Trans Awareness Week

November 13-19 was Trans Awareness Week. Jacob, a member of Rainbows club, volunteered to write us an article about it. Rainbows club is a club for LGBTQIA+ people and allies that runs every Tuesday lunch times in the wellbeing space.  

Yvette Larubina

Wellbeing Team

Trans Awareness Week 

As time changes, society advances. We’ve made many achievements, in many fields of science which definitely includes social sciences. Women have been allowed to work the same jobs that men have, people of colour have been desegregated from common facilities and homosexuality has been widely legalised. However, these social movements are still in progress. There are things in some places women are legally not allowed to do, people are punished by law for being gay and people of colour are systematically oppressed. These effects hit the hardest on another oppressed group, being transgender people. They are individuals who identify as a gender not assigned at birth.  

Trans people have much arguably more oppression in society and law than most to any other minority group. Laws have been enacted in places like Florida where any sort of classroom discussion is banned in any circumstance below grade 4. It is also criminalised in other places like Russia, The Philippines, Egypt, Hungary, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Fiji and dozens more. We can certainly say that trans people experience a large amount of hate speech, online and in real life.  

Trans awareness week is a chance for people to be aware and learn more about trans people. If you’re not informed, I recommend these useful websites:  

https://transequality.org/issues/resources/understanding-transgender-people-the-basics  

-A useful website that is a must read for anyone who thinks they have unanswered questions about trans people. 

https://bethylamine.github.io/  

-A compendium of counter arguments that disprove many different anti-trans arguments. The website is a work-in-progress, so there are some sub-pages that are listed as “to do” due to the dozens of flawed arguments that different people and groups post.  

I hope this article helps out any concerns as we strive for a better world where undeserved discrimination is locked away forever.  

by Jacob Morrison-Broughan 

Year 7