“Out In The Night,” the Story of Four Black Lesbians Convicted for Self Defense, Premieres on PBS and Logo Tonight

In August of 2006, seven black lesbians from New Jersey were hanging out in the West Village of New York City when they were harassed and violently threatened by a man on the street. When they defended themselves, they were arrested and charged with attempted murder and gang assault. Four of the women — Renata Hill, Patreese Johnson, Terrain Dandrige and Venice Brown — plead not-guilty, knowing they were acting in self-defense. They were convicted and given sentences ranging from three to eleven years. Their case became a focal point for activism supporting the women and their case, and protesting the violence, racism, misogyny and homophobia of the legal system that systematically prosecutes women for trying to save their own lives. They became known as the New Jersey Four.

Venice Brown, Terrain Dandrige, Patreese Johnson and Renata Hill via POV

On Monday, June 22nd at 10pm, Out In The Night, a documentary film by blair dorosh-walther, following the New Jersey Four’s case from 2008 to 2013, will be broadcast on Logo and PBS simultaneously. This is the first time it will be aired on TV, and it kicks off PBS’s POV (Point of View) documentary season as well as Logo’s new documentary series, Logo Documentary Films. “This is the first time PBS has ever worked with another network in this way — to simultaneously air a documentary,” said Logo Public Relations and Media Affairs representative Rich Ferraro. “So we’re going to work, as both of these networks, to get this story out there.”

“It’s very rare for a film to be on two different stations, so we’re very excited about reaching a broader audience,” dorosh-walther said.

At 12AM on June 23rd, after the film’s broadcast premiere, it will be available to stream online.

The film, which premiered a year ago at the LA Film Festival and has since been screened over 90 times, has coincided with the Black Lives Matter movement and public outcry over the violence black people face daily across the U.S. Hill and dorosh-walther both spoke to the potential of the film to raise awareness of widespread violence and bias in the court system against black women, black queer people, black gender non-conforming people, and black youth. Hill said, “I want numerous people to be able to connect with the film. I know that our story is the story of so many others, and I want those people to know that they’re not alone and that they do have the right to fight back. The more we verbalize what’s happening to us, maybe the faster we get results. We have the right to be respected just as much as anybody else.”

She also spoke to the connections between her case and other black women who have been arrested and prosecuted for acting in self-defense. “CeCe McDonald’s case is not just CeCe McDonald’s case – that’s my case and so many others, like Marissa Alexander’s. And as we raise awareness about our own documentary, we are given the opportunity to raise awareness about the other situations going on around us.”

dorosh-walther spoke to the significance of the four’s decision to fight back and then plead not-guilty to the charges against them: “I really believe they were this pocket of resistance that night on the street, and again in the courtroom when they pled not guilty. They were facing 25 years, and that’s incredibly difficult thing to do, to plead not guilty. I think that they should be honored and admired for their strength and their courage and their resistance.”

Terrain Dandrige and Renata Hill via POV

Out in the Night is an hour long, and covers a lot of ground, from showing the impact the attack and the case had on the four women and their families, to describing the details of the attack from the women’s perspective. The perspective of the New Jersey Four was sorely lacking from mainstream media’s coverage of the incident. They were portrayed as a “gang” of “killer lesbians,” falsely associating the charges of “gang assault” with actual gang association, and encouraging speculation on their motives based on racist and homophobic stereotypes. Bill O’Reilly took the opportunity to spend several segments of his show claiming that gangs of lesbians were taking over the United States. Several media outlets also used the term “wolf pack” to describe the group of women, drawing on a racialized term generally associated with men to capitalize on racist and homophobic stereotypes, in order to demonize them for acting in self-defense.

dorosh-walther breaks down the mainstream media’s depiction of the case and builds up the narrative the New Jersey Four never got to tell. She walks the viewer through the case and the appeals process, explaining how problems and inaccuracies in the initial trials led to convictions that were ultimately overturned or retried with outcomes of lesser sentences.

The process of making the film started after dorosh-walther had been working on the case for two years as an activist. She was initially hesitant to take on the project because of her position as a white director, but when the appeals process started in 2008 and both media attention and fundraising hit a lull, she decided to visit with the women, their families and their lawyers to see if they were interested in being part of a film. Hill talked about what it was like to meet dorosh-walther, talk about the case on camera and tour with it after it was completed.

“When blair started to get to know us first, so we could get to feel comfortable, that made it easier going in… we formed a bond with one another. At the beginning, we just wanted to get our side of the story out there, so people could get a better understanding of what actually transpired that night, instead of just going off of how the media portrayed us to be.

Having to relive that moment numerous times, speaking about it – it was hard, but I knew at the end of the day it would be worth it because of the outcome. …once it was completed, being on the road and seeing that so many other people were on our side and wanted to listen, that we had the opportunity to reclaim our lives and be seen as human beings – it was amazing. I never saw it being where it is today.”

dorosh-walther interviews Johnson in prison via POV

Following the broadcast, there will continue to be screenings of the film at colleges and universities, and an outreach and engagement campaign is in development, aiming to utilize the film to support and sustain work that’s being done on issues related to the film. Hill hopes the film will reach the President. “I think this should be pushed to the White House,” she said. “I want Obama to watch this on his big screen TV. I want him to look at his sisters and his daughters, and think, what else can I do to save women’s lives and lives in the LGBT community?”

Hill described how the film connects the attack on the New Jersey Four to the widespread violence that continues against black Americans: “As we raise awareness about our own documentary, we are given the opportunity to raise awareness about the other situations going on around us, like Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Mike Brown,” she said. “It gives this documentary and myself so much more purpose to be able to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves.”

The white supremacist terror attack on the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston happened hours after I spoke with Hill and dorosh-walther. Out in the Night helps illustrate how, when we think about the murders in Charleston, we need to also be thinking about its wider context within a misogynistic white supremacist society that condones and permits violence against black people, and in particular black women.

dorosh-walther added in an email,

“My immediate response to the devastating attack on Emmanuel AME Church is the way in which the mainstream news is coddling and protecting Dylann Roof… #BlackLivesMatter is not just about caring that Black lives are lost to hate violence, it is the systemic racism that is infected in the mainstream news media and I think anyone not calling this a terrorist attack is helping to perpetuate a more dangerous environment. Just as I believe the articles that were written about the [New Jersey Four] helped created a more dangerous environment for queer youth of color and specifically Black lesbians.”

Out in the Night is a brilliant film that gives us the opportunity to hear from from Hill, from Johnson, from Dandridge and from Brown; and to be inspired by their resistance and survival in the face of violence and injustice.

WATCH THE FILM

Tune in to PBS or Logo at 10pm EST, TONIGHT June 22nd
Stream the film on PBS from June 23rd to July 23rd

Also remember that even if you don’t have cable, your family members, friends, or professors might. If you see them today or talk to them today, tell them this is on. It’s an opportunity for them to see and support queer media on Public Television.

Trans Women Prisoners Suffer Most From Failures To Stop Prison Rape

Feature image via Lambda Legal

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice failed Passion Star at every turn, according to her accounts in interviews with The New York Times and in a letter to Jezebel. It failed to protect her from gang abuse, numerous rapes, and other violent attacks. It failed to react effectively to the complaints she filed and requests she made to be placed in special housing for vulnerable inmates. It kept her in prison even after her ex-boyfriend, who played the lead role in the kidnapping they were both convicted of, was released.

Passion Star’s harrowing narrative of rape and abuse has quickly come to symbolize an overall culture of violence and sexual assault in prisons that disproportionately affects queer and trans inmates. Experiencing mental illness or distress also increases an inmate’s risk of assault. The New York Times breaks down the statistics, largely based on data from 2011-12:

Texas has by far the largest inmate population and an even higher number, proportionally, of prison assaults. Five of the most sexually violent prisons in the U.S. are in Texas, according to the Justice Department. And yet former Governor Rick Perry, and seemingly his successor Greg Abbott, have declined to formally comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act requirements designed to keep prisoners safer from sexual assault, even though the requirements have been available since 2003. Perry called the requirements cumbersome and expressed concern that they would endanger prison staff. State officials say their “goal is to be as compliant as possible with PREA standards without jeopardizing the safety and security of our institutions.” Lambda Legal has spearheaded a campaign to urge Abbott to comply with PREA, to which he has not responded.

Today is the deadline for states to confirm their compliance with PREA. There is no indication that Texas, or the five other states activists call “renegade states,”  Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana and Utah, have plans to do so. The opt-out penalty? A five percent reduction in corrections-related federal grants. Texas leaders have confirmed this will make no real dent in their corrections budget, which amounts to billions of dollars.

The obstinance of Texas and other states is alarming, and so is the slow progress of implementing PREA so far nationwide. Plans to audit all corrections facilities by August 2016 are substantially behind schedule — so far, only 335 of more than 8,000 facilities have received inspections.

President George W. Bush signed PREA into law in 2003 after decades of studies showing 5 to 20 percent of inmates experienced sexual assault. PREA itself conservatively estimated that 13 percent of inmates have been sexually assaulted while in prison. The law’s slow implementation means inmates continue to suffer — and those inmates disproportionally are trans and queer.

Many eyes are on Passion, but the urgency to stop prison rape has faltered in the 12 years since PREA passed, the Times notes. Regulations won’t do much if prisons and state governments don’t have cultures of taking sexual violence seriously. When so many assaults are at the hands of guards themselves, it’s hard to believe those same guards will commit to protecting inmates even when their worksites are technically compliant with PREA’s rules. In Texas, for example, 21 of 24 facilities examined by auditors do meet all PREA requirements, according to a state official, and the other three await the completion of the auditing process. And yet the data shows Texas inmates experience high rates of sexual assault, including in some of those audited facilities.

