Ohio University’s annual Pride Week returns this year to highlight the experiences of transgender individuals of color with the theme #blacktransmagick.
Among the events hosted are spoken word performances, a vigil, writing and poetry workshops, among many others. Many of the events will be centered around themes of social justice and teaching individuals how they can participate in activism.
J Mase III and Vita E, two performers from awqward — a talent agency for LGBT people of color — will be the keynote speakers. They will also host workshops throughout the week focusing on topics such as microaggression and the intersection of religion, faith and sexuality, delfin bautista, the director of the LGBT Center, said.
“We wanted Pride Week to be something that was celebratory, but at the same time help educate people and also advocate for different strides to be made,” Anna Neawedde, the LGBTQA affairs commissioner for Student Senate, said.
One of the educational events will be a forum titled “Stories from the Clinic: Disrupting Heteronormativity in Healthcare Contexts.” Co-sponsored by the Barbara Geralds Institute of Storytelling, the panelists will include individuals from the LGBT community discussing their experiences with health care.
Lynn Harter, the co-director of the Storytelling Institute, believes there is a therapeutic potential to storytelling for both the individual and the audience.
“We’re creating space for people to name their world in order to change it. It can feel empowering.” Harter, who is also a professor in the Scripps College of Communication, said. “It’s equally empowering for audience members because audience members bare witness to stories. We’re called to enter into the stories of others and try to understand the plight of those individuals and hopefully be more compassionate and understanding about others.”
There have been efforts made to improve policies for people who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015, Neawedde, a senior studying specialized studies with an emphasis on gender, communication and management, said. However, the number of deaths of transgender individuals has increased over the past year.
Seven transgender women were murdered in the first few months of 2017, according to The Washington Post.
“We just want to keep talking about this issue … about what it’s like to be transgender and about the unique experiences folks who are transgender experience,” Neawedde said.
