Trans Pride March aims to raise visibility of transgender community in Vancouver
Trans activist Kate Lamothe says the Trans Pride March will be a chance for transgender people to celebrate being "out and proud".
March in West End will conclude three-day Vancouver Trans Forum
The poster for the Vancouver Trans Forum.
For the first time in more than a decade, Vancouver’s transgender community will hold a Trans Pride March on July 25.
Scheduled one week before this year’s Vancouver Pride parade, the march will mark the end of a three-day Vancouver Trans Forum that will bring transgender people and their allies together to share skills and knowledge.
Kate Lamothe, one of the organizers of the forum, told the Straight that the Trans Pride March isn’t affiliated with the Vancouver Dyke March and Pride parade—which will take place on July 31 and August 1, respectively—but it will be held in the same spirit as those events.
“A lot of trans people live more stealthily or what not, so it’s a way to just be out and proud,” the trans activist, musician, and performance and spoken word artist said by phone from her home in Vancouver. “We’re here, we’re trans, and some of us are queer. It’s just to raise the visibility, I think, and also just to be proud of ourselves.”
The Vancouver Trans Forum kicks off on the evening of July 23 at Rhodes Wellness College (280-1125 Howe Street), with a keynote speech by Sadie-Ryanne Baker of the D.C. Trans Coalition and an all-ages dance party.
On July 24, the forum will feature panels, workshops, and facilitated discussions geared toward transgender, genderqueer, and two-spirit individuals. Session topics include Trans 101: Becoming an Ally and Know Your (Trans) Rights, and one of the workshops is about self-defence.
The second day of the forum ends with an all-body swim at the Templeton Pool (700 Templeton Drive). Lamothe said that people of all genders, sexual orientations, and abilities who face discrimination at pools are encouraged to participate.
July 25’s sessions aim to educate service providers and health-care professionals about how they can be more inclusive of transgender people.
The Trans Pride March will start outside the college at 6:30 p.m. and head down Davie and Bute streets to Nelson Park.
Admission to the forum costs $15 to $50, depending on one’s ability to pay, but no one will be turned away at the door. According to Lamothe, the event is open to everyone and the venue is wheelchair accessible.
She noted organizers hope the forum will help make access to health care easier for the transgender community and kick-start a campaign to make the justice and prison systems safer for transgender people.
“We see this as not just an end point, but sort of a springboard for further action,” Lamothe said.
Leading up to the forum is the first annual Vancouver Trans Film Fest. The first three screenings already took place earlier this month at the Rhizome Café.
From July 19 to July 22, the festival will show films such as She’s a Boy I Knew, by Vancouver filmmaker Gwen Haworth, and 100% Woman, about history-making mountain biker Michelle Dumaresq, at Spartacus Books (684 East Hastings Street).
The Web site of the Vancouver-based Trans Alliance Society defines trans as referring to "anyone who has a gender identity; may it be the medical or psychological model, that is different than their birth sex, and/or expresses their gender in ways that contravene societal expectations of the range of possibilities for men and women".
The site continues: "This may include people who self-identify as transgendered, intersex, Two Spirit, crossdressers, transsexuals, bi-gendered, pan-gendered, genderqueer, androgynous, third gender, female and male impersonators, and drag kings/queens, as well as people whose perceived gender or anatomic sex may conflict with their gender expression (such as masculine-appearing women and feminine-appearing men)."
For Lamothe, the Trans Pride March, Vancouver Trans Forum, and Vancouver Trans Film Fest are evidence of the city's “burgeoning” transgender community.
“There’s a lot of really awesome activism that’s happening, as well as cultural stuff, more representation within media, which is really exciting,” Lamothe said. “But there’s still a lot of struggles to go. All our health-care needs are not completely funded. There is still a lot of police harassment of trans people, specifically trans people who are in the sex trade, and prisons are really unsafe for trans people. So, we’ve come a long way, but we’ve got a long way to go.”
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Comments
It just doesnt make sense to me , but then I am simply an older hetero married male.
