The GLBT Center will observe Transgender Awareness Week from Tuesday, November 14 through Monday, November 20, 2017. The impetus for the week of events is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a global, annual observance for transgender individuals who were murdered over the past year, which will take place on November 20, 2017. The Transgender Day of Remembrance Memorial Sculpture will be on display in the GLBT Center all week. Please visit us in Talley Student Union, Suite 5230 to pay your respects to those our community has lost. On the evening of November 20, 2017 GLBT Center and T-Files, a transgender peer support group, will observe Transgender Day of Remembrance at 5:00 p.m. in Wolf Plaza.

November 14

The theme of this year’s Transgender Awareness Week is “Dismantling Gender Roles” and will kick off on Tuesday, November 14, 2017 with a virtual workshop hosted by Queer Memoir’s Kelli Dunham from 7:00-9:00 p.m. in Talley Student Union, Room 4280. Everyone has a gender identity, but everyone experiences their gender, or lack of gender, differently. Explore your relationship with your gender in this engaging workshop. Come prepared to reflect, write, hear others’ perspectives and share your own. Writing materials will be provided, but participants are welcome to bring laptops and tablets to type responses. Participants are also invited to donate a copy of their work to the GLBT Archive for preservation.

November 15

On Wednesday, November 15, 2017, the GLBT Center will facilitate an exploration of the barriers and challenges faced by transgender adults in employment, healthcare, housing and education. From 6:00-7:30 p.m. in Talley Student Union, Room 4270, participants will review the U.S. Transgender Survey results specific to North Carolina, engage in dialogue about the effects of comprehensive discrimination within our state, and explore possible ways to create buy-in from stakeholders to mitigate effects and prevent the perpetuation of oppression.

November 16 and 17

Students will unpack the ways gender impacts our culture and communities through discussions later in the week as well. Thursday evening will feature an open discussion with the Social Justice Cohort from 5:00-6:00 p.m., a conversation that will focus on transphobia, cissexism, violence and discrimination. On the afternoon of Friday, November 17, 2017 from 2:00-4:00 p.m. in Poe Hall, Room 512, the GLBT Center, Women’s Center and the College of Education will host a discussion of the book Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique Morris. This text is a call to action around the inequalities of Black cis and trans girls within K-12 education and describes the school-to-confinement pipeline.

Transgender Awareness Week will also include two GLBT Advocate workshops. The first will take place on Thursday, November 16, 2017 from 2:00-4:00 p.m. in Talley Student Union, Room 3222. “Indistinct Distinctions: Sexism, Heterosexism and Trans Oppression” is a two-hour workshop that will explore the nuanced, interacting aspects of sexism, heterosexism and trans oppression. Participants will learn about the historical manifestations of these systems and how those manifestations have evolved to create the cultural norms we perpetuate today.

November 20

The second GLBT Advocate workshop, “Cultural Values about Gender and Violence in the Trans Community,” will take place on Monday, November 20, 2017 from 1:00-3:00 p.m. in Room 3222. This is an in-depth workshop about how our cultural values about gender and violence impact the transgender community. The workshop, an offering for the GLBT Center Advocate Program, explores the questions: How does the cultural environment in which we all participate perpetuate bias against the transgender community? How does this pervasive bias, conscious or unconscious, impact the lives of transgender, genderqueer, agender and gender-questioning people? This workshop will create a space where participants can explore the role of cultural values and their own role in creating or envisioning those values. These workshops are open to NC State undergraduates, graduate students, staff, faculty and alumni as well as interested members of the local community.

Register for Workshops

• Register for these workshops or learn more about the GLBT Advocate Program.

Andy DeRoin is program coordinator in the GLBT Center.