This Trans Day of Remembrance, Show Up With Material Support (And Every Other Day, Too)

Today is Trans Day of Remembrance, a day to honor the memory of the trans people who’s lives were lost in acts of anti-trans violence. The day was founded to draw attention to the continued violence endured by transgender people. This year, in particular, as we bare witness to a pile on of not only physical harm of trans people, but also the violence of coordinated attacks via transphobic fear mongering, scapegoating, and the rise of anti-trans bills — particularly those targeting trans youth — marking today weighs heavy. The Black trans-led organization SisTers PGH (who is also featured in the list I compiled below) is honoring trans people of color whom we lost this year to anti-trans violence with their annual Remembering Our Dead portal and I hope that — especially if you are cis — you will take time today to read about not only these deaths in our community, but also the lives they lived when they were with us and the loved ones for whom their light shined bright.

Today is a day of mourning and remembrance, and it is also a day to reflect on the power of survival. I started this week researching and compiling a list of trans-led mutual aid funds, mutual aids that focus on serving trans communities, and trans-owned businesses that we could spotlight, because I believe that in the face of dehumanizing rhetoric and violence that turns our community members into statistics, it is our responsibility to care for one another and change the conditions that impact trans people’s quality of life right now. Not through empty symbolic acts, or by waiting for the next person to do it, but by putting it in our own hands.

If you see a trans person’s GoFundMe going around your timeline, amplify it and give if you’re financially able. If you know of a trans person’s small business, support it. If you know of a trans person who needs a ride to get to wherever, give them one. Especially if you’re cis, ask yourself how are you using your privilege in our community (excuse me, how are we using our privilege) to not just provide lip service, being there and using our privilege to redistribute wealth, to provide safety, to get out of the way and make room, to enact love.

This list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a start. I hope that if you’re trans, and if you might in need of resources, that somewhere in this list you find something that can help with your needs and bring you peace. I hope that you’re cis, in this list you see back a reflection, a reminder, that in this community we take care of our own. It’s that simple. And that you give today — whatever you’re able — to show up with material support for trans people. Then, that you keep showing up every other day, too.

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Black & Pink

Black & Pink is a prison abolitionist non-profit dedicated to abolishing the criminal punishment system (you’ve perhaps heard about their penpal program for our incarcerated trans and queer fam) and supporting people living with HIV/AIDS who are affected by that same system. You can give to Black & Pink National, or donate to local individual chapters.

Black Trans Funds

Black trans funds is a community bulletin board of a Twitter account, run by an autistic Black trans woman, that shares GoFundMe’s and other calls for funds to support Black trans people in acute crisis, people seeking to raise funds for gender affirming medical care, and similar requests for help. Follow and then also give to your community.

Black Trans Travel Fund

Launched in NYC in 2019 by a Black trans man — Black Trans Travel Fund (BTTF) was created to provide Black trans women with the resources they need to self-determine and access safer alternatives to travel, where they feel less likely to experience verbal harassment or physical harm. Donated funds are redistributed directly to Black trans women in need, who can then have the autonomy to purchase private car service, gas for their own vehicles, pay family/friends for a ride, or other travel modifications that best suit their comfort and needs. BTTF also funds paying for passports, TSA-PreCheck applications, and plane tickets for Black trans women. After their initial launch, BTTF now services nationwide and across the diaspora.

Brave Space Alliance

Brave Space Alliance is the first Black-led, trans-led LGBTQ+ Center. Located on the South Side of Chicago, all of BSA’s programs, services, and resources utilize a mutual aid framework. Focused on “creating and providing affirming, culturally competent, for-us by-us resources, programming, and services for LGBTQ+ individuals on the South and West sides of the city” — Brave Space Alliance prioritizes serving POC trans and gender nonconforming communities that are the most vulnerable. While Chicago’s few trans-specific resources are primarily located in the majority-white neighborhoods of the North Side, BSA dedicates itself to building services and advocacy networks on the South and West Sides

The Brooklyn Ghost Project

The Brooklyn Ghost (Guiding & Helping Others Survive Transition) is a Black, trans-led non-profit focused on providing support and empowerment to trans communities of color in NYC. Their Saving Our Own Lives (S.O.O.L.) program provides mentorship to trans and gender nonconforming POC, providing personal, emotional, educational, financial, and transitional growth.

Dreams of Hope

Dreams of Hope is providing leadership opportunities through theater for trans and queer kids. Using art and education as tools for radical change, Dreams of Hope teaches that trans and queer liberation is situated within and dependent on the liberation of all people and that anti-trans and anti-queer oppression is tied to anti-Black racism, anti-semitism, misogyny, poverty, Islamophobia, labor rights, and disability rights. $5 covers the bus cost of one young person to attend a program, $25 covers the cost of a workshop’s creative supplies.

For the Gworls

For the Gworls is a Black, trans-led collective that curates parties and puts the money made into funds that help Black transgender people pay for their everyday necessities such as rent, travel assistance, co-pays for medicines and doctor’s visits, and gender-affirming surgeries. Over the years, they’ve redistributed more than $2 million to Black trans people. Donations to For the Gworls can also be set up monthly.

