LOS ANGELES – In addition to being the day Veteran’s Day was observed in the U.S., this past Monday marked the beginning of Transgender Awareness Week.

Established to raise the visibility of transgender and gender non-conforming people and to raise awareness about the issues faced by the trans community, much of the focus of Transgender Awareness Week is on educating the public about the discrimination, prejudice and threat of violence faced by transgender people in their daily lives.

Adult studio Grooby has announced it is participating in Transgender Awareness Week to “celebrate those who do charity, advocacy work, or otherwise represent the trans adult community in a great light,” said Grooby’s Marketing and Editorial Director Kristel Penn.

“Advocacy comes in many forms and our goal is to showcase that diversity,” Penn added.

Directly after Transgender Awareness Week, on November 20, the world also marks the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) – a day which honors the memory of the lives lost due to acts of anti-transgender violence.

According to GLAAD, TDOR was originally established by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith “as a vigil to honor her memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence that year and began an important memorial that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.”

Penn said that “while TDOR is a solemn and important event for the LGBTQ community and its allies, we believe that the Transgender Awareness Week is equally important to pay tribute to.”

“This week, we want to showcase some of the people in our community who are doing amazing work in formal ways or who lead by example,” Penn added.

Grooby’s participation in Transgender Awareness Week and TDOR is the latest in a series of trans community-focused actions the studio has taken.

Last month, Grooby announced a “pronouns initiative” under which the studio’s producers and staff began publishing their preferred pronouns – she/hers/he/his/they/them – on all relevant sites, social media profiles and email signatures.

The pronouns initiative followed the decision to rebrand the company’s popular membership sites, a process which began in 2017 with the rebranding of SheMaleYum.com to GroobyGirls.com.

“I’m happy to report that the response from the members, the models, and the industry have been mostly very positive and that our leadership seems to have encouraged other companies to make similar changes,” company owner/founder Steven Grooby said in May.

Earlier this year, the company also announced an initiative to help trans performers have tattoos with hateful messages removed, noting that over the years, the studio had “models come to shoots with tattoos that they tried to hide from us or were ashamed of.”

“Many performers we work with come from estranged backgrounds, and I’ve never been from the school of thought that people can’t change. I believe in the importance of giving people a second chance,” Grooby said in January. “We have people who are having problems getting work either in the industry or outside of it from a mistake they made many years ago. If this can help these individuals move forward, then I believe it’s a good initiative.”