The City of West Hollywood and its Transgender Advisory Board recognize November as Transgender Awareness Month. The City will fly the blue, pink, and white Transgender flag over West Hollywood City Hall and will light the globe lanterns above Santa Monica Boulevard in blue, pink, and white through Monday, November 20, 2023.
Transgender Awareness Month events in November will include a performance of the TransDiaries, produced by Hollywood NOW, the Hollywood Chapter of the National Organization of Women. The event will take place on Saturday, November 11, 2023 and Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. at the City of West Hollywood’s Council Chambers/Public Meeting Room, located at 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard. The two performances are free and open to the public. For more information and to RSVP, please visit the Eventbrite page https://transdiaries2023.eventbrite.com.
The City of West Hollywood is also a co-sponsoring multiple community events hosted by trans-led organizations in Los Angeles:
- The TransLatin@Coalition’s GARRAS Fashion Show will take place on Saturday, November 18, 2023 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Pacific Design Center, located at 8687 Melrose Avenue. Tickets for the TransLatin@ Coalition’s GARRAS fashion show can be purchased at https://garras.org. The TransLatin@ Coalition is a nonprofit organization that advocates for the specific needs of the TransLatin@ community that reside in the United States.
- The City of West Hollywood will also host The Church of Trans Love’s Trans Love Dance on Friday, November 17, 2023, from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the West Hollywood Park Aquatic and Recreation Center Respite Deck, located at 8750 El Tovar Place, adjacent to West Hollywood Library. This free event will feature performances and dance rituals from Shakina Nayfack and Loretta Lorraine, and music by DJ Asha. More information can be found on the City’s online calendar. This event is supported in part by a Transgender Arts Initiative Grant from the City of West Hollywood.
- The Unique Woman’s Coalition’s (UWC) TransGiving Dinner will take place on Sunday, November 19, 2023, and will begin at 5 p.m. The Unique Woman’s Coalition (UWC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to being a collective voice centering on the narratives and needs of Black Trans culture. The purpose of this holiday-inspired dinner is to celebrate transgender lives and accomplishments and remember those lost to anti-trans violence. The dinner will also provide much needed resources such as PPE (personal protective equipment) kits, sleeping bags, clothing, vaccines, and much more. For more information about the event, please visit https://www.theuwc.org.
The City of West Hollywood will host an in-person Transgender Day of Remembrance Ceremony at 6 p.m. on Sunday, November 19, 2023 featuring speakers and a reading of names to memorialize people who have been murdered as a result of anti-transgender violence. Transgender Day of Remembrance is part of the City of West Hollywood’s annual recognition of Transgender Awareness Month, which is recognized throughout the United States each November. Transgender Day of Remembrance is an opportunity to look forward to the future and recommit to ending discrimination and transphobia by amplifying the visibility and voices of the transgender community. The Transgender Day of Remembrance event will be broadcast live on the on the City’s WeHoTV channels and streams. For details, visit www.weho.org/wehotv. WeHoTV broadcasts are available within the City of West Hollywood on Spectrum Cable Channel 10. In addition, programming may be viewed using streaming platforms by searching “WeHoTV” within the search functions of AppleTV, Amazon FireTV, AndroidTV, and Roku services. It will also be available live and for replay at the City’s WeHoTV YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/wehotv. Visit the City’s online calendar for more information about this event. The City encourages every community stakeholder to honor the lives and memories of community members and take the opportunity to reflect on the work that remains to be done.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) tracks annual statistics of violence against the people in the transgender community. In the latest statistics currently available, HRC has reported that thus far in 2023 there have been at least 25 transgender or gender non-conforming people fatally shot or killed by other violent means in the United States. A disproportionately high number of victims are Black and Latinx transgender women. Past HRC reports include 41 deaths in 2022; 59 deaths in 2021; 33 deaths in 2020; 27 deaths in 2019; 26 deaths in 2018; 29 deaths in 2017; and 23 deaths in 2016. This wave of violence has been declared an epidemic by the American Medical Association. Rates of actual violence or deaths may, in fact, be higher but anti-transgender violence can be difficult to accurately measure as victims are sometimes misgendered in reports, which can delay awareness of deadly incidents.
For more information about the City of West Hollywood’s Transgender Awareness Month events, visit www.weho.org/tam.
