Join the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity as we stand with the GLBT Center to observe Transgender Awareness Week from Monday, November 18 to Friday, November 22, 2019. The impetus for this week of events is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a global, annual observance for transgender individuals who were murdered over the past year. The Transgender Day of Remembrance Memorial Sculpture will be on display in the GLBT Center all week. Please visit us in Suite 5230 of Talley Student Union to pay your respects to those our community has lost.
As we pay our respects, know that it is our goal — and the reason we continually work to raise awareness — that not one person more will suffer or be killed for simply being who they are, the most fundamental of human rights.
This year’s Transgender Awareness Week will kick off with guest speaker André Perez on Monday, November 18, 2019 from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. in the GLBT Center Lounge. Perez is an oral historian, educator, filmmaker and community organizer who founded the Transgender Oral History Project in 2008 and created a traveling multimedia historical exhibit about transgender activism in 2009. Perez is the director of America in Transition, a documentary web series and community engagement campaign looking at social justice from the perspective of trans people from marginalized communities.
On Tuesday, November 19, 2019, the GLBT Center will host a workshop, “Cultural Values about Gender and Violence in the Trans Community.” This in-depth exploration of how our cultural values impact the transgender community seeks to answer 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. The workshop is open to NC State undergraduates, graduate students, staff, faculty and alumni as well as interested members of the local community. Register for this or other workshops or learn more about the GLBT Advocate Program, on the GLBT Center’s Advocate Program page.
On the evening of November 20, 2019, the GLBT Center will observe Transgender Day of Remembrance at 6:00 p.m. in the GLBT Center Lounge, Suite 5230 of Talley Student Union. While the event will include a reading of the names and stories of those taken from us, we will also reflect on the intersecting violence of transphobia, racism, classism, xenophobia, ableism and other forms of oppression. Please join us to memorialize those who have been taken from our community.
Andy DeRoin is assistant director of the GLBT Center.