Cheers,
The fact is, we can't buy safety at the cost of silence. That's no kind of life. If the world is safe for trans and queer people only if we're silent and suppress ourselves and live as someone different from ourselves, then it's not safe for us at all. It's not a matter of "telling everybody," it's a matter of living our lives honestly, which is something that everyone should be able to do.
One speaks about who one love the other about who one is. For people born with transexuality all they want is for people to understand that the outside package doesn't always represent the person on the inside.
So David this is about more then just having a march, but rather showing people that yes they exist and there are many rights every day people take for granted, that they still must fight to get. Such as the right to keep their jobs while/when they begin living as their true self. Unlike being gay, it's not exactly something that one can hide in the early part of transition.
Transgender, on the other hand, is an umbrella term which can include pretty much all communities under the queer umbrella, plus some others not included.
1. Sexual orientation =/= gender. Gender is one's psychological sex (ie. not their biological sex, which is determined by one's reproductive organs and called 'sex') and sexual orientation is what sex one is attracted to. Being transgendered means that your sex is incompatible with your gender; your gender can't be changed (ie. if you're born a male psychologically, you stay that way), but your sex can. That is what transgendered people strive for: to change their physical sex.
2. There ARE people with a burning hatred for sexual minorities (ie. gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer, etc) out there. Even if they're in the minority, it only takes one or two people to seriously harm another (eg. Matthew Sheppard only had two attackers. He died). It only takes one unsupportive family to send an out homosexual or transgendered person onto the streets. The minority which hates trans- or homosexual people, which you seem to think do not matter at all, does matter very much. As a transsexual, I've experienced this myself.
3. The process of transition invariably involves outing yourself (ie. telling people that you're trans). You can't transition from male to female without parents, relatives or friends not knowing that. If you're a married man, you can't transition without telling your wife that you're literally turning into a woman. Same goes for transgendered people transitioning from both sexes, from all walks of life. You need the emotional support of people you know. People will wonder what happened to you, even if you don't out yourself. Hence, outing oneself is a necessity.
To transition, you also need the approval of doctors for hormones (essential for transforming your physical body into one that's more like the opposite sex). To gain their approval, you need to adopt the appearance of the opposite sex - to the uninitiated, crossdressing or growing/cutting one's hair. How will you explain that to people you know, if you don't out yourself?
Once you out yourself, rumors spread, making you liable to violence from bigots who you barely know.
As for strangers, it's no secret that some transgendered people don't pass (ie. don't look or sound like the opposite sex). They'll get read (ie. people will figure out that they are transgendered purely from appearance or voice). Ergo, you have just incurred the wrath of the 'minority' who hates GLBTQ (gay/lesbian/bi./trans./queer) folk, purely due to your appearance.
Transgendered people can also be homosexual (ie. you can have transitioned from male to female and like women). You can be attacked just because you're holding hands with your homosexual partner - the last 2, 3 gaybashings in Vancouver happened that way, yes? What's a relationship if you can't even hold hands? One that will never go anywhere.
For a large part of transgendered people, transitioning is a necessity; otherwise, they will be plunged into a deep depression and even suicide.
In conclusion:
1. Gender =/= sex.
2. Minorities matter.
3. Transgendered people can be attacked just because they were born that way.
I've revised the story's lede to reflect the fact this will be the first such march in over a decade, not the first ever to be held.
According to organizer Kate Lamothe, the route has been changed, so the march will end at Nelson Park, not Sunset Beach.
I've also updated the story to include the new destination.
Cheers & Good Luck
You have come a long way since "the peak".
:-)
As we are all in our life processes.
I will be facilitating an anti oppression workshop at this important community event.
I believe the trans community itself has a long way to go to become more healthy and less oppressive. So awesome to having this event where issues can be idenified and discussed. Then we can take them to our respective communities.
Now if we can just get that pesky Bill C389 passed - we will be a little closer to achieving some decent level of equality, in all of this colonized land, known as Canada.
Tami Starlight
Vancouver Trans Day of Remembrance/Trans Action Canada.
DNC / VMC