Thursday March 31st is International Transgender Day of Visibility, a day for transgender people to celebrate our existence and say the fight for equal treatment isn't over yet. Not when thousands of people have been murdered and governments and courts consent to the murders by silence and insufficient prosecution.
The right to marry isn't enough. In many so-called "advanced countries", people can be denied recognition of their gender because they have not had genital surgery (Canada), because they have not been sterilized and denied the right to have children (France, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland), because they are denied the ability to change gender on birth records which are required for obtaining legal documents (USA). And in less enlightened countries, it's much bleaker - murder, imprisonment, assault and other crimes are everyday occurrences.
Legal Aspects Of Transgenderism
Transgender Rights Map, 2014 (from Transgender Europe)
Governments predicate "policy" on requiring genital surgery before recognition. This contradicts the medical profession (i.e. educated people who know the medical issues) who require transgender people live as their desired gender for years before hormones or surgery are approved. Denial of basic rights and protections enables discrimination in employment and housing, which forces most transgender people into poverty, unable to get all but the most poorly paid jobs. Such policy is either incompetently or intentionally written to drive people into poverty and make it impossible for them to transition.
Human rights are for humans, but governments have declared transgender people as "not human" and undeserving of the same protections as others simply because we do not fit the narrow and narrowminded gender binary. Denying rights and legal protections to anyone is legalized discrimination, be it race, religion, ability or disability, sexual orientation, cisgender or transgender.
GLAAD: International Transgender Day Visibility
Transstudent (on facebook)
Transgender Europe
International Transgender Day Visibility (from Equality Michigan)
Pride Calgary's day of events, 2016
wearefamilymagazine.co.uk: International Transgender Day Of Visibility
Transgender Michigan
Pride Source
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