Today is the best holiday of the entire year. You’ve never heard of a Nov. 6 American holiday, you say? That’s because it’s the first year that the annual Trans Day of Screaming has taken place.
When a self-described “19 y/o tranny dyke ancom madhyamika guanyin devotee” posted on Tumblr about her idea for a Trans Day of Screaming, the concept was immediately popular, receiving 25,101 notes on the site.
It’s a simple idea, really. Everyone who is transgender screams. That’s it. Forget all the visibility, remembrance, and coming out emphasized on those other LGBT calendar dates. Sometimes what everyone in an oppressed class needs to do is just yell at the top of their fucking lungs.
The word is spreading quickly about this most special of days. On a Facebook event page, trans folks from Australia, Brazil, Bangkok and Saudia Arabia chimed in to let everyone know their exact screaming locations in case any nearby neighbors wanted to join in and scream together. One user located in Rochester, N.Y., graciously offered to “scream into the depths of Lake Ontario so Canada can hear.”
Another from Seattle said, “I’ll be in the hospital after surgery, so the screams will be muted, but never fear, the screams will be real and constant.”
Some posters pointed out that if anyone missed the holiday event, it was OK, since they were “forever screaming” or “screaming internally, externally, eternally and so forth.”
On Thursday, which could be called Trans Screaming Eve, some Facebook users had questions. One asked for clarification: “Does it matter if my screaming is coherent or incoherent? Can I switch back and forth throughout the day?”
The page administrator made the point clear: Trans Day of Screaming is really whatever you want it to be, as long as it involves destroying the world.
“The scream is tomorrow make sure you let your trans friends know so our collective screams can shatter time and space so all shouting can join together as an amalgam of gender and fury,” read a Thursday post.
To keep up the momentum for next year, there’s also a Facebook community page dedicated to Trans Day of Screaming Yearly.
Happy screams, everyone!
Photo via db photography/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
