Every City Needs a Trans Awareness Campaign Like this One

Vancouver is consistently named one of the most livable cities in the world, and its Park Board recently launched a program that’s making it even more appealing.

Hillcrest Community Centre, built during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, became host this week to a series of posters raising awareness about the trans community and issues facing trans people. The program was developed after a 2014 report from the city’s Trans* and Gender Variant Working Group offered suggestions for ways to make public spaces more inclusive and accessible to trans and gender-variant folks.

Said Park Board chair John Coupar, “At its heart it’s about making everyone feel comfortable and welcome at our community centers.”

Alongside the posters, the community center has unveiled new restroom signage that features trans-inclusive imagery—no “woman in triangle-shaped dress” or “man in pants” here.  Said Jazmine Khan, who is featured in the city’s posters,

It feels fulfilling to know I finally have a place. I don’t have to be shamed and ridiculed for going into women’s change rooms just because I don’t have the parts.

The city also began offering a trans-inclusive swim at another community center earlier this year, and will continue implementing longer-term recommendations from the 2014 report with input from a new Trans* and Gender-Variant Implementation Steering Committee.

Get Ms. in your inbox! Click here to sign up for the Ms. newsletter.

 

 

 

About

Stephanie hails from Toronto, Canada. She is a Ms. writer, a master of journalism candidate and a hip hop dancer/instructor/choreographer. She got her start in feminist journalism at the age of 16 when she was a member of the first editorial collective at Shameless magazine—and she has never looked back.