As Thanskgiving approached, Yale University hosted an event called “Transgiving.” The event was advertised on the Instagram page of Yale’s LGBTQ Center. It called on students to “Celebrate trans joy, resilience, and community.”
“Transgiving” is the centerpiece of the LGBTQ Center’s “Trans Week,” which focuses on “celebrating and honoring our trans, non-binary, genderqueer, and gender-expansive community members.” “We envision a stronger and braver Yale University community that is radically inclusive of all sexualities, gender identities and expressions,” the LGBTQ Center says.
Other LGBTQ-oriented events include “Trans Brunch” or “Trunch,” and “Intercultural Trick-or-Treating.” The LGBTQ Center also operates a “Qloset,” which provides LGBTQ-affirming clothing.
Additional universities, such as Oakland University and Northern Michigan University, also held “Transgiving” events.
George Washington University had students discuss the effects on colonialism on “Transgiving.” Its transgiving invitation said students “don’t have to be trans to eat the food.” They can be “non-binary or genderqueer or agender or genderfluid or bigender or femme or masc or andro or… an ally!”
Some colleges promoted the idea of “decolonizing Thanksgiving“, and commemorating a “National Day of Mourning” instead. For example, Cal Tech urged students to “recognize the National Day of Mourning,” while the University at Buffalo, held an event on “Decolonizing Thanksgiving” that asked, “What can we do to honor this day of mourning for Native communities?”
Some progressives have called for replacing Thanksgiving with a “national day of mourning,” based on the false claim that Thanksgiving commemorates a massacre of Indians by the Pilgrims. They wrongly claim the “first official Thanksgiving Day commemorated the massacre of 700 Indian men, women and children during one of their religious ceremonies.” They cite a non-existent professor for this false claim, who they falsely claim “was head of the anthropology department at the University of Connecticut, whose faculty cannot recall him at all. When the department was founded in 1971, [the man alleged to have been a professor] was 79 years old.”
