People who identify as transgender are never alone, four San Antonio transgender activists said March 31 at the fifth annual Transgender Day of Visibility celebration, hosted virtually at Texas A&M University-San Antonio.
The panel discussion was organized by the Mays Center and Rainbow P.A.W.S., the LGBTQ committee on campus, which helps organize events such as Pride and Transgender Day of Remembrance.
“There is no purer gift to the world as trans joy,” said Quantum Zambales (they/them/theirs), vice president of the San Antonio Gender Association.
Transgender Day of Visibility radiated inclusivity, acceptance and pride.
“You are valid and lovely if you elect not to take any medical transitional services,” said Gideon Del Rio (he/him/his), president of the San Antonio Gender Association. “There’s no one right way to be your gender.”
Medical transitional services include hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and/or gender confirmation/gender-affirming surgery.
Forty-five students and members from the A&M-San Antonio community attended the Zoom celebration moderated by Eliasz McCullen (they/them/theirs), coordinator for programs and partnerships.
All four panelists are active figures in the LGBTQ community. They speak out about trans issues and help transgender people access resources in the community.
International Transgender Day of Visibility is dedicated to celebrating transgender individuals and their contributions to the community. It was founded in 2009 by transgender activist Rachel Crandall.
A&M-San Antonio hosted its first Transgender Day of Visibility in 2017. Since then, local activists have been invited to speak at the event.
One of the founders of the Transgender Day of Visibility celebration at A&M-San Antonio is English lecturer and secretary of Rainbow P.A.W.S, Sarah Dwyer (they/them/theirs).
One hot topic of this year’s celebration was how the pandemic affected the trans community.
Dwyer went from teaching five days a week to having to switch to online in less than a week’s time.
“For me being faculty, the impact of the pandemic on daily life was pretty drastic,” Dwyer said.
Dwyer described the first couple of months of the pandemic as chaotic. It would begin to roll over and hamper family and social life as well.
“I haven’t been able to go home in the past year and that has been pretty difficult,” Dwyer said.
Dwyer said they’ve been using applications like Discord to stay in touch with friends and that they’ve been “leaning on each other even more heavily than we usually do.”
“I’ve been able to continue doing my job and doing what I like,” Dwyer said. “But it’s just been a little bit more difficult in a lot of varying ways.”
According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 23% of respondents experienced some form of housing discrimination and 30% experienced homelessness at some point in their lives.
“It’s been good and bad as a trans person,” Jaime Zapata (she/her/hers), San Antonio Realtor, board member for the Pride Center of San Antonio and board member for the Transgender Education Network of Texas, said. “As a community, it’s affected people differently…For trans people in particular, housing is an issue.”
“A lot of trans people need our support groups,” Zapata said. “It has been hard not being able to be around people who are like us.”
Zapata said there is also anxiety around going out in public.
Being open as a transgender person does have its own concerns. According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 46% reported to being verbally harassed.
In other ways, the pandemic revealed a silver lining, such as the San Antonio Gender Association’s virtual meetings.
“It became very evident, very quickly how meeting in a virtual space had a lot of positives,” Zambales said.
Participants had more anonymity, more privacy and could change their names and pronouns in a more recognizable way.
“Social relations have suffered some, but others have blossomed,” Zambales said.
However, virtual meetings have also placed limits on those who don’t have access to technology, said Del Rio, who is also the youth facilitator for Fiesta Youth, an organization that provides a safe space and support for LGBTQ youth.
“I would encourage everyone here if you want to get to know a bunch of trans people, come to one of our SAGA meetings,” Del Rio said. “We’ve become a community of people who are really good at rebuilding social infrastructure.”
Besides being a celebration, another purpose of Transgender Day of Visibility is to raise awareness about discrimination faced in the transgender community.
When politicians don’t want to face certain topics trans people become scapegoats, Zambales said.
“Some people may or may not be aware, but the Texas Legislature already has drafted 12 different bills that affect the LGBT community, seven of which are trans specific,” Zambales said. “And four of those trans-specific ones are targeted towards trans youth.”
Being visible makes transgender people more susceptible to attacks, but if they are not visible, then things will never change, Zapata said.
“You know what, we’re here, we’re not going anywhere, we’ve always been here, and we’ll always be here,” Zapata said. “No matter what laws they come up with, they’re not going to get rid of us. It’s important to be visible.”
To watch the event visit TAMUSA Mays on YouTube. For more information and access to trans resources, visit San Antonio Gender Association, Trans Power SA, Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT) and the Pride Center SA.
To contact Rainbow P.A.W.S., email RainbowPAWS@tamusa.edu.
To request a Zoom invite to San Antonio Gender Association’s meetings, visit them on Twitter @SAGA_TX or via Instagram @saga_tx. Support group meetings are hosted on the first and third Thursday of every month at 6:30 p.m.