When Passion first arrived at Telford Prison Complex in 2002 at age 19, she identified as a gay man. She was almost immediately identified as a target by a gang leader, who forced her to perform sexual acts in exchange for “protection.” She told the Times:

“In the state of Texas, in the general population, there is a culture where gay men and transgender women in prison are basically preyed on by the stronger inmates. They have to be the property of a person who’s in a gang, and this person is the individual who speaks for them. So basically, they’re coerced into being sexually active to survive.”

Over time, she realized she was trans, and the violence continued and worsened, but coming out was vital for her. She told the Times:

“You know how penguins are? On land, if you look at a penguin when it walks around, it’s just an ungainly, clumsy creature. But in water, a penguin is one of the most graceful animals in the world. I didn’t feel like I was in my element until, at all types of personal risk to myself, I became Passion.”

Passion has not been able to pursue medical therapies related to her transition but hopes to eventually. The Texas penal system has been far from supportive of her transition and still refers to her as male and by her birth name in all official documents because she has not been medically identified as trans.

But no matter what, notes Lambda Legal attorney Jael Humphreys, “whether or not she was diagnosed as transgender has nothing to do with whether or not she deserves protection from sexual assault.”

Passion Star has spent more than 12 years in Texas prisons. Photo by Ruth Fremson of The New York Times

Passion first started filing formal complaints about sexual abuse in 2003. Over the next decade plus, she has spent time in multiple facilities and experienced the same abuse from inmates and guards and lack of help from officials in each one. She gained a reputation as a snitch, which only put her at higher risk. She was placed in solitary confinement on multiple occasions as a means of protecting her. Now, she’s back at Telford, this time in the program they call safekeeping, which partially separates inmates at high risk of harm from the general population. But that came only after months of fearing for her life on a daily basis and — perhaps not coincidentally — a few days after the Times called the state to ask for an interview with her.

When Passion learned she would be put in the safekeeping housing, she was “ecstatic,” she told Jezebel.

Really, I felt relief and felt that just maybe I’d now be allowed the opportunity to survive long enough to make it home to my family. Then, in another way, it felt crazy coming back to Telford Unit, where I made my 1st requests for protection. I can’t help but think about the violence I could’ve possibly avoided had my complaints been heeded then.

The state had previously rejected her requests to be placed in safekeeping, citing her disciplinary record — which she says she only had because she had to protect herself when the prisons would not do so. Passion, with the help of Lambda Legal, has filed a federal lawsuit against the state for failing to protect her despite her many pleas for help.

It may be that a successful, highly publicized lawsuit will light more of a fire under Texas than a 5 percent loss in federal funds to the Texas government. If nothing else, perhaps it will lead for some justice and some peace for a woman who may be locked up until 2022. Her story, like those of CeCe McDonald and Monica Jones, highlight the incredible challenges for black trans women in prison — especially in men’s prisons, where the majority are housed, as Mey wrote. Those challenges include sexual violence, lack of access to necessary medical treatments like hormone therapy, and a refusal to recognize their gender. Not even a full implementation of PREA can protect women like Passion from the inherent violence of U.S. prisons, which Maddie and Mey have written about before. The criminal justice system does not have structures in place to effectively protect black trans women, or any other vulnerable prisoner, from violence.

LGBTQ Students Need Representation in Textbooks — and a Whole Lot More

I recently heard CeCe McDonald speak, and the youngest person in the room stood to ask a question. This small human was probably nine or ten, and asked CeCe what other transgender women she looked up to. CeCe named Janet Mock and Marsha P. Johnson, among others, and the moment elicited a collective awwwww from the several hundred people in the room. I thought about how important it is for young humans to learn about the leaders in our multi-faceted struggle for justice.

On the 45th anniversary of Stonewall and the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, it’s worth interrogating how we learn and know our histories. For many of us, our time in school is foundational in how we see the world and ourselves. In school we have histories and literature delivered to us, and whether or not we saw ourselves in those histories or books impacts us. But along with the concrete material presented to us, we also inevitably absorb how we are treated by our teachers, peers and other school staff. School is a social experience. It’s where we learn where we fit — or don’t.

Stonewall! via TransAdvocate

There have been various calls in recent years for LGBTQ representation in our textbooks. A 2009 study by GLSEN suggested that including LGBTQ people and history in classrooms helps make schools safer places for LGBTQ kids. This type of curricular inclusion validates young LGBTQ people’s identities and promotes our history as important and significant to the current state of things. But just putting some events — Stonewall, the overturning of Prop 8, etc. — in our books is far from enough. To keep it so simple would make it too easy to write the history of LGBTQ struggle as on its home stretch toward a finish line of marriage equality and workplace nondiscrimination laws for all, when there is still so much left to be done on the front of mass incarceration, police brutality, homelessness, unemployment, poverty, discrimination and violence that queer and trans people face every day. In order to include a history that is both relevant and empowering for LGBQ and T populations, textbooks need to accurately represent our history and the struggles that remain. For example, effective and inclusive historical representations of Stonewall would talk about the role that trans women played in the riots, and would discuss how trans women were later pushed out of the Gay Liberation Front so the cis people in the organization could be more easily accepted by a mainstream American population.

That being said, it’s important to acknowledge that it’s not like American history curriculums are doing a wonderful and comprehensive analysis of other marginalized groups’ histories and has just unfortunately left out LGBTQ people. There are so many ways that social movements and histories of struggle have been poorly represented in American schools that teach a white-dominant, male-dominant, heteronormative and imperialist narrative of American history. If you took American history — and if you even got to the Civil Rights Movement after the long chronological slog through a detailed history of every war the U.S. ever fought — it’s likely you learned about Rosa Parks as a lady who wanted to rest her feet while taking the bus home from work, so she sat down in an open seat in a spot reserved for white people, was arrested, and then suddenly there was a yearlong bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. What you probably didn’t learn is that Parks was an activist who had been organizing to fight sexual violence against black women for many years prior to the riots, and that it was largely because of the community networks created by anti-sexual violence organizers that the bus boycotts could be so successful.

This nearly-forgotten history (which you can read about in Danielle McGuire’s very excellent book, At the Dark End of the Street) gives insight into the intersections between women’s struggle and the struggle for civil rights. It also challenges white-dominant narratives of feminism that have white women inventing the fight against sexual violence, and male-dominant narratives of the Civil Rights Movement that relegate women to insignificant roles.

via Great Black Heroes

The way the entire Civil Rights Movement is depicted in U.S. history books shows a tendency to package struggle into a neat narrative that allows the Civil Rights Movement to be depicted as a relic of the past, rather than one that continues to be relevant today, as the Supreme Court hands down decisions that would infringe mostly on the rights of women of color, and black and brown bodies continue to be criminalized and marginalized. History books don’t have to ask for a continuing interrogation of injustice in American society if they depoliticize the politics of past struggles. Another significant example of how struggle and violence are written out of mainstream American narrative is all the talk of “Manifest Destiny” in US history textbooks. Traditional lessons on Manifest Destiny mask its history of genocide and colonization of native peoples by portraying it as a harmless great America-expander.

If it sounds like these kinds of lessons would take a lot of time — they would. And we could talk about the shortcomings of American history textbooks probably forever, but another factor in limiting the kind of things kids learn about in school is the state of education in the US. We are not exactly at an easy moment in American education to be creating a more elaborative and critical curriculum. The push by corporate entities and administrators for education reform has been heavily opposed by teachers and students, but is, nonetheless, happening. These reforms, like the implementation of the national Common Core Standards, put increased emphasis on high stakes testing, both in measuring student achievement and teachers’ performance, which means more instructional time has been dedicated to test prep and test-taking, pretty much across the board.

Kathy Kremins, who has spent 33 years as a public high school educator, noted some of her concerns with Common Core: “[Common Core] maximizes ‘informational texts’ and minimizes poetry… ignores graphic works and YA literature; it strongly advises against creative analysis and activities.” And most teachers don’t have the 33 years’ experience Kremins has. Increased pressure and workloads on teachers as a result of the emphasis on test scores and other reforms imposed by administrators has led to poor working conditions for teachers and incredibly high teacher turnover, which means that teachers don’t have time to refine their skills and tailor their curriculum to address their students’ needs.

via Labor Notes

Public school teachers who have tried to include history and perspectives of historically marginalized groups, including LGBTQ perspectives, have been suppressed, despite all signs that indicated their positive impact on the grades and lives of their students. The Ethnic Studies programs in Tucson, Arizona were targeted by the city school board and then made illegal by state law; and more recently on the college level we saw South Carolina create their bizarre penalty system for universities who taught LGBTQ curricula.

Also, it doesn’t matter much what’s in the curriculum if students are being criminalized in the classroom. The growth of the school-to-prison pipeline has disproportionately targeted black and Latin@ LGBTQ students. Validation or safety that could be nurtured by the inclusion of LGBTQ narratives in a curriculum can’t cancel out the negative impact of fear and antagonism created by a heavily policed environment on a student’s ability to learn and thrive.

via the Center for American Progress

We can hope for a world where the young people who don’t get to talk to CeCe McDonald in person will learn her name, and the names of other people who inspired her and other people who have struggled for justice, but ultimately a lot more needs to happen across the entire educational system for ALL kids to have safe, inclusive and empowering experiences in school. The impact of high-stakes testing, the school-to-prison pipeline, pressure on teachers and other shifts in the educational system impact our community and youth in ways that we will continue to feel far into the future.

Laverne Cox Returns to “Katie”, Shows How to Do a “Teachable Moment” Right

Today Orange is the New Black star and transgender activist Laverne Cox returned to Katie, the daytime talk show hosted by Katie Couric, for the first time since her infamous January appearance where she and transgender model and activist Carmen Carrera had to put up with a barrage of questions about what surgeries they had had and what their genitals were like. Cox and Carrera were able to turn the conversation around and the whole thing turned into a lesson on how to not interview trans women. This time, Couric had already been through a teachable moment about how to talk to trans women, but as we’ve seen before, not everyone learns their lesson.

