Important Dates in the Month of March

March is Women’s History Month.
March is National Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month.
March is National Multiple Sclerosis Education and Awareness Month.
March 13-April 15 is Deaf History Month.
March 31st is International Transgender Day of Visibility.

*Updated to add that March is also Trisomy Awareness Month.

In light of Women’s History Month, listen to the Sincerely, Lettie episode “Your Heroes Are Not Mine: The Problematic Whitewashing of Women's Suffrage‬” if you haven’t already. March 8th was International Women’s Day. If you interact with children, I recommend Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History and Little Dreamers: Visionary Women Around the World, both by Vashti Harrison.

You can get more information about National Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month and developmental disabilities on the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities (NACDD) site.

Visit the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation site to learn about National Multiple Sclerosis Education and Awareness Month.

More about this history and purpose of Deaf History Month can be found on the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) website.

In the article “HRC Honors International Transgender Day of Visibility,” Elliott Kozuch wrote about the Human Rights Campaign "call for full equality for transgender and non-binary people."

As I read about these various dates, I was reminded once again of Ijeoma Oluo’s words in So You Want to Talk About Race from the chapter “What is intersectionality and why do I need it?” Oluo wrote, “How do our social justice efforts so often fail to help the most vulnerable in our populations? This is primarily a result of unexamined privilege. Because of how rarely our privilege is examined, even our social justice movements will tend to focus on the most privileged and most well represented people within those groups. Anti-racism groups will often tend to prioritize the needs of straight men of color, feminist groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white women, LGBTQ groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white gay cisgender men, disability rights groups will tend to prioritize the needs of disabled white men. Imagine where this leaves a disabled Latinx trans woman on any group’s priority list.”

*Thank you to my friend Melissa Powell for bringing Trisomy Awareness Month to my attention.

 

 

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