Category: English

To the transgender community there are two important international days of recognition. The first, Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) on November 20, is a day to remember and mourn the violence experienced by the transgender community. The second, the Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), today on March 31, is all about making the trans community more visible in society.

Transgender is a huge umbrella term to a lot of different people. For a long time, I considered transgender (trans) and non-binary (enby) as two very different identities. Now, however, my opinions on that have been changing. There is more diversity to trans identities than I used to think.

We are facing serious upheaval and turbulent political times, and yet we can’t forget art. We can’t give up novels, poetry, paintings, music, and media, even in the most challenging of eras. 

During the early years of the labor movements in the United States, circa 1911, suffragist Rose Schneiderman wrote:

“What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist—the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.”

It became a slogan—Bread and Roses—that still applies today. In today’s context, our bread is essential gains like civil rights protections, housing and social support programs, trans-supportive health care, living wages, etc; while our roses are books, television, movies, music, and art. Specifically, art created by trans people.

Queer Pack is delighted to announce the signing of Australian author Eden S. French. In 2017, Queer Pack will republish Eden’s riveting, world-building, sci-fi novel, Reintegration, which she first self-published late last year.

As the streets get colder and the holiday season sneaks closer, it’s time to embrace the giving spirit. It’s so easy to get lost in the rush of the lead up to it all, that sometimes we all just need a simple reminder of what really matters, and of what is going on in the world.

Homelessness is increasing, and a huge number of youth who are living rough are part of the LGBTQIA+ community. In the US alone there are around 1.6 million homeless youth, and up to 40 percent of those are queer. In the UK, it’s estimated that a quarter of the homeless youth are queer. In Australia, the number sits at 30 percent. No child, no adult, deserves to be left forgotten in the cold. Disturbingly, many of these youths find themselves in the vulnerable position of being homeless due to their family’s reaction to them identifying as LGBQTIA+. Many have been kicked out of home, cut off, sent away and left to fend for themselves purely due to being queer. Add to the fact that many LGBTQIA+ people face discrimination in shelters and from charity services, and the hurdles for these queer kids and adults just keep in increasing.

The following essay was presented during a lecture I gave in February 2014 at the Science Slam of the Institut für Kunstpädagogik, J.-W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The lecture can be viewed on Youtube, only in German. But not everybody speaks or understands German–that’s why I summed it all up in English right here: