The profound sadness and somber commemoration of the names of those transgender individuals who have fallen over the past year and are the focal point of the annual Nov. 20 Transgender Day of Remembrance ( TDoR ) takes place one month before the onset of a season renowned for darkness and bitter cold.
In the comparably short span of three years, The Trans 100 has become recognized as the annual antithesis to the TDoR. With similar appropriateness to the feel and concept of the event, it occurs shortly after the first day of spring and its associated rebirth and beginning of a time of growth. The 100 names at the center of the event are thus celebrated for their continuing and active role in nurturing a once-shadowed community and helping its individual members emerge from the darkness to flourish in society.
The 3rd Annual Trans 100 event will be March 29 at the Mayne Stage in Chicago beginning at 7 p.m.
Performance artist and educator Precious Davis and educator and activist Myles Brady will host the gala evening that will serve as the debut and celebration of this year's list of 100 self-identified transgender individuals from across the U.S. who are, among other criteria mentioned on the event's website "actively working to improve the lives of trans people, doing work that is unsung and/or unseen" and "working in areas of multiple intersections of power and privilege."
The 200 people honored thus far demonstrate the reach of the transgender community into all areas of American life including law, government, education, advocacy and activism, health and human rights, literature, film, music in every corner of the country whether rural and urban—communities enhanced by the contributions of trans people sometimes receiving headline-grabbing attention but mostly undertaken with quiet humility.
This year, celebrated writer, director and producer Lana Wachowski and GLAAD Senior Media Strategist of National News Tiq Milan will deliver the evening's keynote addresses. Audiences can also look forward to performances from singer, songwriter and founder of the punk rock band Against Me! Laura Jane Grace and poet and hip-hop rap artist Rocco Katastrophe. Each are Trans 100 alumni.
The Trans 100 is the creation of writer and advocate Jen Richards and executive director of the Phoenix, Arizona-based trans empowerment organization This is H.O.W. Antonia E. D'orsay.
Richards told Windy City Times in 2014 that she never envisioned the list as a competition rather as an acknowledgement and illustration of the vital role transgender people have played and continue to play in the betterment of a society that in many ways still remains blind to their existence as whole and invaluable human beings rather than dispensable, media-driven caricatures.
"It's not a top-100 list, it's not a best-of list or a popularity contest," Richards said. "It's a sampling of the kind of work we've done in our community. It's meant to give you a sense of the diversity and range of the people in our community and the kind of projects they've undertaken."
While Richards kept a tight hold of the reins for the first two years of the event, for 2015 she has turned over Trans 100 to two co-directors who are both former event volunteers and themselves staunch advocates for their community—Rebecca Kling and Crispin Torres.
Richards told Windy City Times her decision to let go of Trans 100 was difficult but she has faith that under their leadership the event will surpass even her own expectations. "I felt like the Trans 100 was a community project that should stay with the community," she said. "That's one of the reasons I wanted to hand it off to Rebecca and Crispin. We don't want the project to be too closely aligned with any one individual. It's supposed to be something for everyone and has room for everyone's participation."
Richards added that the prolific growth in numbers of transgender activists and advocates has led her to start moving out of that sphere of community work and into one where transgender representatives are sorely needed—the media.
"I feel like one of the areas where there aren't enough [trans] voices is in content creation," she said. "People who can write scripts and direct and perform. It's an area I would like to get more involved in. I have co-written a web-series that will be produced in April that is about the dating lives of two trans-women, I'm working on several feature-length scripts and I am contemplating a media project that would create a kind of Roger Corman approach to film making where we would quickly and cheaply produce any scripts that are written by trans people and that feature trans characters."
While Kling and Torres remain faithful to the original concept and feel of The Trans 100 event, just like Richards they are beginning to plant the seeds of expansion into new areas.
"Jen likes to do everything in full force so for her to ask us to take it over was a very big vote of confidence," Torres told Windy City Times. "Rebecca and I want to take it a step further—past visibility and lifting up voices to finding a way to develop and foster leadership within the trans community and build a larger network of activists and future trans leaders. The Trans 100 is a living document of people that other trans people and folks looking to work with them can refer back to. We are hoping to enhance that this year by offering opportunities for mentorship for young trans people to be part of our project by shadowing one of our film crew or someone on the curation team, I.T. or community outreach. We will build a stronger community of trans people who are really visible in the world and working on all sorts of different things."
"At the end of the day [The Trans 100] is not a fundraiser and it's not an awards ceremony," Kling said. "We are celebrating the community as a whole. I was recently at Creating Change in Denver and was talking with a woman there who said that her son is trans and he reads The Trans 100 and loves seeing all these people being successful and making careers and lives. She told me that it is part of the reason her son has gone into activism roles because he wants to feel like he is living up to that potential. Rather than abstractly talking about how this list can change broad ideas of culture this was a specific person talking about a specific relationship. It brought me to tears."
Kling said that this year The Trans 100 received about 400 unique nominations up from 300 last year. An anonymous curation team is researching each name in detail to determine their contributions to the community according to the website "without regard to ego, interpersonal issues, philosophical approach, or contributions outside the time frame of the previous year."
"We are trying to capture the diversity within the trans community," Kling explained. "People from different ends of the gender spectrum, races, ethnic backgrounds, ages, career paths and professions. It is not framed as the best or the top trans people, rather it's a snap shot or a cross-section of that diversity—a starting point for conversation and one more resource or tool that can help trans people and allies tap into the excellence and the excitement within the community."
The research and voting activities of the curation team is the one facet of the event in which both Kling and Torres remain hands-off. "I am involved and in contact with our curation director but I am not directly involved in that curation," Kling said. "I don't know who is being considered. I want to be sure that the curators we have are people from and within the community but the process is not politicized or influenced."
For Richards, being on the outside looking in to a brainchild which she and D'orsay had been so fastidious in every aspect of its early development is as surreal as it is elating.
"It just brings me tremendous joy to know that this something that is going to outlive its creators," she said. "Regardless of what Toni and I do in the future, this will continue on in some way shape or form. That's really the greatest sign of success."
See thetrans100.com/ .
