People from the transgender community and allies gathered recently at Heritage Park in Oceanside to celebrate International Transgender Day of Visibility with a picnic, entertainment and activities.
The Transgender Day of Visibility, which typically falls on March 31, began in 2009 when Rachel Crandall-Crocker, a transgender advocate from Michigan, posted on Facebook. The Day of Visibility aims to celebrate the accomplishments and beauty of the transgender community, a point highlighted by President Joe Biden in his proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility.
To Jet Finnell, who was the organizer of the event in Oceanside on April 2 and is the gender-advocacy Project Coordinator at the North County LGBTQ Center, celebrating the community is the only way to survive.
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“I think that joy is the only thing that keeps us from utter despair,” Finnell said.
Celebration for the community continues on Friday, when the San Diego LGBT Community Center in Hillcrest will host a Transgender Day of Empowerment, featuring speakers, awards and more.
The event last weekend in North County was free, with food catered by the O’Side Kitchen Collaborative and booths staffed by community organizations. The entertainment lineup included: Mace Viemeister, Owl Rare, Christynne Wood, Autumn Flower and Sasha Ruster.
The celebration felt especially important to Alexis Guevarra, a senior at Oceanside High School. He said he hopes people can learn that being different is OK.
“Your normal is different from anyone else’s normal,” Guevarra said.
The theme of Sunday's event was Transform the Future. Pau Abustan, a member of the queer and disability communities and a professor in women’s, genders and sexuality studies at California State University, Los Angeles, said their hope for the future is safety.
“In the future, I hope all trans kids, all queer kids, all queer elders and trans elders and non-binary can feel safe and welcomed in their authentic selves and be free to be who they are without any fear,” Abustan said.
The future, though, would not be possible without those who fought before them, said Abustan.
“We are awesome today, thanks to trans and black trans women such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera,” Abustan said.
People in the transgender community are not a rarity, Finnell said. Rather, they are embedded in everyone’s communities.
“There’s this whole statistic that 80% of people in America don't personally know someone who’s transgender," Finnell said, "but I like to say that they don't know that they know someone who's transgender."
Abustan agreed.
“We’re everywhere," Abustan said. "We could be your family members, we could be your coworkers and we're here just like you to hopefully make this world a better, more peaceful, more just place."
Finnell's call to action?
“Open your mind a little bit to the possibility that people you know may have a different idea of gender than you might think that they would," Finnell said.
