Today is [International Trans Day of Visibility 🏳️⚧️](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Transgender_Day_of_Visibility), an “annual event occurring on 31 March dedicated to celebrating transgender people and raising awareness of discrimination faced by transgender people worldwide, as well as a celebration of their contributions to society”
Trans people are mappers, and hackers, and cartographers, and have always been a part of the OpenStreetMap community. The OpenStreetMap project is creating a freely licenced map of the world, based on how things actually are, based on how they act, and appear, not based on what some government says. OSM is trans positive. I'm a queer trans woman/enby. I've been out and proud as non-cis for years and years, and transitioned and changed my name while on the OSMF Board (and quadrupled my vote!). Everyone has been really cool and accepting and everything. Tagging changes usually take a while before OSMers adapt! yay! It's not all rainbows and unicorns. OSMers misgendering you on Twitter sucks. Discrimination against trans people still exists in the world. I was lucky to legally self ID (🇮🇪👍🏻). Many counties are waging a war, to various degrees, against trans* & GNC people. In some places it's really bad, some people can live at the edges (some don't make it). My heart bleeds for my trans siblings there. We have always been here. ✊🏻💪🏻 We need allies to stand with us. If you throw us under a bus when we're inconvenient, you're not an ally. 🥺 *cough cough sotm cough*. Remember an important OSM rule: Don't just bulk import your gender from an "official" source. Maybe the on the ground gender you survey yourself is more accurate, and you should throw away the official version? What other stories do you have? 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️  -- Amanda _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
