Held annually on March 31st, the International Transgender Day of Visibility was created to show support for and raise awareness about transgender people and the difficulties they face worldwide.
Founded in 2009, this holiday has slowly but surely become more prominent, respected, and influential as time has passed. Our Transgender Voice Therapy specialists want to inform you that this year’s Transgender Day of Visibility was an incredible success.
Every year, the Transgender Day of Visibility has a theme that is promoted. This year’s theme was called ‘More Than Visibility’. Using the #MoreThanVisibility hashtag, many people across several social media sites showed their support for the transgender community.
The ‘More Than Visibility’ theme is incredibly resonant for the community; it means that visibility alone is not enough to give equality to transgender people.
Despite the increase in visibility in media, transgender people are still not privy to many of the things that other people are. The theme’s goal was to use the concept of visibility as a tool for transgender justice.
For the past several years, the public has seen the visibility of transgender people rise. The mainstream media now distributes knowledge of transgender issues including access to healthcare, education, and employment. Additionally, mainstream media is choosing to reflect positive images of the transgender community that have been sorely lacking for the past several years. This widespread growth of knowledge regarding the lives of transgender people finally culminated in this past Day of Visibility which saw many activists, both in the United States and worldwide, advocate for transgender rights.
One of the ways that the mainstream media has embraced the transgender community is through shows like Amazon’s ‘Transparent’. Eryn Gitelis, one of our speech-language pathologists, has a role on the show portraying a voice therapist. She also works with one of the actors to help with his voice transition on the show.
If you would like to know more about the Transgender Day of Visibility, read here.
