Listeners and organizers from the Trans Day of Visibility: Storytelling and Open Mic function from last year may speak and discuss how to find area strength and health. Credit: Courtesy of Felicia DeRosa
On Sunday, the on-campus occasion “Sanctuary and Community Healing: Finding Strength and Safety in Community” will honor those who want to tell their stories at the Fawcett Center, located at 2400 Olentangy River Rd.
The second installment of the celebration, co-hosted by the Center for Belonging and Social Change and the T Talks group business, will start with experienced speakers and then open the audio for anyone who wants to share their story. T Talks’ founder and lead organizer Felicia DeRosa said the theme was chosen as a result of recent legislation that targeted transgender and nonbinary citizens, like Ohio House Bill 68, which prohibits doctors from prescribing health procedures for gender dysphoria to adolescents and prohibits transgender girls and women from playing in high school or college athletics.
“Everyone in that area gets to speak who wants to speak,” DeRosa said. “This is a chance for us to take a breath, love on each other, and remind each other that we have each other’s back.”
Organizers strive to make the design a timely topic each time. According to Cal King, the event’s organizer, it felt important to place a safe haven for members of the community to interact and unwind from the frequently overwhelming and exhausting efforts to protect that community.
King remarked, “This is an option for us to be in a secure place and tell each other why we do this.”
King said that their beloved aspect is seeing how the stories people tell inspire others to show theirs.
According to King, “It kind of fosters this small cloud of queer joy.” “It’s beautiful.”
When the school first opened its doors, King claimed that there was a gap in the trans and intersex community due to the size of the university.
This gave King the idea to join T Talks and the Center for Belonging and Social Change, who then coordinate the organization of Transgender Day of Remembrance, an international time of memory for trans people who have been killed as a result of stigmatization, on campus.
“To really enjoy and enable the voices of those who have traditionally been marginalized — or otherwise simply overlooked,” King said.
T Talks was founded as a way to communicate both DeRosa’s story and her lineage as a Romani person with her trans community. It fosters empathy and understanding while upholding diversity and admiration for all gender names by using storytelling events to join and educate both the transgender community and its allies.
“It’s helpful to keep that vision a little bit wider so that we don’t lose connections, we can maintain our community and have more open dialogue,” DeRosa said.
The event not only gives people a chance to express themselves freely, but it also helps them realize that they are not alone, and it also helps introduce the younger generation to a culture that feels more like a home, DeRosa said.
“I think it’s urging if you’re in your teens or early 20s to see someone like me doing it,” she said. “I have a career that I love. I’m living my life and carrying out the tasks I believe I’m supposed to. Is being trans difficult? Confident. Have I lost some folks? Yes. But I’m here and I’m doing it. It’s probable.”
Elliot Manning, a fourth-year neuroscientist and president of Trans*Mission, stated that it is beneficial for students to have a position where they can easily express themselves in a positive way in a time when there is a lot of anger surrounding the transgender community.
“I feel like somebody wants to talk about what they’ve been through,” Manning said.
It is important to keep in mind that International Transgender Day of Visibility was established because the broader LGBTQ+ community didn’t talk much about trans people, Manning said, so this event and beyond.
“An important part of Trans Day of Visibility is not just us being accessible for being trans, but what we’ve done, what we’ve contributed to society,” Manning said.
