Resources

Resources to Mark International Transgender Day of Visibility

April 9, 2021 5040

Each March 31 the world marks International Transgender Day of Visibility, an event that has been celebrated since 2009. That year, psychotherapist Rachel Crandall, dissatisfied with how her community was commemorated only in loss, started a low-key effort that paid almost immediate dividends. As she told PrideSource four years later:

“I went on Facebook and I was thinking…whenever I hear about our community, it seems to be from Remembrance Day which is always so negative because it’s about people who were killed,” Crandall, who heads up Transgender Michigan, recalled. “So one night I couldn’t sleep and I decided why don’t I try to do something about that.

“I thought, ‘why doesn’t someone do it?’ Then I thought, ‘Why isn’t that someone me?'”

The event resonated immediately, and by 2021 even saw a proclamation from U.S. President Joe Biden, who signed an executive order on his first day in office on “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.”

In a proclamation on the day that same year, the administration wrote:

Transgender Day of Visibility recognizes the generations of struggle, activism, and courage that have brought our country closer to full equality for transgender and gender non-binary people in the United States and around the world. Their trailblazing work has given countless transgender individuals the bravery to live openly and authentically. This hard-fought progress is also shaping an increasingly accepting world in which peers at school, teammates and coaches on the playing field, colleagues at work, and allies in every corner of society are standing in support and solidarity with the transgender community.

That was then. In 2025, the sitting president issued an executive order, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government,” on his first day in office. Under the banner of protecting women, the order follows up on campaign-trail rhetoric by explicitly stripping away many hard-won rights. This excerpt gives a flavor of the order.

This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.

Compare that view with this paragraph from the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD on the importance on Transgender Day of Visibility in 2025:

Evident in 2025 is intensifying vitriol and attacks against trans people led by a vocal but loud minority. We are seeing a continued year-over-year increase in anti-LGBTQ bills, including more than 450 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in state legislatures across the country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. In addition to these legislative attacks, trans people continue to face direct physical violence, declared an ongoing epidemic by the American Medical Association since 2019, which disproportionately affects Black trans women.

And while we’ve focused on attacks seen in the United States above, we should point out that International Transgender Day of Visibility is international, and that the challenges and joys of trans life resonate just as loudly across the globe.

Below are several resources that have appeared on Social Science Space centered on trans issues, starting with a 2025 testimonial from Shay N. Valley at the University at Buffalo, SUNY.

Trans Visibility, Resistance, and Hope in an Anti-Trans U.S. Political Climate

Five Key Moments in the Struggle for Trans Rights

Watch the Webinar: Trans Rights Priorities for the Biden Administration

Publishers: Changing the Names of Trans People in Their Own Work is Not Enough

Trans Linguistic Activism is About Asking for Basic Respect from Others

Resources

Gender Identity Research & Education Society (GIRES) https://www.gires.org.uk \ UK resource)
2025 anti-trans bills https://translegislation.com/
Global Action for Trans Equality https://gate.ngo/
Transgender Resources https://glaad.org/transgender/resources/
LGBT Foundation trans resources https://lgbt.foundation/trans-resources/
Trans Lifeline https://translifeline.org
The Trevor Project https://www.thetrevorproject.org | Leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention nonprofit organization for LGBTQ+ young people
Transbucket http://www.transbucket.com \ Support around surgical transition
The Tribe https://support.therapytribe.com/lgbt-support-group | Mental health support
Terrence Higgins Trust https://www.tht.org.uk/sexual-health/trans-people/resources | Resources for transgender people in UK
Transequality.org https://transequality.org/
Transgender Law Center https://transgenderlawcenter.org/
Trans Agenda for Liberation
Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, or BLMP
Familia: Trans Queen Liberation Movement, or TQLM
National LGBTQ Anti-Poverty Action Network
UpEnd Campaign | To end the child welfare system as we know it
National Trans Youth Leader Project
Trans Justice Funding Project

Webinar and Written Resources

In 2021 we held a webinar that webinar on the then-state of trans studies; a recording below of that webinar, and external resources identified and curated by the webinar’s panelists appears below that.

With the 2021 publication of The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, a timely question is, what is the state of trans studies now and in the future? This panel of leading scholars in the field — all contributors to the encyclopedia — discuss this topic. The panelists are listed below, followed by their entry in the encyclopedia.