From Laverne Cox’s last appearance on Katie

I went into today’s episode hoping that Couric had listened to Carrera and Cox and learned her lesson, but my hopes weren’t very high based on how others have done. Both Cox and Carrera brought to light a really great conversation about how to respect trans people and treat them like human beings. It seemed like some good actually did come out if it as we had a real talk about what not to say and many news channels and websites did seem to alter the way they do things (although Wendy Williams didn’t quite get the memo and asked Cox a few uncomfortable questions like, “You’ve got breast implants?”). Plus, Cox got to talk about the violence and absurdly high prison rates that trans women of color face on a daily basis.

It takes a woman of infinite grace and patience to constantly be turning problematic and even offensive appearances into positive things. Cox’s Time cover story definitely has its problems but she is using it to make a difference. Even when people insist on asking her inappropriate questions during interviews, she turns it around and makes something good out of it. Not only is Cox a brilliant actress, able to create some of the funniest, saddest and most touching moments from each season of Orange is the New Black, but she’s also a brilliant speaker and activist, able to be calm and understanding when she’s asked invasive and offensive questions. Now, I’m not saying that she should have to be respectful or put up with these questions — Janet Mock’s tweets after being disrespected by Piers Morgan were some of my favorite things ever. I’m just impressed with the ease that she seems to do it.

The conversation this time started with Couric sending some deserved praise Cox’s way. She celebrated Cox’s work on Orange is the New Black and talked about her recent Time cover. Cox said that being on the cover of Time brought her to tears and that she hopes the cover, like her character on Orange is the New Black will inspire trans people everywhere and help them see new possibilities for their lives.

Then Couric moved on to what a lot of us were waiting for. She told Cox, the “last time you were here, I got a lot of flack because I asked about the physical process” of being trans. She then admitted that the “flack” was appropriate, and she now understands that it’s troubling for trans people to hear those kinds of questions, because too often it’s the focus of all conversations they have with cis people and that for many trans people, the physical aspect isn’t really that big a deal. She wanted to show that you can learn to do better and to allow Cox to highlight the trans issues that are actually important. Cox said that she appreciates Couric’s “willingness to learn out in public,” that “we have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and not always right” in public. Couric agreed and said that she wants to use her last show with Cox as a teachable moment only for herself, but also for others. Then Couric really stepped up and instead of asking inappropriate questions, talked almost exclusively about important trans issues.

Cox had a lot more to smile about this time.

After spending some time talking about Cox’s life and her journey towards self-acceptance, they announced that Cox would be coming back after the break to talk about CeCe McDonald. You heard that right. On ABC during a show that often gets millions of viewers, they were dedicating an entire segment to a trans woman of color talking about CeCe McDonald, a black trans woman who defended herself from racist and transmisogynistic attackers, was sent to prison for it, and now is an trans rights and prison abolition activist. They first showed a clip of footage from the upcoming documentary Free CeCe (which Cox said they hope to release at the end of 2015) and then had a real discussion about the harassment and violence that trans women (and especially black trans women and other trans women of color) face all the time. Cox hammered the point home by saying, “Walking down the street is a contested act for trans people” and “I don’t think anyone’s lives should be in danger because of who they are.”

Chase Strangio, Tiq Milan and Laverne Cox

Then, to my very pleasant surprise, Couric announced that they would be back with Cox to talk even more about some important trans issues. When they did, they were joined by Tiq Milan, the GLAAD Senior Media Strategist and Chase Strangio, a lawyer with the ACLU, both trans men. Couric then basically served up a bunch of topics for them to talk about, with her only stepping in to move on to the next one. Literally half of the show was spent talking about trans issues, and I don’t think I heard a single question that I rolled my eyes at. This was the kind of interview I love to see.

Cox was able to talk about the intersectionality that surrounds violence against trans women — she said that the reason trans women are so often the targets of violence isn’t just that people are uncomfortable with the way they challenge ideas about gender and sex, but also because of racism, misogyny and classism. Instead of focusing on surface-level things like last time, this time she dove headfirst into talking about everything from CeCe McDonald, to homelessness, to transgender healthcare to Jane Doe, the trans youth who was thrown in jail even though she committed no crime.

Cox, Milan and Strangio were able to make so many great points about the issues trans people face, where those issues come from and some ways we can try to change things. Towards the end of the episode, Cox talked about her hopes for the future. She said that we need to have gender self-determination for all people, and that we need to make sure that we’re not “stigmatizing, objectifying, sensationalizing or criminalizing” anyone for taking control of their own gender.

A part of me thought about making this article just be a list of Laverne Cox quotes from this interview because she says that many brilliant things. Where Cox was able to turn the conversation around and get in some great talking points last time, this time she was given free rein to talk about important issues for a full half hour. While the last episode of Katie featuring Cox was an example of what not to do, I feel like this one was an example in what to do. Couric let Cox, Milan and Strangio talk about important issues and say as much as they wanted to say, she didn’t ask them invasive or insensitive questions, she admitted that in the past she made mistakes and that she’s trying to learn from them and perhaps most importantly, Katie Couric listened to trans people and didn’t make assumptions. For any other TV host looking to reinvite a trans guest they’ve disrespected in the past: this is how you learn and grow from a teachable moment.

Cecily McMillan’s Conviction Provides Helpful Primer on How the Criminal Justice System Is Totally F*cked

Cecily McMillan is an activist involved in the Occupy movement, but that probably isn’t how you’ve heard of her. More likely you’re familiar with her name because today she was found guilty of assaulting a police officer. The NYPD claims that McMillan intentionally elbowed Officer Grantley Bovell in the face on St. Patrick’s Day 2012. McMillan and her defense claim that McMillan elbowed someone behind her without knowing who they were in an attempt to stop them from groping her breast. It appears that the jury eventually came to believe the NYPD’s narrative.

McMillan’s conviction occurs against a complex backdrop of factors: a criminal justice system that has consistently proven itself to be flawed in its considerations of women defending themselves from men (just ask CeCe McDonald and Marissa Alexander); a type of police brutality that has been particular to the Occupy protest in some ways but certainly did not begin with it; the persistent looming specter of rape culture. The deeply embedded cultural narratives that make McMillan’s shocking conviction possible are complicated, and they’re strong enough that to many, her conviction isn’t really shocking at all. McMillan had photographic proof of bruising on her breast, and her history as an activist who specifically promotes nonviolent tactics makes her unlikely to assault a police officer. None of that mattered, though. Much about this case is confusing, but one thing is clear: The stories that our culture tells itself about violence, justice and women were ultimately more convincing to the jury than the actual evidence.

The history of the NYPD’s violence against civilians is a long one, and McMillan’s trial is only one recent data point. The longstanding “Stop and Frisk” policy is a good primer on why McMillan faced an uphill battle: The legal system has been supportive of police’s right to invasively access civilian’s bodies for quite some time and hasn’t required any real rationale for doing so. Occupy Wall Street brought the issue of police brutality into the national news; while black and brown people in NYC had long experienced violence at the hands of the police, Occupy provided photos and video of violence committed against unarmed young white people, which provoked much more mainstream outrage. An independent investigation by four law clinics found that “the NYPD abused Occupy Wall Street protesters and violated their rights on numerous occasions,” and explained their findings in a report called “Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street.” Assistant district attorney Erin Choi, who prosecuted McMillan in court, told the jury that McMillan’s account of events with Bovell was “so utterly ridiculous and unbelievable that she might as well have said that aliens came down that night and assaulted her.” Given the long history of brutality and violation by the NYPD, and given the violence experienced during Occupy — “Supressing Protest” notes a number of specific incidents ranging from “judo-flipping” people with cameras out to throwing protestors into the air to choke-slamming protestors into cars — Choi’s argument seems at best naive and at worst an attempt to gaslight McMillan and the public into believing that the evidence of police brutality simply doesn’t exist.

Even more disturbing than that one outrageous comment by Choi were the parameters for what evidence was presented to the jury at all. Molly Knefel at the Guardian points out that the jury was specifically denied critical contextual information, and testimony of NYPD officers was privileged over physical evidence of the incident:

…the jury didn’t hear anything about the police violence that took place in Zuccotti Park that night. They didn’t hear about what happened there on November 15, 2011, when the park was first cleared. The violence experienced by Occupy protesters throughout its entirety was excluded from the courtroom. …Judge Ronald Zweibel consistently ruled that any larger context of what was happening around McMillan at the time of the arrest (let alone Bovell’s own history of violence) was irrelevant to the scope of the trial. …Despite photographs of her bruised body, including her right breast, the prosecution cast doubt upon McMillan’s allegations of being injured by the police – all while Officer Bovell repeatedly identified the wrong eye when testifying as to how McMillan injured him.

Although it’s any attorney’s job to try to emphasize the evidence that supports their client’s story and detract from the evidence that doesn’t, what happened in the courtroom during McMillan’s trial is a microcosmic representation of a persistent social reality: the ways in which cultural patterns of violence, especially against marginalized people, are made invisible and instead presented as isolated interpersonal events. In this way, campus sexual assault is downgraded from a national epidemic to an unfortunate misunderstanding between college kids. Violence against trans women is figured as a single transphobic individual, not a widespread and deadly problem. By removing the larger context of McMillan’s assault from the courtroom — like, for instance, the fact that Bovell has a history of violence and misconduct with the NYPD — the prosecution effectively denies that McMillan’s assault is part of a systemic problem and denies jurors the opportunity to come to that conclusion.

