Transgender Awareness Week 2016: Representation and Resilience

Transgender Awareness Week 2016

NEWS FROM THE PROVOST

The GLBT Center will observe Transgender Awareness Week from Monday, November 14 through Friday, November 18, 2016. Be sure to take a look at the educational and thought-provoking programs planned for this year’s observance.

Transgender Awareness Week precedes the Transgender Day of Remembrance on Sunday, November 20, a global, annual observance for transgender individuals who were murdered over the past year.

Monday

The week starts off at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, November 14, 2016 in Talley 4280 with an in-depth workshop about how our cultural values about gender and violence impact the transgender community. This 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.

Monday evening brings the screening and discussion of Cruel and Unusual (2006) at 7:00 p.m. in Talley 4280. This film depicts the experiences of transgender women forced to serve their sentences in men’s prisons. This film contains graphic descriptions of sexual violence and self-harm and brief nudity. The discussion following the film will explore the laws and policies that impact the experiences of transgender individuals facing incarceration.

From Tuesday, November 15 to Friday, November 18, 2016, members of the Wolfpack can write letters of solidarity to transgender inmates across the country with materials provided in the GLBT Center.

Wednesday

Wednesday, November 16, 2016 features February Keeney, engineering manager for the Community and Safety team at GitHub. She is passionate about building inclusive workplaces and online communities. Join her at 4:00 p.m. in D.H. Hill Auditorium for the Making Space Series as she discusses how she leverages her experiences and perspective to foster a greater understanding of privilege and intersectionality.

Later in the evening, the GLBT Center and T-Files, a transgender peer support group, will observe Transgender Day of Remembrance at 6:00 p.m. at the Free Expression Tunnel. Every year, the lives lost to anti-transgender violence are remembered and memorialized during vigils across the globe. Those of us observing TDoR at NC State will hold a simple Reading of the Names and moment of silence before painting the Free Expression Tunnel to share Transgender Awareness Week with the larger campus community. If you would like to join in the painting, work will commence at 6:30 p.m.

Friday

To close the week, the College of Sciences is hosting Martine Rothblatt on Friday, November 18, 2016 from 5:30-6:30 p.m. in Hunt Library Auditorium. Martine Rothblatt has had quite a hand in making the world what it is today; she is a telecommunications lawyer, founder and CEO of United Therapeutics and co-founder of Sirius Radio. She is also a powerful voice for transgender rights, especially within STEM fields. Come hear Martine Rothblatt’s lecture as the capstone to 2016’s Transgender Awareness Week.

Media Kit

Andy DeRoin is program coordinator in the GLBT Center.