Transgender Day Of Visibility: What You Need To Know
metroweekly.comAhead of the 2022 International Transgender Day of Visibility, Thursday, March 31, we spoke with Olivia Hunt of the National Center for Transgender Equality, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.Hunt, who joined the organization last April and became its policy director in February, helped to clarify, for those who may be unaware, what “TDOV” is, and what the LGBTQ community and its allies can do to celebrate the day and lift up the transgender community during these times of, as she calls it, “unprecedented attack.”Excerpts from the interview, edited for clarity, follow. METRO WEEKLY: What is Transgender Day of Visibility?OLIVIA HUNT: Trans people’s lives are usually portrayed in a series of negatives.
We focus on talking about discrimination. We focus on talking about the struggles of transition, the struggles of being seen in our lives for who we are.Trans Day of Visibility is a day specifically to celebrate trans people’s lives and joys, not as struggles, but as triumphs as something to be happy about, to be proud of, to stand up and say that we are here, we are happy, we’re part of our community and our lives are important.
That our lives are worthy and we should be celebrated.MW: I’ll be honest, we’ve had a hard time finding physical events attached to it, especially locally.HUNT: That’s something that’s changed over the years.
Obviously, COVID — the fact that we are still, despite what some people think, living in the middle of a global respiratory pandemic means that we’re not seeing a lot of in-person gatherings, the way that we might in other situations.But Trans Day of Visibility is different because it has historically been celebrated a lot on social media.
