March 31^st marks Trans Day of Visibility, a day of celebration of trans pride and awareness, and a celebration of trans and gender diverse experiences and achievements.

After recent events, Trans Day of Visibility feels particularly important this year. As such, we’d like to start recognising the many, many trans and gender diverse people across Australia and New Zealand that participated in the demonstrations against the recent “tour of transphobia” and the trans-exclusionary rhetoric which it promoted.

We would also like to celebrate West Australia’s trans and gender-diverse community, and the people within wonderful organisations like TransFolk of WA that provide essential support to our communities and training for other organisations and businesses to be more inclusive of trans and gender-diverse people.

Of course, we’d like to give specific recognition of (and a lot of love towards) the trans and gender-diverse community within our region, and to recognise and celebrate their achievements and contributions to our community and society, and to express our love for, and affinity with, them as much-valued members of our own Queer community: they will always have a home within Albany Pride, and their inclusion is simply not up for debate.

Whilst the visibility of trans and gender diverse people in our society has certainly increased, still within the media, they are underrepresented, often talked about rather than talked to. We give thanks to the trans and gender-diverse role models and speakers that do provide recognition and representation in the public sphere despite the increasing prevalence of anti-trans rhetoric and abuse.

At our end-of-month drinks tonight we will be raising a glass to our trans and gender-diverse community. We hope you can all join us from 5pm at The White Star, Albany.

 For more information about TDOV, visit https://tdov.org.au. You can also give your support to WA’s community by donating and supporting TransFolk of WA – https://www.transfolkofwa.org.