Planned Parenthood of Illinois hosted a storytelling celebration Saturday in honor of Transgender Day of Visibility 2025. The event featured stories and art from the Bloomington-Normal transgender community and beyond.
The keynote speaker for the event was Cal Calamia, a nonbinary professional runner, marathoner, speaker and educator. They said that while the international holiday exists to honor the celebrations of transgender and nonbinary people, it just as importantly exists for awareness.
“Now more than ever we need to hold this space to acknowledge not just the beauty of our community, but the grave danger of our rights and everything we have hanging in the balance,” they said.
They are a native of the Chicago suburb of Grayslake, who now resides in San Francisco. They said that where you grow up matters and that their experience growing up in Illinois is different than that of young people in San Francisco.
This was clear to them after becoming a public high school teacher and college professor, and they said they can see young people changing in the way they mature into their communities.
“Young people can learn not to become trans nor to become cis, but to become themselves,” Calamia said. “And to become loving community members that want the best for not only themselves but also for each other.”
Calamia described themself as a lifelong runner, starting cross country in their youth and eventually quitting their collegiate team due to a challenging homelife and no longer feeling comfortable being a member of a women’s team.
“Running, which had been my outlet for so much of my life and my coping mechanism for so many things that I struggled with, was sort of pulled out from underneath me,” they said, “and counter to all that I had previously believed about my sport, I had to stay away from running in order to heal.”
Since that time, they have never stopped running. After advocating for nonbinary divisions in marathons beginning in 2022, Calamia has won marathons in New York City, San Francisco, Tokyo and Los Angeles and took second place in Boston, Berlin and Chicago. They said while running can be an activity others view with negativity; it means more to them.
“I absolutely adore it,” they said. “I recognize the ways that it helps me grow and [it] means so much more to me than just putting one physical foot in front of the other.”
Calamia recognized that among other things, one reason they choose to celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility, or TDOV, this year is in the wake of several executive orders from President Donald Trump, where transgender people are the subject of these orders. The most well-known executive order being Trump’s “Keep Men out of Women’s Sports.”
Dave Bentlin was among the allies and advocates at PPIL’s celebration. The board president of the Prairie Pride Coalition strongly agreed with Calamia that awareness is important for young people.
“It’s an event that’s been around for several years, but I think this year it’s even more important in light of the political climate that we’re facing in our country,” he said. “I think it’s important for both members of the transgender and nonbinary communities as well as the allies of those communities to come out and show their support.”
Bentlin said his organization provides community support through the Gender Expansive Resource Center, which gives gender-affirming garments like binders, as well as their resources for changing someone’s legal name and gender on government documents.
“What we as Prairie Pride Coalition hope to do is to be a bridge during this very tough time, because we know that what’s happening at the federal level is not going to be permanent,” he said. “I look at it as a temporary situation that I think will get better over time, but until it does, we will be there as an organization to help our community feel like they’re getting equity, they’re feeling safe and they’re feeling welcome in our community.”
Olivia Nix also attended the event, not as a participant but as a volunteer with PPIL. As a senior at Illinois State University, she only just started as a volunteer with Planned Parenthood.
She echoed Calamia’s point of view that visibility is important, because in her hometown in southern Illinois, she didn’t get to see many transgender people.
“Growing up it was a very taboo thing and a lot of teachers, a lot of my friends’ parents made it seem like such an odd thing to have trans people in our school,” she said. “Being growing up, you’re kind of blind to it, you’re more a child, you don’t think too much into it.”
Nix said she eventually did get to know people who were transgender as she grew up. However, she also saw how those people were often treated by their communities.
“As I grow older, I see the more hate in the world,” she said. “How people act like they aren’t a human just because they don’t want to be defined by male or female, which is outrageous for me to think, and I want to do my due diligence to be here and support them how I can.”
Transgender Day of Visibility is officially celebrated on March 31 every year.
