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We Happy Trans' Jen Richards and This Is H.O.W. ED Antonia D'Orsay along with a team of people are putting together a Trans 100 List that will be released on March 31, the International Trans Day of Visibility.

I heard I was nominated for it, we'll see on March 31 if I made the final cut for this year.

The initial publicity for it has started with Jen doing a radio interview, and in the resulting Facebook discussion the question was asked by Malaysia's Yuki Choe if there were going to be international trans people on that list.

Here's Ms D'Orsay explaining her thoughts on why which international trans activists should be on a list is a task left to the trans people in those nations and we North American based activists should just follow their lead.

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It all comes down to something I have said before: it is not my place to step in and decide for other nations who the best people doing the hardest work are. I am an unabashed citizen of the US, and while I have some cultural competence with other cultures and countries, it is still an outsider’s perspective and flawed and it can’t possibly be as decent as the ideas of those who are living there locally.

I don’t write about the topics nearly enough, but anyone who spends more than an hour around me will tell you that I am deeply concerned and involved in efforts relating to my black, red, and brown brothers, sisters, and siblings. That means Native, African American, and Latino, for those who are unaware.
There is amazing work going on in South Africa, in Europe, in the middle east, in Malaysia and the Philippines, in various countries in southeast Asia — all over the world, in fact. Some of that work is done under the sentence of death, others must risk decades in prison just to provide a support group.

I pay attention to all of it, but I am not competent to address things.  This is important for me to note, especially since I spend a lot of time pointing out how other people who are incompetent in dealing with things shouldn’t be speaking to them. Would be hypocrisy for me to do so when it comes to something that is as important as this kind of list.

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Read the rest of her thoughts about it in this Dysonnance post