Why should there only be a Transgender Awareness Week? With George Fowler’s guide, you can make 2023 your Transgender Awareness Year.
Another Transgender Awareness Week has been and gone. November 13th marked the start of five days dedicated to raising awareness and celebrating queer visibility, and with it comes the glorious litany of pastel pink and blue infographics flooding social media.
I, for one, love it. Say what you will about bite-sized queer education – it’s bloody effective. These digestible, candy-coloured allyship tips mean our uncles, flatmates, workmates, and Grindr hooksups will soak up a fact or two mid-doomscroll session with minimal effort. Yes, they might only be very shallow dives into wildly complex topics, but the more folks who get a grip on the absolute basics, the easier everyday life gets for our trans whānau. Truly, the first step is awareness.
So, in the spirit of the season (or on the off chance you turned your phone off for a week in mid-November), here are my favourite quick-fire tips and tid-bits for being a good trans ally. Let the listicle begin.
TRANSGENDER IS AN ADJECTIVE
Use it to describe us! So instead of ‘the transgender’ or ‘the transgendered person’, it’s best to say ‘the transgender person’. Also important to remember is that it’s ‘trans man’, not transman. Adjective, not a noun.
NOBODY IS “BORN IN THE WRONG BODY”
Once upon a time, this phrase was a very common way of framing the trans experience.
Now, it’s way out of vogue, and for good reason. There’s nothing wrong with the body I was born in. However, I was born into a world with really stupid, binary, colonial ideas about gender – a world which fails to recognise the capacity that all bodies have for change, fluidity, and transformation. It is a bit rude to blame my body for all of that.
MEDICAL TRANSITION IS NOT MANDATORY
Not all trans people undergo gender-affirming procedures like surgeries, hormone replacement therapies, or laser hair removal. There’s lots of reasons for this including: cost, inaccessibility, and medical risk. But also because – not all trans people want them! We are not a monolith. Whether or not someone has gone down, these paths makes them no less (or more!) of the gender they say they are.
NON-BINARY PEOPLE ARE TRANS
Yep! Not half trans or ‘trans-lite’ but a whole, different, full-blown, glorious flavour. The definition of being transgender is not identifying with the gender one was assigned at birth. Since non-binary people identify as neither entirely male nor female, that fits them squarely under the big beautiful trans umbrella.
PUT YOUR PRONOUNS IN YOUR EMAIL SIGNATURE
And in any other online bios! It’s such an easy way to show support, increase visibility and permissibility of gender diversity, and normalise offering pronouns as part of introductions.
TRANS AWARENESS ISN’T ENOUGH BY ITSELF
We need trans acceptance. We need trans normalisation. We need trans celebration. We need accessible trans healthcare and an end to job and housing discrimination. Trans Awareness Week is a great start, but it cannot be the end. Keep going, keep learning and keep fighting, my loves.
GEORGE FOWLER is a gender diversity and inclusion consultant, a trans man and a big queer dingus. By day, he’s a creative coordinator at Te Taumata Toi-a- Iwi. By night, you can catch him as glittery drag king Hugo Grrrl.
