Lea en español aquí.
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This week, OUT Boulder County is celebrating Trans Awareness Week with a virtual series that welcomes all in English and, for some events, Spanish.
Trans Awareness Week brings attention to, celebrates and offers education about the trans community to the trans and broader communities, said Michal Duffy (them, they, theirs), education and program manager for OUT Boulder County.
Trans Awareness programming began when Executive Director Mardi Moore began her tenure in 2013.
“Trans programming is essential to any LGBTQ organization. Issues of gender and sexuality are different. We as Out Boulder County provide services that are specific to transgender people and specific to LGB people,” Moore said.
In the past, the organization has hosted programming for Trans Day of Remembrance, which falls on Nov. 20 each year.
In 2020, OUT Boulder County decided to move its Trans Awareness programming from November to March in recognition of Trans Day of Visibility, which is March 31.
“We still observe Trans Day of Remembrance and still have a vigil. That event honors the lives lost to trans violence in the previous year. … (We) wanted to bring more of the publicity, public engagement to Trans Day (of Visibility) to honor our lives while we are living. We wanted to bring emphasis to programming that is educational, inspiring and empowering around transgender lives and experiences,” Duffy said.
Trans Day of Visibility was started in 2009 in Michigan by transgender activist Rachel Crandall, according to Wikipedia. The day is “dedicated to celebrating transgender people and raising awareness of discrimination faced by transgender people worldwide, as well as a celebration of their contributions to society,” the site states.
This year’s events are all virtual and open to the public with the exception of Gender Support meetings on Thursday and Monday. These “meet every week. We incorporate them into Trans Awareness Week just to show the community mutual support,” Duffy said.
Events for the week include a virtual film screening of “MAN MADE,” which explores the stories of four trans men participating in Trans FitCon, the only all-transgender bodybuilding competition in the world.
Today, there will be an open forum titled “Ask me anything: Trans Colorado,” at which attendees are offered a safe place to explore and understand the trans community by talking to trans folks “to expand your understanding of what it is to be trans,” according to the event description.
All events will offer English captions but the open forum and the “Hear Our Stories: TransLatina Immigrants in the U.S.” events will offer interpretation. The open forum will have English translated into Spanish for those who have questions. The TransLatina Voices event will be hosted in Spanish and translation services will be offered in English.
Since the primary language of participants is Spanish, it was important to OUT Boulder County to allow them to speak in the language they favor, Duffy said. English interpretation is offered, which is a turn of the tables for English speakers.
“We wanted to do that because the speaker speaks Spanish, primarily, but also to give that perspective to people who are English speakers who don’t usually participate in an event through an interpreter. We thought that would be a really cool way to give some additional perspective to the people who attend by having something centered in another language where you are accessing it through an interpreter,” Duffy said.
“Hear Our Stories: TransLatina Immigrants in the U.S.” will feature “Trans Latinas who have personally experienced ICE detention and the immigration system. They will share their thoughts on how ICE detention impacts transgender communities in particular,” according to the event description.
One of the goals for this week’s programming is to humanize the stories and life experiences of trans people.
“There is not just one trans narrative. There is such a diversity of experiences,” Duffy said. “OUT Boulder really tries to highlight community members … to share their own stories.”
“Hear Our Stories: TransLatina Immigrants in the U.S.” goes beyond interpretation. As a way to humanize the story of a Latina, who has expressed her wishes to remain anonymous because of her active immigration case, she will speak about her experiences as a trans woman and the treatment she received from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Due to the nature of immigration law, the details of her story are intentionally vague to protect her identity.
The woman has sought asylum in America, fleeing persecution from her home country. After being detained by ICE, she was put in solitary confinement because the organization did not know where else to place her, according to José Ramón García-Madrid, OUT Boulder QTBIPOC program coordinator.
“It is an opportunity for people who attend to learn more about the experience of trans detainees in ICE detention,” García-Madrid said.
The event originally had three speakers, García-Madrid said. However, the others felt uncomfortable and removed themselves from the panel.
“When someone is seeking asylum, the burden is on them to prove their case … immigration court is very different than criminal court. The government can use anything against the immigrant,” he said.
The problem being if these folks were not consistent in their testimony, even when sharing at an event like this, the information could be used to deny their case, García-Madrid said.
This Trans Latina is braving the situation and sharing her story, although her video and name will not be shared during the event. García-Madrid said she is interested in being an advocate for others in similar situations and sharing her story of immigration.
It is through sharing personal stories that OUT Boulder County hopes to foster understanding within the trans community and with the broader community.
“We really want to have a positive impact … to have an opportunity for the trans community to feel good, to feel celebrated and to feel recognized and appreciated. (For the larger community) we have that priority of educating the community about our lives and experiences, to really humanize our experiences,” Duffy said.
For more information on Trans Awareness Week, including a full lineup of events, click here.
