Fri 3/31 @ 5PM
Here’s a true story. When I was in elementary school, a looooong time ago, my father, who was a chemist who manufactured adhesives to bind books, brought home another of the boxes of sample books he was working on. Going through them I found — and read — a biography of Christine Jorgensen, one of the first trans women to have sex reassignment surgery. I went “Well, that’s interesting,” but that was about it. It didn’t make me want to change my gender.
March 31 is International Transgender Day of Visibility. Unfortunately, transgender people have had the wrong kind of visibility in the last few years, ginned up by people using them as props to scare the ignorant and falling back on the tired lie that they’re just trying to “protect the children.” These alleged proponents of “small government” want massive, intrusive government making healthcare decisions for this small, vulnerable segment of people, based on their own ignorance (or deliberate disregard) of who trans people are and what they need.
In honor of Transgender Day of Visibility, an exhibition called This Is Trans will open at Studio West 117, the LGBTQ+ complex on the Cleveland/Lakewood border that day. It consists of a series of more than 100 photos, both black and white and color, of transgender individual, taken by artist Vincent-Natasha Gay.
My goal with this project is to raise awareness and encourage education on what it means to be transgender,” says Gay. “Currently, transgender rights are up for debate within our society; and now more than ever, we need to showcase how beautiful and valid it is to live authentically as transgender.”
Gay began the project in 2022 as a way to explore the reality and range of who transgender people are.
“Transgender can be mistakenly thought of as a binary concept in which a person has to transition from one binary gender to the other, aka male to female or female to male,” says Gay. “Stigmas surrounding the community have pushed a belief that a transgender person is only valid if they transition fully with the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and gender confirming surgeries. While some transgender people transition in this way; not all do. With the help of Studio West 117, I am seeking to bring to light that transgender is an umbrella that covers an array of identities; and that each is unique, beautiful and fully valid.”
The show’s opening on Friday March 31 will also feature a transgender wellness fair from 5-7pm with more than 20 Ohio organizations which provide help to the transgender community. From 10pm-midnight, there’ll be a drag show featuring all transgender performers. The show will be open to the public during Studio West 117’s regular business hours, through Sunday April 30. The show will be traveling across the country and Gay is continuing to take photos for it when a trans person contacts him and says they want to be part of it.
Learn more about the show at vincent-natasha.com/this-is-trans.