McMillan’s conviction is about more than just denying the existence of systemic violence, however — it’s about the legal phenomenon of punishing the people who suffer it and specifically of punishing women. In recent years, we’ve seen women who have defended themselves against violence in some way punished by the courts while their attackers receive little or no punishment. CeCe McDonald was the victim of an enraged attacker, but she ended up behind bars, not any of her attackers. Famously, under the same law which did not convict George Zimmerman for the death of Trayvon Martin, Marissa Alexander was sent to prison for firing a shot that hurt no one in an attempt to scare away her abusive partner. McMillan’s conviction fits with a cultural narrative that insists the violence that’s perpetrated against women isn’t a problem, but a woman who defends herself from it is. Of course, this concept also ties in neatly with the narratives perpetuated by rape culture: specifically, that it’s much more likely for a woman to lie about being assaulted than it is that her assault was real. Par for the course, Choi’s comments in court read like a page out of Victim-Blaming for Dummies. From Anna Merlan at the Village Voice:

Choi called McMillan’s claim that Bovell had grabbed her “absolutely offensive” and “physically impossible,” and said it was “absurd how nonsensical that story is.” If McMillan was truly grabbed, Choi said, the young woman would have reported it right away. She pointed out that she spoke to a social worker and a psychiatrist in the hospital after she was arrested, and didn’t mention the incident to either of them.

In McMillan’s trial, we have the opportunity to see not just what misogyny, victim-blaming and apologism look like in action; we get to see how they prop up larger systems of oppression and violence. In her argument, Choi is relying upon a belief that she trusts the jury to already have, or at least be familiar with: “Real” survivors of sexual assault divulge all the details about it immediately to the proper authorities and take all possible opportunities to pursue legal action. If they don’t, it means they’re lying. This idea, of course, ignores key facts, like the fact that McMillan’s assault was committed by one of the “proper authorities” and that McMillan had just seen more than enough police violence go unchecked to know that reporting would likely be futile. The useful myth of the Lying Woman allowed Choi to effectively direct attention away from the independently proven phenomenon of rampant police violence, and back to the level of the individual. When it’s employed deftly, this kind of invocation of rape culture’s ideology can totally obscure any awareness of systemic oppression that a person might have been drawing close to.

One important thing to note is that Cecily McMillan is white-appearing (she’s multiracial), something which has likely radically affected how her story has turned out. Although McMillan’s assault is appalling and inexcusable — as is the court’s ignoring it and convicting her of assault — it’s also something that happens much, much more often to women of color and doesn’t generally receive the outcry that McMillan’s story has. It would be a mistake to look at McMillan’s story as an isolated incident or even just an incident in the context of Occupy and its attendant police brutality; it’s important to remember that this has been happening for long before Occupy and that it has mostly happened to people of color. Even if we couldn’t stop McMillan’s conviction, we can use the visibility from it to support the people of color most often targeted by police violence. We can refuse to bend to the pressure to put on blinders and instead turn floodlights on the whole system.

Tourmaline, CeCe McDonald and Dean Spade Sit Down to Talk Prison Abolition

Author’s Note from Mey: Tourmaline and CeCe McDonald introduced me to concept of prison abolition, and I am forever changed for having known them. Just like the rest of the LGBTQ+ community, I wouldn’t be who I am today without the work, help, and love of Black trans women. We must dismantle the police state and prison industrial complex and invest in our communities. Black lives matter and Black trans lives matter and we all have to do the hard work to prove that we mean that.

On April 21, Tourmaline, CeCe McDonald, and Dean Spade will be at Barnard College for an event called “I Use My Love to Guide Me”: Surviving and Thriving in the Face of Impossible Situations. It will take place at 7:30 pm at The Auditorium at the New School and admission is free. This event is a part of the No One is Disposable series, where Tourmaline has conversations for the Barnard Center for Research on Women about trans activism and prison abolition.

McDonald, who was recently incarcerated, sits down with Tourmaline and Spade, two prison abolition activists, for a conversation about the prison-industrial complex and community-based solutions to the violence it brings. They discuss McDonald’s “own experiences surviving trauma and impossible situations, and the importance of collective organizing for people facing systems of violence.”

In order to get the public prepared for the event, Tourmaline, McDonald and Spade have started releasing a series of short videos showing a conversation between the three about McDonald’s experiences with trauma, survival in impossible situations and what people can do to bring about change. At the event they’ll show more excerpts from this conversation and expand on the ideas brought up in it.

Back in 2011, McDonald and her friends were attacked by a group of white assailants who were shouting racist and transmisogynistic slurs at them. McDonald stabbed one of them in self defense and was arrested and sentenced to 41 months in a men’s prison. After serving 19 months, she was released and has since been sharing her experience and survival. During the time leading up to the trial, her time in prison and since, McDonald has been advocating for the rights of trans women, women of color and all people who have to face the impossible situation of being imprisoned. As she says, “Prisons aren’t safe for anyone, and that’s the key issue.”

Apart from being an activist and artist, Tourmaline is the membership director at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and an activist fellow at the BCRW. She also has a blog where she writes about her projects. Spade is the founder of the SRLP and an associate professor at Seattle University School of Law. He is the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of the Law.

In the first video, McDonald touches on what it’s like to be placed in “impossible situations” and how to survive them. She stresses the importance of love in overcoming these impossible situations and healing.

Here, they talk about how although police and prisons are often portrayed as being the safekeepers of society, they don’t in fact keep us safe at all. In order to help our communities, we need to work together and build each other up.

McDonald is an incredibly inspiring and resilient woman. When she gets together with Spade and Tourmaline, the conversation is sure to be thought-provoking, insightful and challenging. The event page has a way for you to ask questions for the three of them to answer and information on how to register to attend. There are also still two more videos that will be posted there in the weeks leading up to the event.

5 Things to Know About Prison Abolition and the Prison Industrial Complex

Maybe you’ve heard, and maybe you haven’t, but I’m going to say it again because it’s still true: the criminal justice system in the United States is a fucked up institution that is every kind of -ist you can think of, and feeds off of the most marginalized bodies of our society in order for companies to maximize profits. It’s often called the prison industrial complex (PIC), a term coined by the activist group Critical Resistance.

The problems with the criminal justice system have been in the media more than usual in the past year. This is in part because of Orange is the New Black bringing the lives of fictional incarcerated women to our computer screens. It is also because of the outcry over the blatantly unjust treatment of CeCe McDonald, who served 19 months in prison after defending herself against a racist, sexist and transphobic attack, and the trial of Marissa Alexander, who is clearly being racially targeted by Florida Attorney Angela Corey, and could face sixty years in prison for firing a warning shot that hurt nobody into her ceiling while being threatened by her abusive husband.

The PIC is a massive system, and is defined by Critical Resistance:

“Through its reach and impact, the PIC helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the PIC, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant. This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for “tough on crime” politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US.”

Because of the PIC, the US prison system currently houses 25% of the world’s prison population, when we only make up 5% of the general population.

via Prison Culture

The PIC is especially dangerous for queer and trans* people. Outside prisons, queer and trans* people are vulnerable to being targeted by law enforcement for gender identity and presentation. In prisons, queer and trans* people, and in particular trans women, face high rates of violence, sexual assault and harassment, especially from prison staff.

Learning about the many tentacles of the PIC has been a huge part of my coming into radical politics. There is inspiring and challenging work happening amongst communities of prison abolitionists to educate people about the PIC, to challenge the laws that keep it in place, and to make people’s current lives inside the system more dignified and humane.

Here are five important things I’ve learned about the PIC and prison abolition.

via colorlines

1. Prison is bad for everyone

Since CeCe McDonald’s release from prison in January, she has been an outspoken advocate against the prison system, giving interviews and meeting with abolitionist groups. In an interview with the Socialist Worker she said,

“I JUST feel like no matter what, prisons are bad for everybody. They aren’t just bad for trans people — they’re bad for all people. It wouldn’t be fair for me to make it seem like it was so hard for me, just as a trans woman, because I’ve been around a lot of people who don’t deserve to be in prison at all. Prison is hard for everybody. We’ve all got our personal issues and have to do what we need to do to survive in there and be strong.

“It’s not the right approach for people to sensationalize this story and say: You were a trans woman in a men’s prison. Because at the end of the day, all prisons are bad for all people — trans, cis, gay, straight, Black, white, Asian, brown, purple, polka-dotted, striped, zebra, alien or whatever.”

2. The PIC influences how we think about who is and is not dangerous.

If we are in the mindset of understanding that prisons are bad for all people, we can start to question the idea that there are some people who belong in prisons more than others. Dean Spade and Reina Gossett recently had an online discussion about prison abolition and addressed the question, “What about the dangerous people?”

Spade and Gossett encourage us to think more broadly about who is being held accountable for the violent acts they commit. The media and the state do a really good job of teaching us that the only way to stop a person who is violent is to lock them away. But as Gossett points out, the idea of people being either guilty or innocent is flawed:

“The one thing I go back to is Ruth Gilmore, who’s a professor at CUNY and one of the founders of Critical Resistance talks about, really importantly, no one is innocent. There’s not a violent person and a non-violent person. All of us together are doing things that are hurting other people. …there’s not a dichotomy of innocent people and guilty people. The logic of the state, of the prison system, demands that idea… so that all sorts of structures and all sorts of processes – like policing, prisons, imprisonment, deportation – can be justified. …I think there’s a really long history going back to slavery where the state was really dependent on this logic that “free black people” are incredibly dangerous …that poor people wandering are incredibly dangerous …so I would say that no one is innocent, people are consistently harming each other all the time. There are some people who are held accountable by the state for doing that kind of harm, and there are some people who will never be held accountable by the state… people who are running Blackwater, people who are running the military, or Obama…”

3. The PIC is in our Schools.

The School-to-Prison pipeline, which refers to the increased presence of police officers in schools, who are increasingly deferred to for disciplinary matters, makes schools more dangerous for queer and trans* youth, especially queer and trans* youth of color. As a result, more students are ending up in juvenile detention, and are more likely to be incarcerated as adults.

via the Center for American Progress

Having criminal interventions in schools has also led to cases like Jewlyes Gutierrez’s. Jewlyes was sixteen and assaulted by three cisgender girls who regularly harassed her. Jewlyes was charged with battery for defending herself, while her attackers saw no consequences. Cases like hers show us how trans* and queer youth can are unsafe within school systems, at the hands of their peers and adults.

4. Organizations are working to resist the dehumanization of incarcerated people by building community that transgresses prison walls.