GLITS

Centering Black trans leadership, GLITS (Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society) approaches “the health and rights crises faced by transgender community members and the sex worker community , holistically using harm reduction, human rights principles, economic and social justice, along with a commitment to empowerment and pride in finding solutions from our own community.” In addition, they provide leadership training, relocation and asylum assistance, and physical and mental health referrals.

House of Tulip

According to the U.S. Trans Survey, 1 in 3 trans people in Louisiana report being unhoused at some point in their lives. In response, House of Tulip is a trans-led nonprofit collective creating housing solutions for TGNC people in Louisiana. They provide zero-barrier housing, case management, care resources, and community programming to trans and gender nonconforming people in need while also growing the supply of affordable housing in New Orleans.

Incarcerated Trans & Gender Diverse Community Fund

This Australian mutual aid fund provides financial and material support to trans and gender diverse people, in particular Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who are incarcerated. The fund provides support both to trans people in prison as well as post-release, when they are returning home to their communities.

Little Petal Alliance

The Little Petal Alliance is a non-profit that assists BIPOC trans people by providing a comprehensive mental health and wellness package that can include therapy, resources to combat dysphoria for those who need it called Gender Euphoria Care Packages (hair removal sessions, make up kits and tutorials, clothing, wigs, etc) and employment networking.

Meg Emiko Art

You probably know Meg Emiko’s simple and to the point “Protect Trans Kids” graphic without knowing it — it’s become ubiquitous in queer spaces online. Meg is an Asian American, trans nonbinary artist and activist. Popularly known on TikTok (with over 33k followers) and on Instagram (over 62k followers), they left their full-time job to pursue art a few years ago and have dedicated their bright, poppy art and apparel to making sure that QTPOC feel loved, heard, and represented.

The Okra Project

The Okra Project is a Black trans-led mutual aid collective providing support to Black trans and gender nonconforming people to help alleviate daily barriers. The name comes from the history of Africans sneaking okra onto captive ships during the Transatlantic Slave Trade to sustain them and the diasporic Black tradition using the okra plant as a symbol of not only nutrition, but also health and prosperity. The Okra Project began as a way to extend free meals to Black trans people experiencing food insecurity. Now it also encompasses housing, health services, safety, education and employment to the Black trans and gender nonconforming community.

Proud Haven

Since 2014, Proud Haven has provided safe shelter, emotional support, and independent living skills for trans and queer youth experiencing housing instability or who are currently unhoused. Focusing on young people between the ages of 12 and 14, Proud Haven offers daily workshops, games, arts and crafts, workshops, movie nights, and resources.

SisTers PGH

SisTers PGH is a Black, trans-led non-profit serving POC trans communities in Southwestern PA, providing programming, services, and housing. Their expansive community work includes Project T (a trans-led transitional housing program), the home equity committee (which helps graduates of Project T through the process of homeownership), BroThers PGH (community spaces for trans masc people), a TGNC youth collective, and legal name change services. In addition to one-time giving, SisTers PGH also asks for monthly or annual giving to help provide the sustainability that’s vital to their work.

Sistering

Based out of Toronto, Sistering is a multi-service agency for at-risk women and trans people who are either currently unhoused or precariously housed. Roughly 70% of the communities they serve are survivors of abuse or are substance users. Using a feminist, anti-racist, trauma informed and relationship based model, Sistering’s programs include a low barrier 24/7 Drop In, housing and case support, peer outreach, harm reduction, and employment services.

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) is a legal aid organizationbased in New York City that provides access to legal services for trans, gender nonconforming, and intersex people in need. They also provide public education and advocate for policy reform to end state-sanctioned discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression.

Trans Housing Coalition Fund

The Trans Housing Coalition (THC) is an Atlanta based, trans-led and founded organization that utilizes a person-centered approach to get trans people into permanent, affirmative housing. A guiding principle of the THC is Housing First, which recognizes that housing is a human right and that unhoused people deserve to be offered housing without needing first to satisfy any conditions.

The Trans Justice Funding Project

The Trans Justice Funding Project is a community-led, non-charitable trust that funds other grassroots, trans justice groups run by and for trans people. Their focus is on providing community funding and support to small trans groups with budgets less than $250k. You can learn more about their funding model and you should because I sincerely believe it’s a model is a blueprint.

Trans Lifeline

Trans Lifeline is a trans-led grassroots hotline and microgrants (for name changes, mutual aids for trans people who were recently incarcerated, and gender-affirming hair removal) non-profit that offers direct emotional and financial support to trans people in crisis. A $25 donation connects a trans person to the hotline, $77 funds the hotline for one hour, and $455 is the average legal fee to update an ID.

Trans People of Colour Project

The Trans People of Colour Project (TPOC) is a three-year project funded by the Toronto Urban Health Fund. It’s designed to provide greater access to food security, foster affirming support, offer access to useful sexual health education and resources via weekly Drop Ins. Not for nothing, they also did this cookbook (it’s free to download) and it looks amazing.

