November 14 through 18, Monday through Friday, marks the Week Against Transphobia 2022, which culminates in Sunday’s annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, observed each November 20. The theme of this year’s Week Against Transphobia is “I Choose Loving….” The events are part of a broader initiative referred to as Transgender Awareness Week.

The Week Against Transphobia is spearheaded by the Zero Campaign, a program of the Latino Commission on AIDS, a nonprofit serving LGBTQ Latino people, and the Oasis Community Pride Center, which is located in New York City and offers clinical and sexual health services and support to Latino communities and their allies.

Oasis describes the week of awareness and events as follows:

We are excited to host 2022’s Week Against Transphobia, in partnership with community-based organizations, from November 14–18 leading up to Trans Day of Remembrance on November 20th. Transphobia, in simple terms, is an irrational fear of those perceived to break or blur stereotypical gender roles. Through this lens, transphobia impacts every individual expressing gender in transgressive ways, independent of their gender identity or sexual orientation. However, transgender individuals continue to bear disproportionate amounts of the violence born out of transphobic fear. This year alone there have been at least 30 murders of trans individuals in the United States.

 

The work to end this deadly violence cannot fall solely on those most impacted. Ending transphobia will allow everyone to express their gender identities more freely. Therefore, it is our duty to organize against anti-trans violence.

 

This year the Zero Campaign is calling for an end to transphobic hate violence through our continued theme of “I Choose Loving…” for the Week Against Transphobia, November 14–18. We invite your organization to join us in this display of the strength love can provide.

Events throughout the Week Against Transphobia include the Zoom discussions “Trans-Liberation” (Monday), “The Trans Umbrella” (Tuesday), “Justice for Trans Youth”  (Wednesday) and “Justice for Latin American Trans Communities” (Thursday). Discussions take place live from 1 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. ET. You can register for the Zoom events on OasisCenter.NYC/zero. In addition, you can view the discussions live and after the fact on Oasis’s Facebook page. Below is the discussion from Monday:

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1 million people identify as transgender in the United States, which has a total population of about 328 million. HIV remains a prevalent health issue among the transgender community. Adult and adolescent transgender people made up 2% (671) of 36,801 HIV diagnoses in 2019.

For additional information, see the POZ Basics titled HIV and Transgender People. It notes that a meta-analysis found that “an estimated 14% of trans women and 3% of trans men in the United States are living with HIV. This proportion rises to 44% for Black trans women and 26% for Latina trans women and falls to 7% for white trans women. Previous estimates suggested that around 20% to 30% of U.S. trans women were HIV positive. Globally, trans women are about 49 times more likely than non-trans people to have HIV.”

Numerous organizations and individuals mark Transgender Awareness Week. For example, Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ and HIV civil rights group, offers legal resources and guides yearound and is fighting many of the lawsuits against transgender people.