Prison abolitionists are working to make life better for people in prison by building community across the walls.

Organizations like Black and Pink have pen pal programs for queer and trans* people between incarcerated people and people who aren’t incarcerated to build community and systems of support for people in and outside the system that look to abolish it.

via Shutterstock

Black and Pink writes,

“Our goal is liberation. We have a radical view of the fight for justice: We are feminist. We are anti-racist. We want queer liberation. And we are against capitalism. Prisons are part of the system that oppresses and divides us. By building a movement and taking action against this system of violence, we will create the world we dream of. We also celebrate the beauty of what exists now: Our love for each other. The strength of our planet. Our incredible resiliency. All of the power we have to continue existing. While dreaming and struggling for a better world, we commit to living in the present.”

5. People are showing up to protest mass incarceration

From the Free Marissa Now campaign to the Free CeCe Documentary to collectives working on transformative justice responses to violence, organizers across the country are standing up to fight the PIC.

Monica Jones, a black trans woman, is currently on trial for “manifestation of prostitution,” which she was arrested for while protesting the criminalization of sex workers through Project ROSE. She is fighting her case and working with Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) of Phoenix to bring a report to the UN Human Rights Commission on the treatment of sex workers in the US criminal justice system.

via SWOP Phoenix

Jones spoke out on A Kiss for Gabriela in anticipation of her trial, which has been postponed until April 11, about the urgency of the work to fight the criminal justice system:

“…police arrested more than 40 people in Phoenix for prostitution last night. I don’t have all the details yet but these ongoing arrests show that we have so much more to do to end the criminalization and incarceration of people due to the policing of victimless crimes. I won’t give up until all of this is ended.”

Also.Also.Also: Laverne Cox Needs Our Help and Other Stories We Missed This Week

Hello, Seahawks! I’m calling you that because you’re winners or something. I don’t really get how football works, but let’s take a peek at the stories we missed this week while I was trying to figure it out. (I didn’t.)

Pee Wherever The Fuck You Want, Y’all

Maine: The Bathroom Equality State.

The Maine Supreme Court has delivered a significant victory for transgender students. In its interpretation of the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA), the Court ruled that trans students have the right to use the bathroom with which they identify and cannot be forced to use a separate restroom.

The case involved a fifth grade student who had already been fully identifying as a girl for several years and was using the girls’ restroom at Regional School Unit 26. Another student’s guardian objected, and a media firestorm prompted the school to begin forcing her to use a solitary staff unisex restroom. Eventually, the student’s family had to remove her from the school and move to another part of the state so that she could go to school safely.

Though the decision was not unanimous because of one justice’s concerns about how the law was written, the court did unanimously agree that the student deserved equal access to the girls’ restroom.

Don’t F*ck With Panti

Don’t ever tell a drag queen that you know homophobia better than they do.

A video by Rory O’Neill – also known as drag queen Panti – on homophobia in Irish society has gone viral, with more than 100,000 views in less than two days… In the video, Panti fights back over the use of the word ‘homophobia’ which he says has been appropriated by other groups since The Saturday Night Show interview.

“For the last three weeks, I have been lectured to by heterosexual people about what homophobia is and who is allowed to identify it,” he told the audience. “People who have never experienced homophobia in their lives… have told me that unless I am being thrown into prison or herded onto a cattle truck then it is not homophobia – and that feels oppressive.”

Vanity Fair’s Best Cover Yet

Vanity Fair’s 20th annual Hollywood Issue has a three-panel gatefold cover, and unlike every other year in their history, a black person is on the actual cover of the issue this year rather than folded inside the magazine for second glimpses. OUT OF THE FOLD AND INTO THE STREETS, Y’ALL.

Jerry Seinfeld is The Least Funny or Aware Person on Earth

Jerry Seinfeld, the man who thinks his own life is funnier than anyone else’s, just doesn’t get why comedy needs to be diverse. I mean, don’t we all relate to him and his weird-ass life? ISN’T IT ENOUGH THAT HE GAVE US A SHITTY SITCOM LIKE TWENTY YEARS AGO?

In a recent sit-down with  BuzzFeed Brews with CBS This Morning, Seinfeld said it is “anti-comedy” to approach the genre like it’s “the census.” Seinfeld was asked why he featured so many white men in his web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and seemed to become irritated at the question.

“It really pisses me off,” he said. “People think [comedy] is the census or something, it’s gotta represent the actual pie chart of America. Who cares?”

 ”Funny is the world that I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested,” he said. “I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that.”

It Ain’t Easy Being Queer Anywhere

+ But it might be a little better in Latin America:

Latin America’s gay rights revolution has highlighted the ingenuity of gay activists and the leadership of politicians like Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. In July 2010, she became a gay rights heroine when she signed Latin America’s first same-sex marriage law, over vigorous opposition from the archbishop of Buenos Aires (today Pope Francis). But the celebration of activists and politicians has overlooked another hero in this campaign: the region’s high courts. Their embrace of gay rights has been nothing short of audacious, especially in contrast to recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court.

+ In Russia, 77% of LGBTQ people don’t trust the police – and the queer community is being overwhelmed by violence that no cop seems to care about. But Happy Olympics!

+ For queer folks coming to seek asylum from South Africa in America, safety isn’t always that easy to come by.

For The Marriage Crowd

+ Next up in the #MarriageEqualityWars: Wisconsin.

+ Gigi Chao doesn’t wanna marry a man – and since her dad doesn’t get it, she appealed to him in public. (He has since rescinded his dowry offer.)

A week after Hong Kong tycoon Cecil Chao doubled his 2012 offer of $64 million to any man who could marry his gay daughter, Gigi Chao has publicly rebuked him and urged her dad to accept her partner of nine years.

“There are plenty of good men, they are just not for me,” she wrote in an open letter published by two Hong Kong newspapers on Wednesday. “It would mean the world to me if you could just not be so terrified of [girlfriend Sean Eav], and treat her like a normal, dignified human being.”

+ DOMA being struck down didn’t just change one moment in history; it continues to change our history.

+ Blue Cross Blue Shield is really sorry to all the North Carolina homos who waited too long for family coverage health insurance.

+ In Oregon, gay marriage is one thing. But helping make gay weddings awesome? That’s another.

Free CeCe: The Documentary You Could Make Into A Thing

Just f*cking do it.

I began researching this story with Laverne Cox when I was the Series Producer of the public television show, In The Life. When In The Life ended, in December 2012, this project stayed with me. It seems each month there is a new headline of a bias crime against a transgender woman of color. I became committed to producing and directing this powerful, feature-length film that confronts transgender bias crime with both rigor and humanity. I wanted to hear the voices of victims who were all too often silenced by brutality; I wanted to produce a useful film that sensitizes the audience and amplifies the authentic voices and lives of trans people.

Acabeymia

Rutgers is offering a class on Beyonce. I have no words for this situation as it leaves me blindingly optimistic for our world.

VIDEO: Laverne Cox Speaks On The Revolutionary Act Of Loving Trans Women At Creating Change 2014

Please excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor because I am just plowed over by the brilliance that was Laverne Cox giving the keynote address at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s 26th National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change.

Creating Change is happening right at this very moment! Maybe you’re there yourself. It is a big, queer, corporate conference sponsored by everything, from lube to oats to airplanes and the AARP. (The cool part about its bigness is that a bunch of radical queer people can come together and use all that super corporate money for radical things!) This year, 4,000 people from across the United States are gathered in Houston, Texas for the five-day festival of queer networking and “networking.” The themes of the 2014 conference are HIV/AIDS in communities of color, trans* rights, and the intersections of the gay rights movements with healthcare and immigration.

Cox’s presence at Creating Change is clearly setting the tone for the conference and for the direction of the movement. Samantha, a grad student at Emory University attending Creating Change, spoke to that: “I am at CC because Laverne Cox is here! It’s a banner year for transgender activism and …I’m thrilled that trans women of color are at the center of this conference instead of the periphery.”

via National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce

There’s a lot on the docket for Creating Change. Each day is packed with shorter workshops and daylong “institutes” to go more in-depth on issues ranging from economic justice to bi/pan/fluid organizing. Flipping through their 160-page catalogue, these would be my highlights:

• Crisis of Success: LGBTQ Momentum, Racial Regression and Our Collective Challenge by Rebecca Suldan, Rinku Sen, Tarson Luis Ramos and Caitlin Breedlove
• How Arizona “Flushed” Anti-Trans Legislation by C. Michael Woodward and Abigail (Abby) Jensen
• From Stonewall to Stop and Frisk: Police Violence, Government Misconduct, and the Criminalization of LGBTQ Communities by National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, Lambda Legal, Streetwise and Safe and BreakOUT!
• 69 Ways to Use Saran Wrap: Queering Your Campus Safe Sex Education by Zaneta Rago
• The Secret to Your Story is Vulnerability by Gabriel Garcia-Vera and Nicolas Rolda

If you’re there at Creating Change, I’m jealous. But thanks to technology, I tuned into the livestream of the opening plenary that kicked off the conference. After an hour of PSAs and introductions, Houston Mayor Annise Parker spoke, Kate Clinton told some bad jokes, and then finally, finally, Laverne Cox came on stage to give her keynote address.

The crowd exploded when Cox took the stage. She opened by speaking directly to what that felt like: “I have to say that a black transgender woman from a working class background raised by a single mother — that’s me — getting all this love tonight, this feels like the change I need to see more of in this country.” She used the stage to highlight the work of trans women activists across the United States, naming the power of love and resilience in resisting the violence that is constantly perpetrated against trans women, specifically trans women of color.

Laverne Cox with activists Janet Mock, Reina Gossett, Miss Major and Kokumo via SRLP

Cox pointed to trans activists Silvia Rivera, Miss Major, Monica Roberts, Kylar Broadus and Candis Cayne for the work they’ve done that paved the way for her. Cox named organizations serving trans* people like the Chicago House’s TransLife Project and Casa Ruby in Washington, DC, specifically noting their need for more money to do the work that they do.

