Awareness, indeed!

This is Transgender Awareness Week.

The Week concludes with Transgender Day of Remembrance  (TDOR) on Tuesday, November 20, when we remember our trans brothers and sisters who died because they were trans and did not pretend they were something else.

I discovered that TDOR events are scheduled all over the calendar because TDOR falls during Thanksgiving week this year and some of the people who might normally attend, will not be available. For example, some colleges and universities are on vacation next week, so they have either scheduled a TDOR event this week or simply cancelled their TDOR event this year.

Getting back to Transgender Awareness Week, the GLAAD Trans Week webpage states that the Week is intended "to help raise the visibility of transgender and gender non-conforming people, and address the issues the community faces."

Over the years, I think I have done my share of making civilians aware of transgender people. It was actually kind of easy once I overcame my fear of mixing it up with civilians. Once I found out that I had nothing to fear except fear itself, I loved going out and finding new venues in which to strut my stuff as a woman, trans or otherwise.

It was "easy" because almost all of my friends and acquaintances, who knew the male me accepted the female me.

My former co-workers knew the male me long before they were introduced to the female me and things did not change when they were made aware that I was trans; I was the same old Stan, but with an improved fashion sense.

Strangers were almost as easy. I assume that I passed some of the time because no one pays much attention to old women like me, so old transwomen can fly under the radar and not be closely scrutinized.

On the other hand, I also assume that some civilians suspected that I was a trans, but they did not make an issue of it. The worst experience was the use of wrong pronouns, but I can live with that especially in the cases when the person using the wrong pronoun corrected himself/herself.

Doing outreach at colleges and universities was different because going in, the students knew we were trans, so there was no fooling them. On the other hand, I think we probably enlightened some of the students. How many of them expected over-the-top drag queens to show up and were surprised when we appeared just like other civilians? Awareness, indeed!

Wearing Madeleine (Source: Madeleine)

I found this before and after photos to be fascinating. (Source: Pinterest)