Awareness Only Gets Us So Far: Reflections on Trans Awareness Week

By Z Nicolazzo

Every November, I anticipate Trans Awareness Week with cautious optimism. It’s not that I do not care for awareness; as a trans person myself, I recognize awareness is an important step toward the liberation we all seek. However, I also am cognizant that awareness will only get us so far. Simply put, awareness is indeed necessary, and yet is insufficient in and of itself to stem the ongoing tide of cultural trans oppression I and other trans people experience daily.

In a piece I wrote titled Imagining a Trans* Epistemology: What Liberation Thinks Like in Postsecondary Education, I detail the ongoing presence of trans oppression, or the myriad ways that trans people, particularly trans women of color, are stripped of their humanity socially and politically. Moreover, the more we as trans people are surrounded by these negative, harmful, and false misunderstandings of who we are, the greater likelihood we have of struggling to accept, love, and cherish ourselves. This phenomenon is called internalized oppression, which is an outgrowth of the waves of cultural trans oppression.

This year is both different and the same for trans people in the United States. It is different because there is a dramatic increase in anti-trans legislation being proposed and signed into law by conservative politicians throughout the country. For example, in my own home state of Arizona, Governor Doug Ducey signed anti-trans legislation into law in late March of this year, restricting trans girls’ participation in school sports as well as barring trans people from accessing inclusive healthcare, which studies have demonstrated as being life-saving for many of us. And all of this has happened in the wake of Time magazine’s heralding the U.S. experiencing a “trans tipping point”—something they claimed happened in 2014, which they ushered in by inviting Laverne Cox to pose for the cover of the magazine. It has also happened in the wake of an increasing cultural awareness of trans people through popular media outlets, and the ongoing visibility of who we are. Clearly, awareness is not doing the full work trans people need in terms of improving our life chances.

This year, when you recognize and honor Trans Awareness Week, I would encourage readers to do a couple things. First of all, for the trans people reading this, remember we “may be from oppression, but we ourselves are not of oppression”—a point I made in my aforementioned Urban Education article. In other words, we are forged in the ongoing fire of cultural trans oppression, but we are not the tragic figures we are misrepresented as being. We have beautiful, mundane, and expansive lives. Just like I often realize when thinking about the flora and fauna in Arizona, things can thrive in harsh and inhospitable conditions. Certainly, we could flourish all the more if trans oppression ceased; and yet, we continue to make whole worlds and networks where we love, support, and take care of each other. As the Black trans woman and activist CeCe McDonald has stated, “we keep each other safe.” Let’s keep doing it.

For the nontrans readers, I implore you to do more than just become aware of trans people. This is just the first of many necessary steps to increasing trans people’s life chances, and while it is important, it has yet to, in and of itself, change material conditions for us. Find ways to support and be involved in trans-led and centered organizations, speak out against trans oppression even when trans folks are not present, do the internal work to understand and counteract your own investments in trans oppression, run for public office on a platform of trans liberation, read gender-expansive literature to your children and talk to them about gender self-determination; there are so many things you can—and should—be doing to support trans flourishing. Whatever you do, just don’t stop at awareness. This is what I as a trans person want. This is what we as trans people need. And, as Mariame Kaba reminds us, we do this ‘til we free us—because freedom, not merely awareness, is the ultimate goal. 

Now is the time to start.

Article Details
Imagining a Trans* Epistemology: What Liberation Thinks Like in Postsecondary Education
Z Nicolazzo
First Published March 8, 2017
DOI: 10.1177/0042085917697203
Urban Education

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