By Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Faculty Chair, Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights | Harvard Kennedy School
The views expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights or Harvard Kennedy School. These perspectives have been presented to encourage debate on important public policy challenges.
Transgender Day of Visibility is our perennial opportunity to celebrate the precious lives and powerful achievements of transgender people. So let us do that—loudly, widely, proudly.
In these treacherous times—especially on days like this—we also have the responsibility to sound the alarm about the unrelenting attacks on our trans siblings. There are precious few people in the world more vulnerable to violence right now.
History shows us that transgender people have always existed—in every age, in every context and culture, in every way. For example, in Female Husbands: A Trans History, the trailblazing historian Jen Manion* chronicles the stories of “female husbands”—ordinary people assigned female who “transed gender,” lived as men, and married women—in the United Kingdom and United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. The long historical record is clear that people have been transing gender for quite some time—from the storied Roman Emperor Elagabalus and diverse two-spirit indigenous communities to the hijra peoples in South Asia, travesti peoples in Latin America, and ogbanje peoples in West and Central Africa. Transgender may be the most familiar collective term of reference in our time, but history overflows with diverse ways to trans gender, different languages to name and describe these lived experiences, and distinct examples of cultures that celebrated them.
At this moment in history, trans lives are under ferocious attack. Here in the United States, violence against transgender people is on the rise and there are hundreds of bills under consideration across the country that would negatively affect trans and gender nonconforming people. In 2025, Outright International documented the global trend of rising attacks on trans, intersex, and nonbinary people, part of a longstanding and enduring history of criminalizing LGBTQI+ people, a familiar page from the same old playbook that is propelling the current authoritarian ascendancy. Across the globe, transgender people are being used and abused as legal scapegoats, political targets, and worse.
Transgender may be the most familiar collective term of reference in our time, but history overflows with diverse ways to trans gender, different languages to name and describe these lived experiences, and distinct examples of cultures that celebrated them.
These unrelenting attacks are part of a dangerous political and cultural shift. In every region of the world, an expanding “anti-gender” movement is fueling the rise of right-wing political parties and political victories. Last week, both of India’s national legislative bodies—the Lok Sabha (House of the People) and Rajya Sabha (Council of States)—passed the 2026 Transgender (Protections of Rights) Amendment Bill, and yesterday President Droupadi Murmu gave it her assent. This controversial new law changes the definition and basis for recognition of transgender people—from self-identification to medical certification—and represents both a troubling reversal of past legal and legislative precedents and a terrifying assault on the human rights of transgender people in the world’s largest democracy. Also last week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned transgender women from participating in female competition and mandated genetic screening to determine the eligibility of female athletes. Notwithstanding the curious fact that this new policy has nothing to say about transgender male athletes, the ban also violates multiple commitments of the IOC’s stated mission. Historically, the Olympics have never won a medal for political neutrality—and we should be thankful for this—but it’s worth noting that the IOC just conceded defeat to this contemporary moral panic.
Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31) is one of a growing number of official occasions that mark and center LGBTQI+ existence. Some of these—Transgender Day of Remembrance (November 20), World AIDS Day (December 1), National Day of Silence (April 10), and Pulse Remembrace Day (June 12)—are meant to mourn loss and memorialize our ancestors. Other annual rituals—Bisexual Visibility Day (September 23), International Lesbian Day (October 8), National Coming Out Day (October 11), LGBTQ History Month (October), Intersex Awareness Day (October 26), Lesbian Visibility Day (April 26), Pansexual Visibility Day (May 24), Pride Month (June), International Non-Binary People’s Day (July 14), and International Drag Day (July 16)—are intentional efforts to claim our space, showcase our joy, and celebrate our global diversity. Indeed, Transgender Day of Visibility was founded in 2009 by U.S. trans activist Rachel Crandall-Crocker, who sought to establish an official occasion to celebrate trans lives, distinct from Transgender Day of Remembrance, which was meant to mark and mourn the murders of trans people. Whether more celebratory or solemn, all these special days represent acts of resistance in the face of discrimination, violence, and attempts at erasure.
These ongoing conflicts—between celebration and crisis, existence and erasure, resistance and backlash—are a central feature of LGBTQI+ history and all histories of minoritized and marginalized peoples. In my work on social justice movements, I refer to this as the “paradox of progress”: the reality that backlash often coincides with struggles to expand freedom, equality, and human rights. More pointedly, the backlash tells on itself. Its very existence is evidence and admission of progress. If queer people weren’t winning—changing laws as well as hearts and minds—panicked people wouldn’t see us as such a threat to children, to families, to civilization. We cannot lose sight of this truth in these upside-down times.
If queer people weren’t winning—changing laws as well as hearts and minds—panicked people wouldn’t see us as such a threat to children, to families, to civilization.
The United States offers one powerful example of this. For most of U.S. history, discrimination and violence against LGBTQI+ people has been a routine and bipartisan practice. People often forget that Democrats and Republicans were virtually united in their hostility and opposition to queer people and our human rights until the 1990s, in the wake of the AIDS epidemic. Honestly, it would be impossible to calculate how many of our lives have been destroyed by legal discrimination and criminalization, medical malpractices and scientific pathologies, religious persecution and miseducation, cultural caricature and public policy. And yet over the last three decades, against great odds, the American LGBTQI+ movement has achieved a growing list of victories: advances in HIV/AIDS treatment and medication; decriminalization of sodomy; hate crimes legislation; repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”; more inclusive and expansive non-discrimination laws; and marriage equality. During this time, the Democratic Party has slowly become a more reliable ally on many of the issues that matter to us. Trans rights are one notable exception. With the reprise of the Trump regime, attacks on transgender people are a core tactic and the results have been catastrophic. That the “opposition” party is inconsistent and incoherent when it comes to supporting the lives and rights of transgender people is a moral indictment, especially in this era of fierce backlash.
Given this reality, it is more important than ever to raise our collective voices in solidarity with transgender people worldwide. In the Carr-Ryan Center’s Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program, we are deeply committed to this work: in our three-year (2026-2028) Research Cluster on Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights (with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs); in our annual LGBTQI+ Activism Summit; in programs like “The Fight for LGBTQI+ Human Rights Throughout the World” and “The Fight for LGBTQI+ Equality: Dispatches from the Front Lines” (with the Institute of Politics), “Strengthening Solidarity Among Gender Movements” (with the Women and Public Policy Program), “American Teenager: Transgender Displacement and the Fight for Home,” and “Trans Visibility in Challenging Times”; in our six-part East Asia Series Webinars curated and hosted by Program Manager Ying Xin; in the appointment of our inaugural cohort of LGBTQI+ Student Leadership Fellows; in the appointment of our inaugural cohort of 2025-2026 Fellows; in the work of our Senior Fellows Jessica Stern and Leo Varadkar; in the writings of Program Director Diego Garcia Blum and Program fellows and affiliates Nayyab Ali, Kimahli Powell, and Ian Lekus; and in our first Transgender Day of Visibility roundtable featuring powerful contributions from Nayyab Ali, Henry Tse, Philomena Polefrone, and Reggie Greer.
Visibility is as important as it is fraught. In a world where transgender people are fighting harder than ever to advance and defend their human rights, they are also more vulnerable than ever to prejudice, surveillance, and violence. So let us take time today to celebrate trans lives and rededicate ourselves to the difficult and unfinished work of liberation.
*Professor Manion will be delivering Harvard’s prestigious Nicholas Papadopoulos Lecture on April 15, 2026. Here is more information.
