Standing Tall, Running Proud

When I came out as trans back in 2007, no one really seemed to care about trans people. We were slightly invisible, or at least not the focus of the country’s obsession.

But then in 2014, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance was proposed. While the City Council was deliberating the issue, outside City Hall people were chanting, “No men in women’s restrooms!” This was to be the rallying cry, beginning in Houston, traveling to North Carolina, and back to Texas with a vengeance in 2017. This attempt by some to erase people who do not conform to what they expect men and women to look like has swept the nation. During this time, more and more folks—including non-binary and gender-expansive folks—have come out. One would think this would make life different and it would make life easier.

Here we are. We are your friends, your family, your loved ones, and your co-workers. Yet, the more visible we become, the more we’ve had a target placed on our backs. In 2015, when same-sex marriage became legal, things really started changing. The rallying cry of “No men in women’s restrooms” was all people could talk about, as far as the LGBTQ community went. It has become even harder to be who we are and to be out, to be visible.

In some ways, it feels as if it is a Catch-22. It’s so important for people to see us—for kids to see trans grownups, and for parents to see that their kids have a future. Trans folks deserve to see other trans folks and be in community with them. Yet coming out and being loud and proud has led to so much hate and bigotry.

The word transgender is literally being erased from so much across the country. It was just announced that the National Park Service has removed the word transgender from the Stonewall Memorial website. The first bricks that launched our revolution were thrown by black and brown trans women, those that were the most marginalized even then. And now their identities are gone.

But they aren’t forgotten, and we won’t be forgotten either. That is why this year the Trot for Trans Visibility is more important than ever. It is so important that trans people see allies, that trans people feel love, and that we can feel joy and happiness in our own bodies with our friends and our families in a place where it is okay to be who we are.

I invite you, your friends, and your families to come out and join us for the 5K on March 29 to be in solidarity with one another, to show your love, to show your appreciation, and to show you understand how important it is to be a community right now.

It gets harder and harder listening to the rhetoric that says trans people don’t exist. But nobody’s words are going to take our visibility away from us.

About the Trot for Trans Visibility

In 2023, endurance athlete runner Cal Dobbs (he/they) was planning a Trot for Trans Lives 5K in Austin to support trans and intersex people. Knowing that a lot of folks can’t get to Austin, Lou Weaver reached out about coordinating something in Houston. Cal and his team responded, “Yes, let’s do a Houston 5K.”

Without knowing anything about 5Ks, or even running, Weaver jumped at the opportunity.

The Inaugural Houston Trot for Trans Visibility 5K in 2024 was more successful than he could have imagined. Thanks to help from the local queer running community the Trot became a much smoother operation, and the start of something powerful for the local trans community.

What: Trot for Trans Visibility 2025 Houston 5K Fun Run
When: Saturday, March 29, 2025; Run starts at 9 a.m.
Where: Frost Town Brewing, 100 N. Jackson St.
Info: tinyurl.com/5n7kfzt4