on LGBTQ people, according to the Human Rights Campaign; 150 of them are specifically targeting transgender people—the largest number ever.
YES! presents a special roundtable discussion marking Transgender Day of Visibility hosted by Racial Justice and Civil Liberties Editor Sonali Kolhatkar for Rising Up With Sonali. Guests include Carl Charles, senior attorney in the Southern Regional Office of Lambda Legal located in Atlanta, Georgia; Ebony Harper, founder and executive director of California TRANScends; and Maebe A. Girl, a congressional candidate running for California’s 30th Congressional District.
The views expressed here and on Rising Up With Sonali do not necessarily reflect the opinion of YES! Media.
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Sonali Kolhatkar
is currently the racial justice editor at YES! Media and a writing fellow with Independent Media Institute. She was previously a weekly columnist for Truthdig.com. She is also the host and creator of Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. Sonali won First Place at the Los Angeles Press Club Annual Awards for Best Election Commentary in 2016. She also won numerous awards including Best TV Anchor from the LA Press Club and has also been nominated as Best Radio Anchor 4 years in a row. She is the author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence, and the co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women's Mission. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights, 2023). She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. She reflects on her professional path in her 2014 TEDx talk, “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host.” She can be reached at sonalikolhatkar.com
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