LGBTQ+ Holidays: When (and Why) to Celebrate Them All Year Round?
Do you feel like your LGBTQ+ identity remains invisible? Do you want to proudly show it to the world or connect with other queer people? LGBTQ+ holidays are a great opportunity to celebrate, share, and be seen!
International Transgender Day of Visibility
When: March 31
Transgender people are talked about a lot, but they are not always talked to. We don't recognize every trans person at first glance. And so the International Transgender Day of Visibility was created to show that transgender people are everywhere in the world.
This holiday was founded in 2009 by psychotherapist Rachel Crandall, who lives in the USA. The reasons were both those we mentioned above and the fact that she herself was frustrated that the only international holiday known up to that time that directly concerned transgender people was simply Memorial Day (we will talk about it below).
International Asexuality Day
When: April 6
Asexuality and the spectrum of related sexual and romantic orientations (such as demisexuality, aromanticism, and the like) are not very well known to the public, which is perhaps why international Asexuality Day celebrations were held for the first time only in 2021. The date has no special symbolism: it was simply chosen so that, if possible, it would not clash with any other significant day .
Interestingly, this holiday falls in April, which is also Autism Awareness and Acceptance Month, and there are more asexual people among people on the autism spectrum than in the general population .
International Day Against LGBTQIA+ Discrimination
When: May 17
The holiday, which had the funny abbreviation IDAHOBIT (originally IDAHO and then IDAHOT) in English, was first celebrated internationally in 2005 as the International Day Against Homophobia. And why in mid-May? On May 17, 1990, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the list of diseases .
This does not mean that since then all countries in the world have not considered sexual intercourse between persons of the same official gender a crime (in some places such intercourse is even punishable by death!), but that is also the purpose of the holiday: to show that the fight is not over yet and that it does not only concern gays and lesbians.
International LGBTQ+ Pride Day
When: June 28
This is probably the most important LGBTQ+ day of the year: the anniversary of the Stonewall Inn protests in the United States, which gave rise to the tradition of LGBTQ+ pride marches. Of course, these don't have to be held only on that day or generally in June (in the Czech Republic, they tend to be held in August), but this date has been used for celebrations the longest.
International Non-Binary Day
When: July 14
If it's true that four babies are born every second , that means that there are just over 345,000 born every day. And when we consider that roughly one percent of the human population is nonbinary, that works out to be (assuming that nonbinary people also make up one hundredth of all newborns) about 3,456 born every day.
Some interesting nonbinary person is sure to be born on July 14th, but Canadian nonbinary fantasy author Katje van Loon came up with this date to celebrate Nonbinary People's Day for a different reason: it's right in the middle of International Women's Day and International Men's Day . Of course, not every nonbinary person considers themselves to be a person on the borderline between male and female, but at least it makes the day easy to remember.
International Bisexuality Visibility Day
When: September 23
Many people with one or both of these orientations will confirm that bisexuality and biromanticism are overlooked by many people. And although there have been associations promoting the idea of a day dedicated to the visibility of bisexual and biromantic people since the early 1990s, it was first officially celebrated by the international organization supporting LGBTQ+ rights, ILGA, at its conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1999.
And why September 23rd? That month, in 1946, one of the most famous bisexual people in the world was born, musician Freddie Mercury. According to American activist Wendy Curry , the choice fell on the 23rd of that month because it was a weekend that year and another co-founder of the event, Gigi Raven Wilbur, was celebrating her birthday that day, so there was another reason to celebrate.
International Lesbian Day
When: October 8
Exactly seven months after International Women's Day, International Lesbian Day is celebrated. Its origins are not well known, but it is believed that its first celebration took place in Australia or New Zealand in the last century.
International Transgender Day of Remembrance
When: November 20
Transphobia is not just discrimination in the job market or healthcare. Did you know that 96% of murdered trans people worldwide are transgender women or trans feminine people ? Or that most of them are people working in the sex industry? Unfortunately, several hundred trans people from all over the world die violently every year – and on November 20th, we remember these deceased.
Commemorative events are also taking place in the Czech Republic, for example in Prague under the flag of the non-profit organization Transparent.