Starting tonight with the "Transgender Monologues," a series of events aimed at promoting awareness and education about transgender issues will take over the UW campus. Transgender Awareness Week, put on by the UW LGBT Campus Center and a number of student and community organizations, comes at a time when transgender rights have recently been in the national spotlight.

Madison’s own representative, Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, recently authored and pushed for an amendment to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that called for "sexual identity," i.e. transgendered people, to be included as something employers could not discriminate against when hiring. While ENDA itself did, happily, pass (though it still faces a threatened veto from President Bush), Baldwin’s amendment didn’t receive enough support from either Democrats or Republicans to make it through.

The story helped to highlight the major hurdles transgendered individuals still face in our country, and the misconceptions and stereotypes they face even from otherwise liberal allies.

The week includes everything from a candlelight vigil to a drag show to self-defense workshops, the latter being painfully necessary in an age when violence committed against transgendered people is increasing (up by at least 20% from previous years, according to this 2006 study: http://www.avp.org/publications/reports/2006NtnlHVReportReleaseEdition.pdf).

Tonight’s show, to be held at the Memorial Union Play Circle, will feature “a variety of local talent slamming, reading monologues and performing.” A film festival, scheduled for this Saturday at 7:00PM for the same space, will include a screening of “The Aggressives,” a documentary about “women who prefer to dress and act as men and who participate in NYC's predominantly African-American lesbian drag balls,” as well as the critically acclaimed feature film “Ma Vie en Rose.”

For a full list of events, visit: http://www.wisc.edu/lgbt/events.html

Whether you’re a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge about transgender issues or, more likely, someone who’s mostly in the dark about this facet of our society and humanity, the week’s events offer a good primer to both the uninitiated and those who it effects most directly. The schedule balances the educational with the entertaining, and provides little excuse to remain ignorant of an important movement.