Today is International Transgender Day of Visibility, which falls each year on the 31st March. The day exists to help raise awareness and also celebrate the lives of trans people and draw attention to the discrimination, violence and poverty trans people face as a result of prejudice, ignorance and misinformation.
Most people are brought up to believe there are two genders, male and female, that are separate and distinct. This is the basis of our understanding of sexual diversity – people are seen either to be attracted to people of the ‘same sex’ or the ‘opposite sex’. Life would be much simpler were this actually so…
People who identify – or who others identify – with more than one minority group experience social violence, oppression and disadvantage from all the different aspects of their minority identity. Black trans women are the archetypal minority within a minority – living with daily intersectional violence targeting women, trans people, trans women in particular, on top of racism.
