Petition time

[beandelphiki]

**Please distribute widely****

TITLE: Support Visibility of Transgender People of
Color
SUMMARY: The media focuses its attention on
transgender whites, at the expense of the visibility and representation of transgender people of color.

Click here to sign the petition.

Comments

[aerindipity.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware that the media focused on transgendered people at all... other than in the most superficial, drag-queeny kind of way.

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

Heh.

Well, I know that, very occasionally, there will be articles in major magazines, newspapers and the like. The biggest paper in my city, for example, The Calgary Herald had a huge story on local transgendered people when I was in 9th grade. Had a huge impact on me. There's occasionally stuff on TV, too.

But it's true - when I think about it, whenever I've read/seen something, the people who had their stories told were almost all white, and there was no discussion about being a POC and being transgendered. So that's a unique viewpoint that's not being heard.

Anyway, I yanked this from the journal of someone I don't really know, but zie was saying that there is a woman zie knows who plans to use this petition to get support for a documentary of FtM POC, or something like that. Assuming this petition actually does get signatures.

[fanelia.livejournal.com]

just because i'm curious, what statistically is the ratio of transgendered whites to colored transgendered people? i mean, is the portrayal accurate or fair at all, or is it way off mark? it's sort of difficult to sign a petition when we don't have any of the numbers or facts, and the petition itself doesn't explain a whole lot, can you shed some light on this?

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

Sorry I got back to this so late.

It's really hard to know. I went searching for information on demographics. I didn't look forever - I kept pulling up information on the demographics of AIDs, go figure - but I did find a study done on 123 FtMs, in which 67% percent were white. But that's it so far, and nothing on MtFs. I don't think it's something that gets studied a lot. It's generally agreed upon that it's very, very hard to count the number of transgendered people, period, let alone keep track of their ethnic background. Some people never go to a doctor because they don't want surgery, some people get surgery and "disappear" - and so on. So while it looks as though the vast majority of trans people are white, it's pretty hard to know. And not seeking the opinions and viewpoints of trans POC isn't going to help us find out that information, either.

*shrug* I just think that it would be beneficial to us to get a perspective that isn't white. It seems to me that a lot of places online set up for trans people to hang out and talk are very white clubs, and people who aren't white can feel alienated and so on.

And like I mentioned above, there's apparently someone who might be using this petition to help get support for a documentary. That seems like a worthy cause to me.