The International Day of Transgender Visibility is celebrated on March 31 of each year. It is a date proposed by the transgender activist Rachel Crandall in 2009, to raise awareness and sensitize the world population and end discrimination against transgender people.
If you haven't talked to your kids about the term transgender yet We give you some ideas and tools to do it. And if you have already done it, these activities can serve to deepen the subject. In general, this topic in the classroom is dealt with from 5th grade to high school.
Giving visibility to the term transgender
The first to be able to make transgender people visible is to understand what we mean with that. The term transgender refers to people who identify with a type of sexual behavior that does not correspond to the sex assigned to them at birth. These people use at a social level a clothing, a behavior and a sexual attitude of their own with the gender they identify with.
Unfortunately, despite how much this topic is talked about globally, abuses and rapes continue to occur in many countries against transgender people and the LGBT community. In 2011, the UN approved a resolution to defend the Human Rights of all people with a specific sexual orientation, as well as a gender identity or expression.
Which gives Any type of violence or discrimination against them is prohibited in any country in the world. The UN has a website, Free and Equal UN, which is a valuable international reference. You and your children can consult it to learn more about this topic. Also in it you can get some resources and watch very educational videos.
Stories for the little ones about transgender visibility
One of the most used tools to talk with the little ones on any subject are the stories. We are going to give you a list of them that treat of boys and girls who feel that they are of another gender from which they were born. After you have read them you can ask them if their class or some of their friends, or they themselves feel this way. And how do these people make their transgender visible?
The day of everything upside down, this story will allow you to explain what is transsexuality to the little ones. It tells the story of Gabriel, who asks the fairy for one wish: to be a girl. For a single day your wish will be fulfilled ... or perhaps it will be fulfilled for more than one. You will have to read the story to know the ending.
I am Jazz is the true story of jazz jennings, a famous transgender girl who has her own series. From the age of two, Jazz was aware that he had the brain of a girl in the body of a boy. Her family, who were terribly confused, decided to take her to the doctor, who told them that Jazz was transgender and that she was born that way. The goal is to inform children about the life of transgender people to encourage tolerance and acceptance.
Talk to teens about gender identity
There are topics that seem to be taboo with adolescents, and sexual diversity can be one of them. It does not hurt than on a day like today let's propose a cinema forum at home. We recommend you some movies. Before you start, you can brainstorm ideas that transgender visibility generates, and then comment on how many of these ideas have emerged in the movies.
Ma fri in rose is a co-production of director Alain Berliner. The movie tells the story of Ludovic, a boy with the mentality of a girl. He is in love with Jerôme, his schoolmate and son of his father's boss. What starts out as fun turns into outrage to families when boys pretend to be married. The situation generates reactions from neighbors, friends and teachers. Fortunately everything ends well.
The Danish girl It is a film based on the novel of the same title by David Ebershoff, so another option may be to read the book and comment on it. It tells the story of Lili Elbe, a true story, since she was one of the first people to have sex reassignment surgery in Denmark.