Trans folks and allies around the globe celebrated and honored International Trans Day of Visibility (ITDOV) on March 31, 2022. This day is an effort to both shower trans folks with positive visibility and affirmation, as well as to get allies actually moving when it comes to supporting a profoundly marginalized community. It’s also an opportunity to honor and say the names of those lost to violence, in particular, trans women of color and trans sex workers.
Disturbingly, on the morning of ITDOV, staff members of Baltimore Safe Haven got to work and found more a vehemently hateful message vandalizing their office door, as reported by The Baltimore Sun. Baltimore Safe Haven is a local trans-led nonprofit that offers transitional housing, food, and various support sources to trans folks, with a particular focus on Black trans women. It’s safe to say the organization saves lives every day. It’s also safe to say the graffiti was targeted and hate-based. The message said: “F—k pride DIE” in purple spray paint. While it doesn’t repair the harm done, the Baltimore police are at least investigating it as a potential hate crime, according to local officials.
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“I just started shaking,” recalled Nicole Wells, who told the outlet she was the first to find the message upon arriving at work on Thursday morning. The caseworker added: “It was shocking.”
The organization tweeted pictures of the vandalism.
Iya Dammons, who founded Safe Haven and currently serves as its executive director, told the Sun that the group believes the message was in response to plans for a trans-focused Pride celebration in the coming months, including a parade and block party. Dammons said the group is “devasted, afraid, and traumatized” but pledged they won’t cancel the Pride celebration.
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“We’re going to stay vigilant and fight like hell,” Dammons, an openly trans woman who says she’d faced structural barriers including poverty and discrimination, said. “This is one of those moments.”
While this situation (obviously) doesn’t happen all of the time, there is an ongoing attack on trans rights in this country. As Daily Kos continues to cover, Republicans are deadset on isolating and excluding trans folks at every level.
We’ve seen state lawmakers push discriminatory measures to keep trans girls out of girls’ sports, for example, as well as attempts to keep trans people of all ages from using the correct bathroom and locker room facilities. We’ve also seen a recent surge in efforts to ban safe, age-appropriate, gender-affirming health care for minors, including attempts to ban procedures that are extremely uncommon for adolescents anyway, like surgeries.
Then, in Florida, we have anti-LGBTQ+ legislation already signed into law, thanks to DeSantis and his outrageous Don’t Say Gay law. While conservatives are eager to use fearmongering language like “grooming” and “predatory” in reference to a law that’s allegedly about parental rights, we all know it’s really about making LGBTQ+ folks seem like monsters and a danger to cisgender, heterosexual people around them. And especially a danger to children, which is why supporters of the hateful law keep suggesting it’s “inappropriate” for teachers to even discuss things like sexual orientation or gender identity in public school classrooms.
There’s nothing inappropriate about being LGBTQ+. Adolescents are exposed to cisgender, heterosexual norms every single day, even in examples as seemingly minor as a teacher having a framed wedding photo on their desk or classmates referencing their parents. Am I suggesting we ban all references to such things? Of course not.
But I am suggesting we can be more inclusive and honor the fact that cisgender, heterosexual norms are just that: norms. They’re not the default and they’re only the standard because that’s what societal norms tell us. But there’s nothing unusual, scary, or inappropriate about queerness. The only thing scary is the way conservatives treat us.
Sadly, while all queer people (and especially queer people with intersecting identities, like queer people of color, queer disabled folks, LGBTQ+ sex workers, and so on), are prone to violence and discrimination, trans folks are especially so. Trans people also report higher levels of mental health distress, like depression and suicidal ideation, and also face higher rates of unemployment, housing insecurity, and even leaving high school without a diploma.
There is no queer equality without trans equality and protection. In fact, there’s no equality, period, if trans folks aren’t included.
“Every breath that a trans person takes is an act of revolution, both here in Baltimore and across the country,” Dammons told the Sun. “We’re here, and we’re not going anywhere.”
That’s exactly the message all allies and advocates need to take up now: We’re not going anywhere.