Encountering Students at Villa Julie College
Realizing, Fulfilling 'Who They Are'
Encountering Students at Villa Julie College
Realizing, Fulfilling 'Who They Are'
With each violent death, members of the local transgender community have become more visible. With each case making the nation's capital one of the most dangerous places for them to live - police recorded five homicides in a year - they have become better organized and more politically active.
This emerging movement is a marked departure for a little-understood group that has long hovered in the shadows, largely ignored until a few years ago by even the gay rights campaigns. For the first time, transgender people have a clear agenda: They are no longer going to deny who they are, they said. And they will not be denied their basic civil rights.
Earlier this year, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the group's first national rights agency, opened in Washington. At La Clinica del Pueblo and at the Whitman-Walker Clinic, support groups are meeting regularly. The local and national communities are working closely together to demand health and social programs and legal protections against discrimination in employment and housing.
"The most significant thing is there are so many more transgender people out than there used to be, which means a couple of things," said Mara Keisling, executive director of the privately funded center. "It means that there are a lot more of us that can be activists, and it means there are a lot more people who are facing overt discrimination and violence." "Transgender" is an umbrella term to describe people who do not conform to traditional notions of gender identity, appearance and expression. Within the group are heterosexual cross-dressers, men who identify as women, women who believe they really should have been born men. Some simply appear as the other gender; others may take hormones to obtain some of the desired characteristics; still others have surgery. The District's five transgender homicide victims were all men who dressed and identified as women, a population that often is the target of hate crimes.