“Trans women supporting and loving each other is a revolutionary act.”

She looked to CeCe McDonald. CeCe’s story shows the violence perpetrated against trans women of color by the criminal justice system. “That shit is fucked up,” Cox said, pulling no punches as she detailed the violent reality of the world that trans women of color have to live in.

Cox named the necessity of love in the struggle for justice for trans women of color, pointing again to CeCe, the Transgender Youth Support Network in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the work of grassroots activists there that did amazing work with few resources to make sure CeCe did not get lost in the criminal justice system.

“The way in which CeCe advocated for herself and the way in which her support committee advocated for her is a template for the way we do activism all over this country. It started with CeCe and it started with her having this profound sense of love for herself, that everyone around her felt. Everybody I talked to who has come in contact with CeCe talks about this woman who inspired them and who had so much hope and propelled them to have hope to and to fight on her behalf. Love for a black trans woman freed her and kept her safe on the inside. …I believe when we love someone, we respect them and we listen to them, and we feel like their voice matters… We let them dictate the terms of who they are and what their story is.”

CeCe McDonald and Laverne Cox via GLAAD

What was truly incredible about watching Cox speak is that she didn’t just talk about the revolution — she made her speech a revolutionary act in itself. Even a year ago, it seemed unlikely that a black trans woman could have that kind of platform, speaking to the public of the LGBTQ community as an actor who already has recognition in the mainstream community at-large. Cox named how much has changed, how much trans women have been at the center of that change, and also how much still needs to be done. “Trans women supporting and loving each other is a revolutionary act,” she said. Referring to the responses to her and Carmen Carrera’s interview with Katie Couric, she said, “We are changing the conversation right now.” And you know she was including Mey’s response.

Throughout her speech, Cox was interrupted by applause over thirty times. “It really is a big deal to have this kind of support,” she said. She talked about having lived most of her life being chased by people who were trying to beat her up, and struggling with self-hatred.

“I’ve always been like, ‘Love myself? How the heck am I supposed to do that?’ …I believe, now, I’m starting to understand a little bit of what it means. I don’t internalize all the negative things and negative stereotypes that people have of trans women of color. I don’t do that number on myself anymore… I am starting to believe that in the deepest core of myself that I am beautiful, I am smart, I am amazing.”

Cox brought a clear call to action for the audience at Creating Change: support trans women, and make their voices the ones which define the struggle. She used her platform to breathe life into the room and the movement, speaking to the realities of the lives trans women of color live today, reminding all queer people that we cannot be complacent, that there is always more work to be done in the struggle for justice for trans* people, and that that work must be done from a place of love.

Take some time to listen to Cox’s speech for yourself. You can tune into other Creating Change plenaries online at the Gay and Lesbian Task Force Livestream.

feature image via National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change facebook

Also.Also.Also: CeCe McDonald, Beyoncé, and Laura Jane Grace Raise Their Middle Fingers to the Man and Other Stories We Missed This Week

Hello, Jheri Curls! How are you feeling today? I’m feeling like TAKING LIFE BY THE HORNS. But first, the stories we missed this week.

The Myth of Beyonce’s Imperfections

The newly released Shriver Report features writing from a ton of amazing women – Beyoncé among them – focused on the economic impacts of gender inequality. Queen Bey’s essay slammed “the myth of gender equality.”

Humanity requires both men and women, and we are equally important and need one another. So why are we viewed as less than equal? These old attitudes are drilled into us from the very beginning. We have to teach our boys the rules of equality and respect, so that as they grow up, gender equality becomes a natural way of life. And we have to teach our girls that they can reach as high as humanly possible.

We have a lot of work to do, but we can get there if we work together.

Bow down, bitches.

F*ck The Man

+ Trans 16-year-old Jewelyes Gutierrez is facing criminal charges after defending herself from bullies.

+ Marissa Alexander will remain free on bond – but with tightened restrictions.

+ CeCe McDonald got free and jammed out to Queen Bey. With Laverne Cox. NBD.

On @Beyonce‘s new album not full on rachet but #CoutureRatchet. @Free_CeCe said post that. #posted. Jamming to the visual album with CeCe

— Laverne Cox (@Lavernecox) January 13, 2014

You Should Give

+ Easy Abby wants to do it with you. Erm, they want to do it together. This thing. This crazy thing called a webseries! ONLY THEY WANNA PUT IT ON THE TEEVEE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32UH5b4-iS8

+ THE FOXY MERKINS. Sounds sexy.

The Good, The Bad, The Downright Depressing

+ Who Decides? According to NARAL, if you’re in America, it’s definitely not you.

The anti-choice War on Women did not slow down in 2013. You can be sure it will only ramp up further in 2014 as the mid-term elections approach. As opponents of a woman’s right to choose continue to chip away at our freedoms piece by piece, we’ll be there to fight them every step of the way and reveal the shadowy organizations supporting them. But we’ll work just as hard to expand our freedoms, so that every woman has not just the right, but the opportunity to make whatever choice is right for her.

+ Gay activists may not get their rainbow flags and fly them, too, in the Little Saigon Tet parade.

+ Liz Cheney is no longer running for office in Wyoming, which is nice on account of she was the absolute worst.

+ There are so many abominable things about gay marriage that Utah can’t seem to remember all of them at once.

+ Whoops! Turns out Obamacare is awesome and saves the government money. Put that on your “broken website” and enroll in it, GOP.

+ Chris Christie vetoed a bill that simplified the process for trans* folks of obtaining amended birth certificates. I am guessing he vetoed it because it wasn’t about bridges, or because it does nothing to fix his really fucking unimaginative name. Really? Why has this never come up.

A Man Could Go To Jail for Doing A Bad Thing

Newsworthy.

A Toronto man named Gregory Alan Elliott was arrested and charged two years ago with criminal harassment for threatening messages he allegedly sent to women via Twitter. His case finally began in a Toronto court yesterday. If convicted, he could face jail time.

It’s a heartening development for women whose professional and personal lives are heavily taxed by the specter of online abuse. Traditional law enforcement channels (not always on the cutting edge of new social media technology) often don’t take internet-based harassment seriously, because it seems to exist only in an intangible playground and because our culture’s “boys will be boys”/”don’t feed the trolls” apologia is so aggressive. The line where online attacks cross over into real-life danger is muddy and ill-defined for most people—even, quite often, victims themselves. Is this real? Am I being oversensitive? Am I installing an alarm system in my house because some 13-year-old boy in Ohio is bored? 

That’s What She Said

It’s baaaaaaack.

Media Matters

+ So, what exactly does MSNBC plan to do about the Sochi Olympics?

+ Jared Leto got a Golden Globe for his shitty movie, and then he gave a shitty speech. Shit.

+ “Chozen” doesn’t do shit for anyone, you big fuck-ups.

+ 2014’s gonna be a big year. It might be the year black women take over Hollywood.

+ Catching Fire is the first film since 1973’s The Exorcist to be the top-grossing film of its year. Katniss Everdeen, you have won the Hunger Games.

Catching Fire, the second installment of The Hunger Games saga is not actually an experimental art house film about a family arguing over a pizza order as they play an epic game of Monopoly, crossed the $400-million mark at the domestic box office this week. With a domestic haul of $409.4 million, the Jennifer Lawrence archery expo has passed Iron Man 3 as the highest-grossing domestic movie of 2013, which would be a notable achievement all on its own if it were not augmented by another trivia-worthy fact: Catching Fire is the first movie with a solo female lead since 1973’s The Exorcist to become the top-grossing film of the year.

Transgender Dysphoria Blues

NPR is streaming the new Against Me! album and there’s only one takeaway: LAURA JANE GRACE IS PERFECT.

Also.Also.Also: CeCe McDonald Gets Free While Issa Rae Gets Famous and Other Stories We Missed This Week

Hello, perfectly cut slices of my favorite pies! This week I went back to DC, got extremely sick, and still went to work during the #polarbearvortex. I am legend.

Here are the stories we missed this week while I was making soup.

Issa Rae Rules and Other Celebrity News

+ Issa Rae made the Forbes’ “30 Under 30” List!

+ Robin Roberts isn’t the first gay news anchor and she’s hopefully not the last. The NY Times took a look back at how other news stars broke the news about the sexuality.

CeCe McDonald Will Be Released Later This Month

YOU HEARD ME.

You Should Go / You Should Submit

+ Storm Large is coming to New York City!

Storm Large: musician, actor, playwright, author, awesome. She shot to national prominence in 2006 as a finalist on the CBS show Rock Star: Supernova, where despite having been eliminated in the week before the finale, Storm built a fan base that follows her around the world to this day.

Storm spent the 90s singing in clubs throughout San Francisco. Tired of the club scene, she moved to Portland to pursue a new career as a chef, but a last minute cancellation in 2002 at the Portland club “Dante’s” turned into a standing Wednesday night engagement for Storm and her new band, The Balls. It wasn’t long before Storm had a cult-like following in Portland, and a renewed singing career that was about to be launched onto the international stage.

+ The hoax zine submission deadline has been extended! You haven’t missed your chance… yet.

as the thrice-changed submission date for #9 comes to a final close, we have chosen to start cultivating submissions for our next issue in order to save us both badly-needed time due to our very hectic personal lives. we are totally ecstatic to announce that the topic for hoax #10 will be feminisms and EMBODIMENTS, and we are eager for feminists of all backgrounds and genders to submit!

Tel Aviv to Commemorate the Gays of the Holocaust

We were here.

The Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality will unveil a monument to commemorate members of the LGBT community who were persecuted by the Nazi regime for their sexual orientation and gender identity on January 10.

The new monument will be mounted outside the Municipal LGBT Community Center in Meir Park (Gan Meir) which serves as the city’s main hub of activity for the LGBT community.

