Trans Awareness Week runs from November 13-19, just before Remembrance Day.

Transgender people fight again and again to have a place in society and to be respected there. They also and above all want to have the same rights as cisgender people considered normal by this backward Judeo-Christian society. They also want all these so-called specialists in transidentity, who have never received any valid training on this subject, to stop interfering in their lives, thus preventing them from living in complete peace of mind.

This commemorative week was initiated in the United States of America and the dates were chosen to precede the Trans Day of Remembrance which was created by trans woman activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith in commemoration of the death of Rita Hester, a trans woman killed in Allston, suburban Boston by a person who has never been identified. The numerous stab wounds that Rita had suffered, the fact that the door of her apartment had not been broken into, and the absence of theft because her jewelry was still on her, suggest that this assassination is an act of blatant transphobia.

Hundreds of transgender people are murdered every year, so it is more than important that the cisgender population be made aware of the realities of life for transgender people.

Transgender people have always been an important part of the LGBTQIA+ community and they have often been at the forefront of important social movements concerning the community.

Two prominent examples are trans women Marsha P Johnson, a black American drag queen, and Sylvia Rivera, a sex worker of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan descent. So far, it has not been possible to establish with certainty that the two or either of them were present at the time of the Stonewall riots.

On the other hand, it is certain that in the 1970s, they were at the origin of the creation of the first shelter for young LGBT people in New York. They are also behind the creation of one of the first community organizations for young trans people. Many of their actions are the basis of the rights that members of the LGBT community currently have.

Celebrating this week is also a way of honoring their work and their memory.

And trans history continues to be written today. A trans person who contributes to mark our current society is the black American actress Laverne Cox. She was the first transgender actress to be nominated for an Emmy award in 2014 and she was also the first transgender woman to grace the cover of Times Magazine. Through her actions, she has greatly contributed to increasing the visibility of trans people in society.

There are many resources that allow you to become familiar with the daily realities of trans and non-binary people. To deepen one's knowledge, one can watch films and documentaries, read books or watch TV shows that depict true representations of trans and non-binary people. I quote you some of them :

1. Movies :

    The Danish Girl - Lola vers la mer - Girl - About Ray (3 générations) - Just Charlie - L'épreuve d'amour - A perfectly normal

    family - Une autre femme - Une nouvelle amie - XXY - Il est elle.

2. Documentaries :

    Petite fille - Disclosure - Unique en mon genre - Transidentité, le combat pour être soi - Je suis transgenre - C'est pas ton genre

    Océan - Butterfly - Calamity - Transidentité, une rencontre avec soi-même.

3. Series :

    Transparent - En infiltré(e)s - Pose - Destiny Rose - Her story - Hit and Miss - Louise - September Mornings - Veneno - Work in

    progress.

4. Books :

    La transidentité, du changement individuel au débat de société - Cette fille, c'était mon frère - Celle dont j'ai toujours rêvé - Le

    secret de Grayson - Appelez-moi Nathan - Sociologie des transidentités - Manifeste d'une femme trans.

Transgender awareness week is a good way to highlight the issues that transgender and non-binary people experience and it is the perfect opportunity to learn more about these realities of their daily lives.

As these are the realities of their lives, it is very important to listen to them and remain so throughout the year. These realities are all obstacles and challenges that trans people face every day. All this, simply because the cisgender and heteronormative society does not make enough efforts to meet them and does everything to better understand and accept them.

This week culminates in Trans Remembrance Day in which transgender people remember their friends who have been murdered or committed suicide due to the lack of recognition of the society in which they have to survive.

It is therefore a day of mourning so that all those who have suffered an attack on their life are not forgotten and that their memory weighs on the responsibility of this cis-hetero-normed Judeo-Christian society.

It will be so until the day when transgender people will simply be accepted as they are and they will benefit from the ability to live together without discrimination.