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March 31 Is a Day To Celebrate Trans Folks. Let’s Write About Visibility!
How Can I Make Trans Day of Visibility Meaningful for Cis People?
As a trans man, I can experience both erasure and hypervisibility in the same breath
It’s really tempting to just disappear from public life on Trans Day of Visibility this year, turning a day that most cis (non-trans) people don’t know about into a day of self-care.
In spite of the smile plastered on my face most of the time, I’ve been nursing an avalanche of burnout. The vast majority of my work involves providing emotional support for various kinds of overwhelming trauma. When work ends, there is often another trans person calling for emotional support through some kind of legitimate panic. It sometimes feels like I never clock out.
I know this day isn’t about self-care on the surface. In theory, Trans Day of Visibility is all about raising awareness of who we are as individuals and as a community. It’s supposed to be a day of expressing the joy of survival. In practice, it often becomes a day of hanging out with other trans people in a place where cis people could theoretically appreciate us from afar if they can even tell that we’re trans. In today’s political climate, cis…