The monument will be shaped in the form of a pink triangle, reminiscent of the pink triangles LGBT community members were required to attach to their clothes in the concentration camps, and will feature short texts in Hebrew, English and German.

F*ck You, Linda Harvey, and Also This Other Sh*t

+ Linda Harvey’s new anti-gay book, Maybe He’s Not Gay, was pulled from Amazon. Maybe she’s not happy, but I don’t give two f*cks, really.

+ Ma’Lik Richmond, Steubenville rapist, was released early from juvenile detention. And the worst part is how grossly obvious it is that he ain’t learned shit.

A statement was also released from Richmond’s attorney and it reads:

“Ma’lik Richmond recently completed his designated time at the Cuyahoga Hills Juvenile Detention Facility. The past sixteen months have been extremely challenging for Ma’lik and his extended family. At sixteen years old, Ma’lik and his family endured hardness beyond imagine for any adult yet alone child. He has persevered the hardness and made the most of yet another unfortunate set of circumstances in his life, as with each other obstacle, Ma’lik has met it squarely, lifted his chin, and set his shoulders; He is braced for the balance of his life. While away, Ma’lik has reflected, learned, matured, and grown in many ways. He is a better, stronger person and looks forward to school, life, and spending time with family. At this point, Ma’lik wants most to be a high school teenager in conjunction with his release, Ma’lik, his family, and guardians ask that the media respect their privacy in this matter, as we all need to heal and move on with our lives. We will have you know that Ma’lik will be taking all the time necessary to focus on his academic and personal goals. We ask for your support and prayers as we move forward, thank you.”

+ How do y’all feel about queer lady business in luxury ads?

“Being queer has become trendy,” Vuillemin notes. “On one hand this can be a plus. If you are a kid trying to come out you can feel that you will have support from your peers. On the other hand it can trivialize the importance of LGBT rights no matter what is trending.”

+ Until women are safe on the Internet, they’re not gonna be safe in the real world.

Two hours later, a Palm Springs police officer lumbered up the steps to my hotel room, paused on the outdoor threshold, and began questioning me in a steady clip. I wheeled through the relevant background information: I am a journalist; I live in Los Angeles; sometimes, people don’t like what I write about women, relationships, or sexuality; this was not the first time that someone had responded to my work by threatening to rape and kill me. The cop anchored his hands on his belt, looked me in the eye, and said, “What is Twitter?”

+ Surprise, surprise! Nobody’s leaving the Boy Scouts en masse just because they accept gay kids now. Take that, God!

+ The documentary Queer as Pop completely ignored the contributions queer women have made to pop music. Thus, it is fatally flawed and probably really boring.

LDR Realness: First Comes Visa, Then Comes Marriage

Maria, a Filipino immigrant, and Carla, her American partner, after ten years of a long-distance relationship, were the first to marry after receiving a historic fiancee visa. May they bring honor to us all.

Microsoft Loves Women

How brave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyB7bzYRoqY

Queer View Mirror: Five Important News Topics We Talked About in 2013

There’s a post going around Tumblr right now that pretty accurately sums up how I feel about this year. It’s one of those unformatted, semi-snarky text posts clearly designed to get a lot of notes, but I can’t deny identifying with the sentiment: “2013 was my character development year which means 2014 is strictly action and story progression and i dont know about you but i’m excited.”

That’s also how I feel about much of the work that was done in various queer communities this year: There was a lot of development and organizing and education and campaigning and so, so much important vocalizing of needs. We may not have gotten everything accomplished that we wanted to, but in many spheres, from reproductive rights to same-sex marriage to conversion therapy to trans* visibility, we’ve set the stage for real, concrete change in 2014.

I thought it would be a good exercise for this first edition of my weekly news column, Queer View Mirror, to reflect on some of the biggest things that happened in 2013 — what we were talking about, good and bad, for the last 12 months, and what we can reasonably expect to hear a lot more about in 2014. After this, QVM will be a recap of a single topic that’s been in the news that week, including historical background and some more forward-thinking stuff. But for now, let’s talk character development!

1. DOMA Dies, Everyone Puts a Ring On It

Windsor outside the Supreme Court when it heard oral arguments in March 2013. Via Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images.

When my home state of Illinois was considering legalizing same-sex marriage in May, it would have been the tenth state to do so. By the time it finally did in November, it was the fifteenth. Adding New Mexico and Utah, which both legalized marriage via court ruling this month, makes eight U.S. states where same-sex couples can get married today that couldn’t one year ago. Marriage is definitely not the be-all, end-all of equality for LGBTQ people, but for many, it is a legal status critical to protecting their families. For others, it’s simply something they want to do, and barring them from it is becoming increasingly legally indefensible. There’s also something to be said for how legalized discrimination — and the lack thereof — impacts public perception of said group.

The impetus behind legalization in many states has been the collapse of the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal act prohibiting same-sex unions, which was defeated largely by this June’s Supreme Court ruling in the case of Windsor v. United States. We’ve written quite a bit about the story of Edie Windsor and her wife Thea Spyer, who upon her death left Windsor a large inheritance that was promptly taxed by the government, which did not recognize their legal marriage. Windsor’s subsequent challenge of discrimination made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which effectively gutted the law when it ruled that using DOMA to bar same-sex couples from federal benefits and protections is unconstitutional. Many state courts have taken the ruling as reason enough to invalidate their own laws barring same-sex marriage, and even where appeals are pending (as in Utah, where a judge has ruled marriages may continue while the state makes its case), marriage equality advocates are hopeful. Though all polls should be taken with a grain of salt, it is encouraging that a number of surveys this year found for the first time a majority of support for same-sex marriage among Americans, and it seems judges and politicians are finally beginning to follow suit.

2. LGBTQ Groups Demand Rights Worldwide

Gay rights activists in Bangalore, India, hold placards during a protest meeting after the country’s top Indian court ruled that a colonial-era law criminalizing homosexuality will remain in effect in the country. AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi

Marriage battles have broken out across the rest of the world, too, and they’ve often been just as erratic abroad as in the U.S. In July, Queen Elizabeth II approved a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in England and Wales, but not the rest of the United Kingdom. Costa Rica’s legislature accidentally passed a bill legalizing same-sex unions, but so far courts have declined to enforce it as such. In Australia, a High Court decision this month invalidated a piece of legislation from October that had legalized same-sex marriage in the Australian Capital Territory. Unlike in the U.S., where couples who marry during brief periods of legalization have been allowed to stay married after the laws are challenged, Australian couples who married during the last two months have been stripped of their licenses. Blargh. France legalized marriage equality after an outbreak of antigay attacks and expressions of homophobia, though many couples have found it still doesn’t protect their unions. But sure victories have been won in Brazil, New Zealand, Uruguay, Colombia and France.

But marriage isn’t the only right LGBTQ people have to fight for, and in many places the much more basic right to exist without fear of attack or harassment is still unsecured — and in most cases, these situations are direct results of current or former western and western colonialist influences. In Uganda, for example, a long-debated bill punishing homosexuality with life imprisonment has passed; a similarly draconian law in Nigeria was rubber-stamped this month and now awaits only a presidential signature. India’s Supreme Court overturned a 2009 law decriminalizing homosexuality, infuriating those in the country who had hoped the original legislation would be a stepping stone to greater security, recognition, and legal rights. In South Africa, where LGBTQ equality was written into the constitution but still struggles for societal support, the death of Nelson Mandela combined with mounting antigay stances among politicians has many activists worried that violence against queer people — particularly “corrective rape” of lesbians, a disturbing trend in the country — will soon increase.

In other ways, though, solid gains have been made. Ireland got an anti-bullying measure for its LGBTQ schoolkids, a French lesbian couple won the right to adopt children together and South and Southeast Asia saw queer visibility skyrocket. Trans* people are coming out and getting more acceptance in some areas, and countries like Germany and Australia allowing people avoid male or female labels on some official documents. A couple of places saw their first-ever pride celebrations, including Gujarat, India, and Podgorica, Montenegro. Serbia held its third annual pride parade despite an official ban on doing so.

3. Visibility Increases for Trans* People, But Doesn’t End Violence Against Trans* Women

Trans* people, and women especially, have made a mark on the public sphere this year, whether through representation on popular television shows or through horrifying cases of assault and mistreatment in the justice system. Though not everyone is doing it right (many are getting it really, really wrong) some media outlets are trying harder to properly address trans* people in their coverage of these events. Laverne Cox and CeCe McDonald both made my list of top queer women of 2013, and commenters on that story pointed out a handful of other trans* women who could have easily joined them, including Chelsea Manning, Janet Mock and Laura Jane Grace. Some young trans* people are demanding and winning legal protections in schools, and parents are creating more safe spaces for their gender nonconforming children. Even in countries where anti-trans* sentiment is strong, trans* communities are growing and speaking out against violence. Everywhere you look, trans* individuals are demanding recognition, and not as the demeaning caricatures they’ve long been associated with.

But these are baby steps — important baby steps, but baby steps. The pressure is on to guide those new to representing trans* folk — I’m looking at you, Two And A Half Men — are doing it in a respectful, informed way. But still, shows like Glee and movies like Dallas Buyer’s Club, which consider themselves allies to trans* folks and are lauded as such, are failing miserably to offer positive and constructive portraits of trans* life or to include trans* folks in the development or execution of their work. In this way, trans* media representation is presently not dissimilar to where gay and lesbian media representation was at in the ’80s.

I’ve seen people like Cox and Mock and our own Autostraddle writers who have made sure that at least some of the discussions going on about trans* people are done with care as well as a critical eye. Still, there is a lot of ground left to cover, particularly when it comes to stopping anti-trans violence and making the LGBTQ rights movement as inclusive as its acronym suggests.

