Trans Visibility Main Menu Trans Visibility Let's get started! Basics of "Transgender" Christine Jorgenson Laurence Michael Dillon Marsha P. Johnson Shawn Stinson Janet Mock Wren Kauffman Jazz Jennings Interview: Juniper Xiomara Political Revolution Publication: The Experience Newspaper

Introduction

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My name is Gary Walker-Roberts and this is my Applied Project in order to earn my Masters in English at Arizona State University. I have chosen to focus on Transgender Awareness, and will deliver the information on a digital platform. My desire to advocate for the transgender community was sparked in 2012. My boss, at the time, demanded that I apply discriminatory hiring practices when a highly qualified transgender female applied for a position that I was hiring for. I refused to do so and hired the most qualified person for the job, and it just so happened to be the transgender woman. The company was not happy with my "insubordinate" actions, and soon after the company and I settled on a severance package. At that moment, I decided to return back to college and earn my degrees. My passion was to focus on social injustice and English courses. I heavily focused on gender and sexuality issues and concerns, mainly transgender issues.

In my scalar book I present many of my scholastic work that started at Los Medanos Community College and finished at Arizona State University. I decided to focus on transgender issues for my applied project to further my advocacy for the trans community by brining awareness, both educationally and socially, to the forefront of people's minds to eliminate fears and misconceptions that leads to bigotry, or worse transphobia.  In the words of Margaret J. Wheatley, "You can't hate someone whose story you know!"

I truly believe what Whatley so eloquently stated and believe hearing transgender individual stories is a great place to start. I created my Trans Visibility scalar book for my digital essay in my Digital Literacy English class at Arizona State University. After typing in "transgender" into Google's Ngram viewer site and seeing that the words popularity did not spike until, around, the 1960's was shocking to me. Transgender individuals have existed since the beginning of time with a very rich history; however, the community was marginalized and "othered" at the rise of Christianity. The Christian religions forced the gender binary system on societies across the globe; especially, during Euro-colonization of a continent thriving with Native Indians. Transgender history was intentionally forgotten and erased until Christine Jorgensen bravely entered American's living rooms by way of television. This was the beginning of social change and throughout the years the fight for trans equality and equity in social systems has steadily increased due to social media platforms.

I decided to build on the solid base I had created in my Digital literacy class and expand my book. Trans visibility has increased over the years and I proudly share many of their stories in my book. However, with any advancement, there always tends to be regression due to strongly rooted bigotry and homophobia. Even though President Obama made history in his speech in XXX, homophobia has recently infiltrated into individual states political systems, such as, North Carolina's HB2 law. Shawn Stinson's physic became the image to counter argue North Carolina's HB2 law. North Carolina's HB2 inspired me to write a screenplay for my Arizona State University FMS 511 class.

I have had the private to work with two Transgender activists, Janet Mock and Juniper Xiomara. One of the projects that I lead in collaboration with Mock and Xiomara resulted in major changes for our local community college. The work must continue and my scalar book aims to educate individuals with a hope that our society stops "othering" the trans community. Trans visibility should not be a death sentence, rather, trans visibility should be seen as a human right. In order to illuminate transphobia, I am committed to educating members of our society on the beauty of trans visibility!
I hope you enjoy my Trans Visibility Scalar book!