Transgender Day of Visibility (TDoV) — 2024
On TDoV, We Owe Each Other a Fighting Chance
This post is written by Logan Casey, MAP’s Director of Policy Research. In this piece, Logan speaks to the recent waves of anti-transgender legislation across the U.S. As a transgender man and on behalf of MAP, Logan offers an invitation for people outside of the transgender and nonbinary communities to join in the fight for a better world.
Since 2009, Transgender Day of Visibility (TDoV) has been an important touchstone for the LGBTQ+ community, one that recognizes and celebrates transgender people in all of our richness and contributions to society. Unfortunately, what is becoming more visible — now more than ever — is the hatred we are facing and the coordinated attempts to prevent us from being who we are. And sadly, the more visible that hatred becomes, the harder it can feel to keep fighting for the better world we know is possible.
Amid a landscape of sweeping anti-transgender legislation, MAP is carefully tracking the discrimination that transgender and nonbinary people experience and the unique challenges that we are up against. In our work, MAP firmly stands with transgender and nonbinary people, advocating for our continued representation and recognizing our rightful place in the world.
On this 15th annual Transgender Day of Visibility, we are issuing a renewed call for people outside of the transgender and nonbinary community to not only recognize the escalating attacks that are taking place day after day, but to step up and join in the fight to make them stop.
Our community has been increasingly targeted year after year, with hundreds of bills in 2024 that mirror the record-shattering number of anti-LGBTQ bills proposed in 2023. However, discriminatory bills are not the only types of attacks we are facing. We are witnessing a coordinated effort, separate from the legislative process, designed to harm transgender and LGBTQ people more broadly. For example:
- Florida, Arkansas, and Montana are weaponizing state agencies to prevent people from changing the gender markers on driver’s licenses and other identity documents.
- In Texas, the Attorney General is aggressively attacking transgender people through various means, including trying to subpoena private medical records from gender-affirming health providers in Seattle and other places outside of Texas. The AG has also targeted PFLAG in efforts to obtain private membership records about transgender people and their families in the state of Texas.
- On social media and in public discourse, escalating attacks on LGBTQ people, queer visibility, and inclusive content are attempting to intimidate businesses, libraries, healthcare providers, and others into fear and silence.
To read more about the escalation of attacks against transgender people in recent years, read our Freedom Under Fire report and our Under Fire series. These reports offer hard-hitting examinations of what we are up against, with rigorous research, maps and visuals, and real-life, personal stories.
These reports also highlight the need for us to work together, across movements, to ensure that LGBTQ people can not only exist, but flourish in communities across the country.
When it comes to the rights and freedoms of transgender Americans, we cannot lose sight of how dramatically the lines have shifted in terms of what is considered “normal” and what is acceptable. For example, in 2016, following North Carolina’s enactment of HB2, which made it illegal for transgender people to use public restrooms according to their gender identity, Equality North Carolina led a tremendous national campaign partnering with corporations and businesses to pressure the state to overturn the discriminatory law. Today, nearly a decade later, Florida and Utah have substantially worse laws on the books, yet similar corporate or public pushback has been faint. The fact is, we need people beyond the LGBTQ+ community to join, or rejoin, our fight for a more just world.
In times like these, finding safe spaces to build community are incredibly important — especially in more hostile environments — as they help provide a balance and a refuge from the difficulties and potential discrimination of everyday life. These spaces can also be transformative, allowing those within the community to provide for each other, despite the political environment.
As we outlined in our 2020 report, LGBTQ Southerners, who face an extraordinarily hostile political environment, often operate outside the state legislative context, focusing on community building and directly addressing immediate needs like housing, food, and healthcare access.
The report highlights how LGBTQ people take care of each other while also fighting to educate others and change hearts and minds, to make a better world.
But we cannot be the only ones responsible for this work. We need everyone to join in this fight, in this world-building, because a better world for all of us is possible.
This moment is about more than simply defeating bills. We are fighting to protect queer spaces. We are fighting to protect queer people. We are fighting for the ability of LGBTQ+ people — and especially transgender people — to express themselves freely and gather in peace and joy and safety. And more than that, we are fighting to make every space safe, for everyone. And to make a better world, for everybody.
As we commemorate TDoV, I know that it can be extremely hard to find joy and resiliency, especially as we navigate the worst years of our political experience. In this moment, so many things are happening that are horrible and incomprehensible, and although we want to look away, we must not. This is an invitation for everyone to take notice and acknowledge the pain of right now. Then we must ask ourselves, “what can we do?” And then do it, together.
These last few years, I often find myself thinking of a quote from one of our trans elders, Leslie Feinberg: “You’re already wondering if the world could change. Try imagining a world worth living in, and then ask yourself if that isn’t worth fighting for.” Today and every day, we owe it to each other to imagine that world and take action to get there.