Trans* women, especially trans* women of color, still face terrifying amounts of violence, and little chance of seeing justice for their attackers. The murders of women like Islan Nettles, Domonique Newburn, Brittany Stergis, Betty Skinner, Amari Hill, Eyricka Morgan, Kelly Young, Ashley Sinclair, Cemia Dove, Diamond Williams, and many more show us that in some ways, the most important takeaway when it comes to trans* issues in 2013 may be how far we still have to go. Charges against Nettles’ murderer were recently dropped, and many of these murders aren’t being classified as hate crimes; it’s clear that as a culture we have a lot more work to do in making sure trans women and trans women of color are safe, and for the legal system to hold someone accountable when they’re not. This was the year that saw increased outrage over trans* women’s mistreatment in prisons, but not a solution to their problems. And that should be the goal for next year — to take all this knowledge and anger and turn it into concrete change.

4. Sochi Olympics Could Be the Best or Worst Thing to Happen to Gays in Russia

The Olympics are headed to Sochi, Russia in 2014, and, given the country’s dangerous and repressive laws against gay “propaganda”, the world isn’t sure what to do about it. President Barack Obama is skipping the Olympics but sending LGBTQ Americans in his place. Gays are boycotting Russian vodka (although the impact of this move is up for debate). International celebrities are facing sanction to wave rainbow flags during trips to the country. Many are calling for a complete boycott, similar to the 1936 Berlin games. Athletes are coming out in droves and assuring the world they’ll compete in Sochi anyway. Still, Russia is cementing its stance as a homophobe’s heaven by passing laws.  In the meantime, Russia’s laws have spurred horrific attacks against gay teens (who, uhh, don’t deserve protecting, apparently). There has been some hope that the government is softening its anti-gay stance, but then everyone started second-guessing that as a political tactic to make the Olympics a success. Until we hear more discussion (and more solid commitments) from Russian leaders, it’s hard to say what the best tactic is going into the games.

5. Everybody Comes Out

Coming out is a double-edged sword for most of us; for celebrities or people otherwise in the larger spotlight, it is even more loaded. Regardless, the backlash to coming out has changed radically. 2013 was a big year of coming out for politicians, actors, journalists, athletes, musicians, television and comic book characters, scientists and many, many more. Elsewhere, debate erupted on why we come out, when we should do it, what we say when we do and what it means if we don’t. Regardless of why or how we come out, though, doing so is an important personal and political act. It asserts our right to exist, reminds those who oppose us that we aren’t going anywhere. And if 2013 felt like we found a new fellow queer a day, I can’t wait to see what 2014 brings.

And that’s it! Well, it’s not everything, of course, but we’ll dive into more after the new year. For now, go pick out your best sparkly outfit, buy some champagne, and get ready to party. We made it through 2013! See you next year.

Queer View Mirror is a weekly news recap focusing on one topic per week. (Except this first one, which covers the whole year.) I’ll take you through the history of the topic, the most current events and where to go to learn more. Use what you read here to write a research paper, be a better blogger or impress people at parties. Or as an excuse to never read the newspaper again. You do you. If there’s something in particular you want to hear about, email kaitlyn@autostraddle.com and let me know!

10 Women Who Could Have Been The Advocate’s “Person of the Year”

Last week, The Advocate named Pope Francis its 2013 “Person of the Year,” much like TIME Magazine named him their Person of the Year, for reasons that don’t seem to be much more substantial than the fact that he’s said some kind of decent things about LGBT people, things The Advocate hopes the 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide might agree with and thus be influenced into compassion. I won’t go into all the arguments about why their pick is a bad one — the rest of the internet has already done that for me — but I thought it would be a good exercise in positivity to instead look at 10 women from inside our queer communities who would have been better picks. Because this is Autostraddle, I’ve limited the list to LGBTQ women, and also because this is Autostraddle, I want to hear who you think I missed. Part of the purpose here is to highlight how very many women there are out there doing incredible work despite the fact that they rarely get the recognition they deserve, so when you inevitably think of someone who had an incredible year but isn’t named here, please let me know in the comments. Let’s make this a real celebration of all we’ve accomplished in 2013! A few days after the initial announcement, The Advocate doubled down on its decision, acknowledging the widespread criticism of the choice but ultimately reaffirming the hope that applauding Francis’s steps so far would push him into advocating further acceptance. But I’ll say I hope The Advocate keeps reading its critics, including this list, so they don’t repeat this act of erasure next year. And if not? Well, I’ll be around to make a new list of the important queer ladies of 2014.

via IMDb

Laverne Cox, Actress and Trans* Activist

In addition to being arguably the best part of everyone’s new favorite show, Orange is the New Black, actress Laverne Cox spent 2013 educating the world on trans* issues, advocating for trans* people in the prison systems, befriending Melissa Harris-Perry and just generally winning our hearts. She is currently the only transgender actress playing a transgender character on a TV show, an accomplishment that would be enough to get her on this list even if she hadn’t done any of those other things.

via Political BlindSpot

CeCe McDonald, Trans* Activist and Prisoner

After defending herself against a transphobic and racist attack outside a bar in 2011, McDonald was charged with second degree murder (she pleaded down to second degree manslaughter) in the death of one of her attackers. She was subsequently sentenced to 41 months in prison. Her prospects in the prison system, from correct placement to hormone therapy, were abysmal from the start, but McDonald has put on a brave face, telling press, “I’ve faced worse things in my life than prison.” This month, we learned that none other than Laverne Cox is working on a documentary, called “Free Cece,” about McDonald’s story. Cox interviewed McDonald from the men’s prison facility where she is being held, and that’s only the most recent example of McDonald speaking out from behind bars. If her actions so far are any indicator, she’ll she’ll continue her activism even after her eventual release.

Photo via Getty Images

Brittney Griner, WNBA Player

Approximately two seconds after joining the Phoenix Mercury as the 2013 WNBA Top Draft Pick, Brittney Griner came out publicly. She went on to appear on the cover of ESPN Magazine, attend the GLAAD Awards, be featured by Elle Magazine (and basically every other publication in the country), sign a contract with Nike, become a style icon and maybe probably find time to play some basketball, too? Just guessing here. Very few professional athletes come out even after going into retirement, so Griner’s choice to discuss her sexuality just as her career was starting is truly a brave one. The 6’8, bow-tie-wearing, tattoo-sporting Griner isn’t fazed, though, telling USA Today, “When you’re doing something good and you’re on top, someone’s always going to have something bad to say.”

photos by Robin Roemer

Kate McKinnon, Comedian

When she debuted on Saturday Night Live in April 2012, Kate McKinnon was only the third out gay cast member in the show’s history. But we’ve known McKinnon was hilarious since at least 2007, when she joined the original cast of Logo’s “Big Gay Sketch Show.” On SNL, she’s become a bit of a breakout star, proving time and again that you can’t really lose if you commit fully to even the most ridiculous of characters. If this BuzzFeed list isn’t enough to win you over, please watch her Ellen impression (performed on “Ellen,” of course) to fall in head over heels.

Fallon Fox, MMA Fighter

Fallon Fox’s coming-out interview has been fuel to the fiery debate over whether trans* athletes should be allowed to compete as the gender they identify with, but she hasn’t quit MMA fighting despite allegations that her past and transition give her an unfair advantage over cisgender women fighters. She may not have wanted to be a trans* icon, but when it became clear she was going to be outed, Fox took on the mantle anyway. She has continued to advocate for herself and for other trans* athletes, picking up sponsors and fighting back against near-incessant bullying.

Edie Windsor, Activist

Much has been written about Edie Windsor, the woman who sued the United States when they taxed her $363,000 on her inheritance when her wife, Thea Spyer, passed away in 2009. The couple had been together for 44 years and had married in Canada in 2007, but the government didn’t recognize the marriage and refused Windsor’s request for a spousal tax exemption. When Windsor won her case this June, it was a crucial blow for the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which the Department of Justice had ruled unconstitutional in 2011 but which various cases across the country have kept alive in fragments. While marriage is not the be-all, end-all for many people (queer and not), the recognition Windsor won for her marriage gives hope that same-sex marriages are on their way toward equal legal footing.

Mary Lambert, Musician

Singer-songwriter Mary Lambert spent 2013 proving she was much more than “that girl who sings on Macklemore’s ‘Same Love,’” and not just by releasing a full-length version of her verse from that single. Lambert’s portfolio of “heartbreak folk” songs and spoken word poetry reflect on her struggle to reconcile her Christian faith with her sexuality, body image and sexual abuse. Her music career took off this year — she’s signed with Capitol Records, performed at the VMAs, been nominated for a Grammy and released an EP, “Welcome to the Age of My Body,” just last week.

via Flickr

Diana Nyad, Swimmer

At age 64, Diana Nyad completed her long-held goal of swimming from Cuba to Florida. It was her fifth try — the fourth since she turned 60 — and she made it all 103 miles without the help of a shark cage. No, her 53-hour journey wouldn’t have been any different if she’d been straight instead of a lesbian, but Nyad has used her platform as a noted athlete to talk about her sexuality as well as the sexual abuse she experienced as a young woman. She’s an accomplished athlete and a role model for many.

Raven-Symone, Actress

After years of outside speculation and cryptic comments to the media, Raven-Symone officially came out this year to celebrate marriage equality in California. She’s also dating model and actress AzMarie Livingston, making me more jealous of a couple than I ever thought possible. It’s important that this former child star came out because many of us grew up with her, from her early days on The Cosby Show right on through The Cheetah Girls and That’s So Raven. Her coming out story, long and convoluted as it is, reflects the way many of us come out today: not with one big announcement, but through a series of affirmations about our beliefs and the people in our lives.

Sally Ride, Astronaut

It was only a year and a half ago that we learned through her obituary that Sally Ride, the first female astronaut to travel to space, had a 27-year-long relationship with a woman. Ride and Tam O’Shaughnessy were childhood friends and collaborated on books and other projects but kept their relationship as private as Ride’s fight with pancreatic cancer. This year, Ride was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for her work as an astronaut, scientist and advocate for racial and gender equality in education. She may have kept much of her personal life very private, but Ride nonetheless made a huge impact on many young women growing up in the 80s, including our very own Riese.