Marquis Bey, assistant professor, African American studies and English, Northwestern University | Entry on “Black People“
Aaron Devor, founder, The Transgender Archives; inaugural chair in transgender studies; and professor, sociology, University of Victoria | Entry on “Reed Erickson“
Julian Kevon Glover, Assistant Professor, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University | Entry on “Laverne Cox“
Kristen Renn, Professor, Higher, Adult, & Lifelong Education, Michigan State University | Entry on “Career Development and Trajectories“
Ann Travers, Professor, Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University | Entry on “Pro Sports Athletes“

Emily Skidmore, associate professor of history at Texas Tech University, moderated the webinar, which was sponsored by the UMass Stonewall Center and Clark University’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program and co-sponsored by UMass Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies and the Five College Queer, Trans, and Sexuality Studies Certificate

The Literature

Queer Embodiment by Hil Malatino

Black on Both Sides by C Riley Snorton

Reverse Cowgirl by McKenzie Wark

Read My Lips by Riki Wilchins

The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Gender by Marquis Bey

Black Trans Feminism (forthcoming, January 2022) by Marquis Bey

Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism by Marquis Bey

Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of the Law by Dean Spade

Mutual Aid. Building Solidarity During This Crisis and the Next by Dean Spade

Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with the Cure by Eli Clare

Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson

“Queer Investments in Punishment” by Sarah Lamble in The Transgender Studies Reader 2

“Trans Necropolitics” by C. Riley Snorton and J. Haritaworn in The Transgender Studies Reader 2

CR: The New Centennial Review, volume 3 issue 3 – Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument by S. Wynter

“On Confusing the Map for the Territory” by Sylvia Wynter in Not Only the Master’s Tools. African-American Studies in Theory and Practice edited by L. R. Gordon and J. A. Gordon

Canadian Journal of Law and Society, volume 15 issue 2 – Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George by S. Razack

Books From Sage

Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBTQ Studies by Deborah T. Meem, Jonathan Alexander, Key Beck, Michelle A. Gibson, August 2022

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies by Abbie E. Goldberg, Genny Beemyn, Published: June 2021

The Psychology of Women and Gender by Nicole M. Else-Quest, Janet Shibley Hyde, March 2021

Sexualities and Society by Megan Todd, November 2020

Gender & Society, Bi-monthly journal

Questioning Gender: A Sociological Exploration, August 2023

Suggested Readings on Trans History

Trans bodies, trans selves: A resource for the transgender community by G. Beemyn (pp. 501-536)

Re-dressing America’s frontier past by P. Boag

Transmen and FTMs: Identities, bodies, genders, and sexualities by J. Cromwell

Histories of the transgender child by J. Gill-Peterson

Men as women, women as men: Changing gender in Native American cultures by S. Lang

Female husbands: A trans history by J. Manion

How sex changed: A history of transsexuality in the United States by J. Meyerowitz

Feminist Studies, volume 37 issue 2 – Constructing the “good transsexual”: Christine Jorgensen, whiteness, and heteronormativity in the mid-twentieth century press by E. Skidmore

GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, volume 20 issue 1-2 – Ralph Kerwineo’s queer body: Narrating the scales of social membership in the early twentieth century by E. Skidmore

True sex: The lives of trans men at the turn of the twentieth century by E. Skidmore

Recovering a Gender Transgressive Past: A Transgender Historiography by E. Skidmore

A Companion to Women’s History by (eds.) N. Hewitt & A. Valk

Transgender history: The roots of today’s revolution by S. Stryker

Suggested Readings on Trans College Students

Trans People in Higher Education by (ed.) G. Beemyn

Journal of College Student Development, volume 58 number 4 – Exploring the ways trans* collegians navigate academic, romantic, and social relationships by A. Duran and Z. Nicolazzo

The Counseling Psychologist, volume 47 – Healthcare experiences of transgender university students by A.E. Goldberg et al

Journal of Educational & Psychological Consultation, volume 29 – What is needed, what is valued: Trans’ students’ perspectives on trans-inclusive policies and practices in higher education by A.E. Goldberg et al

Journal of Diversity in Higher Education – Trans students’ advocacy and activism experiences within college and university settings by A. E. Goldberg et al

Journal of Diversity in Higher Education volume 12 – Transgender graduate students’ experiences in higher education: A mixed-methods exploratory study by A. E. Goldberg et al

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, volume 29 issue 9 – “It’s a hard line to walk”: Black non-binary trans* collegians’ perspectives on passing, realness, and trans*-normativity by Z. Nicolazzo

Trans* in college: Transgender students’ strategies for navigating campus life and the institutional politics of inclusion by Z. Nicolazzo

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, volume 30 issue 3 – An exploration of trans* kinship as a strategy for student success by Z. Nicolazzo et al.

International Sociology, volume 34 issue 4 – A Retrospective of LGBT Issues on U.S. College Campuses: 1990-2020 by Garvey S. Rankin, et al.