It seems almost unconceivable the ground we
have covered over the last year in terms of real visibility and what it is to
be trans. We have entered a period of ‘transgender awakening’. There can be no
going back, but there is still much to do.
Leading this charge and putting the issues on
the world stage was the feature in the June 2014 issue of Time. ‘The
Transgender Tipping Point – America’s next civil fights frontier’ by Jaty
Steinmetz profiled a range of transgender people, making the point that trans
people are significantly more likely to be impoverished, unemployed and
suicidal than other Americans. We know through current studies that this is
exactly the same in Australia.
For the first time anywhere in the world a
magazine with the credibility and power of Time put US trans woman and star of
the Netflix drama Orange is the New Black, Laverne Cox, on its cover. She is an
incredible role model for us all and in this profile she nailed the benefit we
all wish as an outcome of this awakening.
“We are in a place now where more trans
people are willing to tell their stories,” Cox told time.
“More
of us are living visibly and pursuing our dreams visibly, so people can say, ‘Oh
yeah, I know someone who is trans’. When people have points of reference that
are humanising, that demystifies difference.”
