{"id":73351,"date":"2024-11-07T10:37:08","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T17:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=73351"},"modified":"2024-11-07T10:37:08","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T17:37:08","slug":"tdor-reyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/tdor-reyes\/","title":{"rendered":"What Transgender Day of Remembrance means to me"},"content":{"rendered":"

*Editor\u2019s Note: The \u201cViews from NAU\u201d blog series highlights the thoughts of different people affiliated with NAU, including faculty members sharing opinions or research in their areas of expertise. The views expressed reflect the authors\u2019 own personal perspectives.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

By Jaden Blake L. Reyes<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Jaden Blake L. Reyes <\/span><\/span>is a <\/span>C<\/span>ampus <\/span>L<\/span>iving initiatives and partnerships coordinator <\/span>at NAU.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The month of November is dear to me, and I want to share two reasons with you:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. My family introduced me to the world on Nov. 7, 1995.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Transgender Day of Remembrance is on Nov. 20.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \"old<\/a>
    Reyes was raised and socialized as a Filipino woman.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    I was raised and socialized as a Filipino woman in America. Throughout my life, I had moments when my birth gender did not align with how I felt. I struggled with the concepts of Western and Filipino femininity and masculinity as I grew up. It did not make sense to me that women\/girls had to do <\/span>this <\/span><\/i>and men\/boys had to do <\/span>that<\/span><\/i>. I always had this thought growing up:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u201cAnyone can do that; why does being this certain gender matter?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    I used she\/they pronouns and continued to live with my assigned identities throughout college until I moved to Terre Haute, Indiana, for graduate school. In graduate school, I met another non-binary person who helped me explore my gender identity. That\u2019s when I started addressing myself socially as \u201cJB Reyes (they\/them)\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

    When I moved to Flagstaff to work full-time for NAU, I felt comfortable exploring my gender identity more and how it intersects with my other identities. The more I focused on decolonizing and radicalizing my Westernized and white way of thinking, I have been able to honor and incorporate my queer, neurodivergent and Filipino identities into my life. While doing this, I had this recurring thought in my mind:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cThe way I am living, I am my ancestors\u2019 biggest dream.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"Jaden<\/a>
    Reyes “would not be able to live this way without the trans, Black, Indigenous and people of color who fought for our rights.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    I am Jaden Blake Lumacad Reyes (he\/they), a proud queer Filipino transmasculine person who is doing his best every day to live his most authentic life. I would not be able to live this way without the trans, Black, Indigenous and people of color who fought for our rights, who fought for our existence, who fought for the rest of our community and the rights of other trans generations to come.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    November is a bittersweet month of transition, grace and remembrance. I hope for positive change where folks make consistent efforts to acknowledge that trans people are humans too and just want to live their authentic lives. As people are trying, give them space since they will make mistakes. It is now their responsibility to learn from those mistakes. It pains me that there are folks whose lives were lost due to violence and transphobia. I wish they could be here and live their most authentic lives. I hope that we can honor those folks and live aspects of their life for them so they will not be forgotten.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    To all my living trans family and friends, I acknowledge you, I honor you and I support you wherever you are in your gender identity journey. To my posthumous trans family and friends, no words can express my gratitude for what you have done for our community. I hope that you can rest in power and peace.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    *Editor\u2019s Note: The \u201cViews from NAU\u201d blog series highlights the thoughts of different people affiliated with NAU, including faculty members sharing opinions or research in their areas of expertise. The views expressed reflect the authors\u2019 own personal perspectives.\u00a0 By Jaden Blake L. Reyes Jaden Blake L. Reyes is a Campus Living initiatives and partnerships coordinator…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":73353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views-from-nau"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}