Speakers at Farmingdale State: Time to stand up for transgender rights

There was music and theater, stories of harassment and tales of transformation Monday at the Long Island Transgender Day of Remembrance at Farmingdale State College.

But speaker Jesse Power, who introduced himself as “the boy who had to tell his parents he was not their little girl,” perhaps summed up the theme of the evening most succinctly.

“I will not apologize for being who I am,” Power told the scores of transgender people and allies at the event.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance, held every year to mourn transgender people who have been murdered in the past year, was begun in 1999 to commemorate the unsolved killing of a transgender woman named Rita Hester in Massachusetts.

A report released by the Human Rights Campaign on Monday said in the United States at least 22 transgender people have been killed in 2018, and at least 128 have been killed over the past five years because of transphobia.

Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, one of the speakers at Monday’s event, said Nassau police have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to hate crimes.

“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” Curran said.

Keynote speaker Kylie Madhav said transgender people have never been welcomed in American society, but things have become even more dire since the Trump administration announced last month that it would seek to narrowly define gender as a concrete condition determined at birth. Many transgender people see that move as an attempt to roll back the federal government’s recognition and protection for their community.

“We have overcome before,” Madhav said, and we will overcome again.”

But for the transgender people who participated in Monday’s event, it was also an opportunity to say they are not like most people — and that is OK.

Speaker Sofia Miller spoke about struggling with suicidal thoughts, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder after facing rejection from family members after she decided to transition. But her life had greatly improved, she said, thanks to support from her friends and her fiancé.

“I’m glad I’m here to share my story with you,” Miller said.