Hello, everyone!
The Point
The excitement and interest in the Trans 100 has led me to link up with Jen Richards and so the Trans 100 is officially a joint effort of WeHappyTrans.com and ThisIsHOW.org.
We’ve decided to focus the first year’s list on the US, and we encourage other countries to start their own local lists, but we will be highlighting specific individuals from other countries.
We have developed a website form for you to use in adding your nominations to the list, and we are now starting to add those already given into the list itself.
Guidelines:
- Nominees must be living and currently working to improve the lives of trans people.
- Nominees can be working at any scale, locally, regionally, or nationally.
- We would like to see all parts of the country represented, and especially the otherwise unsung or only locally known workers.
- We particularly encourage the addition of persons of color.
- Nominees must identify as trans.
Think of this like the Forbes list.
Notes:
- Voting is anonymous.
- The list will not be ranked, and the tally will not be publicized.
- Nominees will be contacted by the editors for permission before the list is published.
Here is the link to nominate someone: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGhjS2pseWNCbGJCVnNMN2dfYXZ2bkE6MQ
Please be sure to share this widely and let people know about it!
The Backstory
So a couple days ago, in a conversation with my son, he noted that I showed up in a lot of google hits.
He also sorta noticed that I was involved in a lot of stuff, that I was busy, and that I was very much an activist. He’d been stalking me for two years, after all.
And I said to him that yeah, if you were to take the top trans people in the country and put them on a list I’d probably be in the 90 to 100 range.
Which, after I thought about it, probably wasn’t very accurate. But, for that matter, I also realized that all the Top Trans people lists I’d ever seen always included people who were dead or not active. And my personal experience has been that there are some really incredible trans people doing some really incredible work.
I have seen lists that focused on younger activists, but the trans community is pretty well layered with older, younger, people who transitioned a long time ago, people who are just starting, and more.
Often, our conversations surround the fairly standard narratives, and, to be blunt, the white people dominate everything.
Now, part of the reason for that is that we live in a culture that places whiteness and beauty and all that crap ahead of the rest, but this list isn’t going to be that way. This list is going to be more like the Out 100, a kind of Forbes style list of 100 Trans people who are making contributions and changes to the lives of trans people.
While I have no doubt that in some cases, it is just going to be because they are trans and did something for themselves that brought them into the limelight, this list is going to focus more on the people who are really doing something. I see it as a way to recognize the people who often aren’t realized as local resources on a national level, and a list that can be used as something more than just pretty people doing pretty people stuff.
One of the programs I instituted at This Is HOW is the Arizona Trans Awards — a set of awards that recognize contributions of all kinds of people to the betterment of trans lives in Arizona. They are yearly awards, and the 2012 awards will be given out in march of 203 at a big shindig we are going to have.
I did it because recognition is important – being seen and having someone pat you on the back for a job well done is actually pretty important, even if you feel kinda silly when it happens and even if you are someone like me who wants the work to stand out first and foremost.
And, as with all this kind of thing, I don’t want it to be something that only applies because you hold to a certain party line. I don’t have to agree with who you think is trans enough to recognize your contributions to the community.
So I posted about this on a support group site I’m part of, and on my own profile. And then, when it started to really take off, I clarified a few things and posted it again on my FB page, and clarified in the support site, and then posted it in a few other FB groups.
And the response was really incredible.
Now, I’ve been talking off and on with Jen from WeHappyTrans.com for a couple weeks. The This Is HOW Regina House Residence program clients all made videos for the WHT 7 Questions project, and I did my own as well. And she saw a lot of the same potential that I saw in the importance and value of this list, and so we sorta had this little exchange of ideas and thoughts and then ended up brainstorming and then I got asked to make it a TIH project and so about an hour before I started writing this post (which I am doing only while I am finishing off a beer, so I’m typing really fast) it became an co-project of WeHappyTrans.com and ThisisHOW.org.
Why just the US?
Time, and awareness of our own shortcomings.
The list’s work is primarily being done by the teams at WeHappyTrans and ThisIsHOW, and both of those two groups have a lot more stuff to do and also have people with full time jobs and the rest. So we have to make a call there for amount of time and labor.
Next, the principles are citizens of the US. We Americans have this horrible habit of thinking that we are the most important people in the universe. In my case, this is true, of course, but really what it means is that we have a really bad habit of being ethnocentric in our approaches to things. So we are not the best people to do this kind of work for other countries.
People from those countries are far better suited to the task, and really, each country should do its own list so that it can achieve the same goal of recognizing some of the lesser known people who toil away in the trenches, so to speak. A single list for the whole world necessarily makes it harder to miss the people who make tremendous impacts — impacts that change lives in significant ways that count deeply, and those are the very people we are thinking of when it comes to getting the word out.
That said, we do want people to nominate persons of significant importance from outside the US who are still alive and currently working to make the lives of people better. The reason for this is that we want to be able to highlight them in the list, and expose many people to the amazing things that happen outside the US — as well as sometimes even explain how being trans is culturally different from the way that people in the US see it.
Also, if you want to start a specific list for your country, let us know at director@thisishow.org or jen@wehappytrans.com. We do want to have more lists for the various countries, and we want the people who work incredibly hard every day to be known and seen and recognized for their efforts.
It counts, Believe me, it really makes a difference.
Breakouts
Ok, so here I am, black and white and red all over, and you can be certain that of importance to me is the desire to see the amazing efforts of trans people of color recognized. I’m also involved in efforts against STD & HIV, homelessness, substance abuse, ex-offender re-entry, work skills, and so much more. This work is important to me, but more so, it is important to people all across the country, and folks need to know that stuff is out there.
So once we call an end to the collecting of names, we are going to start contacting all the people nominated. We are going to make sure it is ok with them, first off, and then we are going to ask them some basic questions about themselves, and then we are going to put all that stuff into a listing that is built around the top 100 folks, in alphabetical order.
But we are not going to stop there. We are going to do call outs. For people outside the US. For persons of color. For people doing particular kinds of work. Lists and interviews with certain people. Like I said — think about the Forbes list, They do a lot of stuff around it. So do the folks at Out magazine.
We are going to do the same thing, and we are going to make it into a PDF as well as a website. And it will be available — possibly for a donation that will support our organizations, but we don’t know yet, we’ll see how it goes.
What matters more is that it will give folks a starting place, a resource they can use to get themselves going, and possibly even a book down the road. Because for both of us, it is the work that matters, not us.
And in this way, we will be able to make sure that people get recognized for the work they are doing, that the work that is being done is seen, and that we can start to change the way that the media sees and portrays us.
Because we are amazing people. We are powerful people.
We are Trans people.
And we are everywhere.
So nominate your areas trans activists and advocates today. And watch for more info on the Trans 100!
-- Download The Trans 100 as PDF --
The nomination form is very poorly done. Since the form only asks for name, group, website, and location, how the heck is anyone supposed to know if they are a person of color or anything else? It does not ask for what they do, does not ask anything about the nominee at all. Actually, it does not even specify whether the requested information is about the nominee or the nominator. An unsung hero may not belong to an organization or school with no URL so all you have is a random name and location, no way to know if they are Trans identified, don’t know if they are an actual person much less whether they are active in tryin gto improve Trans lives. Great idea, major fail in application.
And of course you fail to define transgender for the purposes of this project.
It is a project I conceived of Serene. So the definition is the one I have used for at least four years, with refinements.
But, more importantly, it would be the definition of Trans, as this the Trans 100. And I just updated that definition a couple of posts ago. But the original post is still here as is the page — scroll down and click the pages word below and then select what is trans to get an idea. Or just go back a few posts where I talk about sex and gender for the updated version.
This means that you could nominate someone, and unless they are a Cis person or an Inter person, or generally do not fall into the realm of trans people, they are going to be looked at for the work they do for other trans people.
If the person nominated, when we contact them, isn’t trans, they are likely going to indicate such to us.
By nature, this list will exclude those who are stealth, because they won’t want to be seen. It will likely exclude separatists because they often do not want to be in a list that 1- I have anything to do with, and 2- they often do not want to be seen in a list with people they do net feel meet their standards for such.
And yet, they are not going to be excluded by me, personally. If nominated, they will be contacted and they will be asked, and if they say sure and the work they do for others meets the criteria, then they will be included.
We know who is trans. We know who is not. That I would have a need to define it strikes me as odd, but I thank you for the comment.
You have been using a definition of trans for the past 4 years. But it strikes you as odd that you would need to define trans. OK, then.
Yes — again, *because* I’d had one for the last four years.
I am sorry to be the one to break it to you, but the world does not come here to study your archived blog posts. I don’t know how may unique readers you get, but I am guessing not many. So don’t assume that we are going to know your definition or that we are going to sort through your old posts to find out what it is or was.
Bottom line: if you are including GNC in the term trans, then I plan to nominate an accomplished cis woman with short hair or who prefers pants. There are many such women, in all fields, and their accomplishments far surpass the accomplishments of even the most prominent TSs. If you are not including GNCs, then it isn’t really the Trans 100 anyway.
That’s odd. Most of my visitors do come here for my archived blog posts according to statistics. But thank you for breaking it to me gently.
Many is a questionable statement. On an average non advertised day I can expect around 3 to 5 K unique visitors. Overwhelmingly they don’t stick around or are robots. Trimming the fat and controlling for visitors who stay longer than 3 minutes, I get about a tenth that. It goes up on a well advertised day. For reference.
But enough of my just being annoying because you tweaked my nose and I was in a weird mindset. TO the point you raised and the issue of contention:
The definition of Trans in play: Transness is the state or condition of someone who does not conform in a majority of aspects to the way their society or culture sees them as behaving and living in relation to their physiological sex. This is usually due to a variance between their physical sex and one or both of their social sex identity and/or internal sex identity.
So that does include people who do not conform to their expected gender (GNC) but does not include, for example, cis butch lesbians.
That said, they can still be nominated — nominations are open. We will be contacting the people so nominated, as I explained earlier, and we will see what sort of work they are doing.
Now, as an example of what might not work, nominating Rea Carey, who I like and admire greatly, probably wouldn’t get her into the trans 200 list. THis would be because when we contact her, she’s going to tell us she isn’t trans. Also, we are going to look at their work, and, in the above case, since Ms. Carey’s work is not focused on Trans people, she wouldn’t qualify on the basis of her work being done, either.
This doesn’t mean that she’s not a worthy person, just that she doesn’t meet the qualifications of the Trans 100 list.
Now, if the person in your suggestion sees themselves as a cis person, they aren’t going to be included for the same reason — they aren’t trans. By the same token, those who are separatists will often not wish to be included because they won’t see themselves as having a discordance twixt their internal identities and their physicality.
Yet that doesn’t mean that GNC people are excluded, either, since many of them will see themselves in such a way, and have that discordance.
So, to reiterate, these are the guidelines:
Guidelines:
- Nominees must be living and currently working to improve the lives of trans people.
- Nominees can be working at any scale, locally, regionally, or nationally.
- We would like to see all parts of the country represented, and especially the otherwise unsung or only locally known workers.
- We particularly encourage the addition of persons of color.
- Nominees must identify as trans.
That last bit means that the individual’s sense of self must include a marked and broad difference from the social expectations for someone of their physical sex in relation to the social systems that govern gender in their culture, as a result of their variance in self awareness along the axis of both or either their social sex (gender) or internal sex.