Trans Women of Color Collective

Sponsored by The Washington Peace Center and led by and for trans and gender-nonconforming people of color, the Trans Women of Color Collective (TWOCC) is an organizing collective that develops and magnifies the leadership of trans people of color. In addition to the Black Trans Health Initiative and focused leadership initiatives in the South and the Midwest, the TWOCC has community funds earmarked for education, daily survival needs, and mental health and wellness.

Transfigure Print Co

Transfigure Print Co is a Michigan-based, trans and queer owned, screen printing company. A portion of the profits from many Transfigure items benefit trans and queer businesses, and advocacy efforts (you can see a list of grassroots orgs that have been their partners from across the country). Purchases also support the Transfigure trans fund, which connects trans people in need with funds that they can self-determine and recieve in privacy.

Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois

The Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois provides legal assistance and services for trans people in Illinois in a manner that prioritizes community care, starting with three central values: prison abolition, gender self-determination, and transformative justice. They are a client-centered organization focuses on holistic, abolitionist criminal legal services and aims to address gaps in mainstream LGBT civil rights movements.

Transgender Emergency Fund of Massachusetts

Founded in 2008, the Transgender Emergency Fund of Massachusetts is a non-profit that among other things, provides assistance for low-income and unhoused trans people living in Massachusetts. They help with homelessness prevention, shelter assistance, nutrition assistance, prescription co-pay assistance, and transportation — though at the current moment they are primarily focused on daily life necessities such as food assistance and personal supplies.

Transinclusive Emergency Crisis Fund/ Mutual Aid

Transinclusive Group is a trans-led advocacy non-profit focused in South Florida. The organization also helms the Transinclusive Emergency Crisis Fund/ Mutual Aid, which provides financial assistance for prescription drugs and Hormone Replacement Therapy, transportation assistance, food vouchers, as well as utility and rent payment assistance.

Transanta

The idea behind Transanta is simple — trans and nonbinary young people under the need of 24 (Transanta notes that they are specifically showing support for those who are houseless, in the foster care system, or otherwise without essential support) write in with their wishlist and needs, you fulfill it. In doing so, you show trans young people that they are loved and cared by a community. How could you not? You can donate or buy gifts (this year’s gifts are not open yet, but donations are accepted year-round).

TransYOUniting

TransYOUniting is a mutual aid non-profit that provides resources to Pittsburgh’s trans community, focusing on the Black trans community in particular. Through their crisis fund they offer emergency housing, food assistance, winter and emergency supplies, transportation services, and partner with Proud Haven (also on this list) to create community youth spaces.

True T Pittsburgh

Since its founding in 2010, True T has been using Pittsburgh’s has a popular underground ballroom scene as a source of not only entertainment, but also activism. where socialization takes place and culture is exchanged. They annual Galaxy Ball has invested more than $50k back into local trans and queer communities. Donations support OPTION-U, short-term housing program and developmental hub prioritizing trans people; holistic wellness programs and services including HIV testing and hormone replacement therapy; as well as ballroom and free community programing.

Woke Kindergarten

Woke Kindergarten is a Black, trans-led, early childhood education and creative portal that supports children, families, educators, and other organizations in their commitment to abolitionist, pro-Black, queer and trans led liberation. Their work includes consultations for educators, teachable poems, read out loud exercises, workshops, and more. There’s also a mutual aid shop!

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If you have any trans-led mutual aid funds, mutual aids that serve trans communities, or trans-owned businesses that you love, please share them in the comments.

What Mattee Jim, Navajo Trans Elder, Teaches Us About Remembering

A month of convergence: the pandemic, ongoing uprisings to defend Black lives, Native American Heritage Month, Trans Day of Remembrance, and a presidential election. After what felt like a year of waiting to exhale, Mattee Jim celebrated the loss of President Trump with a symphony of honks and rejoicing voices. “I was cruising up and down for four hours. I didn’t even mind going slow,” she said. Many were dancing in the streets. She placed her trans flag on her dashboard so it could be on full display: as a Navajo trans woman, many parts of her were relieved.

Mattee Jim is of the Zuni People Clan and born for the Towering House People Clan. This is how she identifies as a Diné — the word that those in the Navajo nation use among themselves. She’s speaking to me from her office at First Nations Community Healthsource, where she’s returned, despite the pandemic, to ensure her Native communities have the resources for HIV prevention. She’s been doing this work for several decades.

She was born in Gallup, New Mexico, which lies near the arbitrary border that cuts through the Navajo nation, a line meant to indicate when New Mexico becomes Arizona. Navajo voters like Mattee were instrumental in flipping Arizona, a battleground state, blue. Yet, in many exit polls depicting voter statistics by race, Indigenous voters were forgotten, placed into the “something else” category.

Despite the Native words that are scattered across a map of the U.S. — Milwaukee, Oklahoma, Malibu, Tallahassee, Mississippi River, and Yellowstone National Park are just a few — the meanings of these words have been warped, assigned new values by colonizers. Few youth today are taught that both the American constitution and the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, the first feminist convention in the U.S., were inspired by the laws and matrilineal traditions of the Haudenosaunee people. Indigenous knowledge has been the well of inspiration that colonizers have drunk from, only to poison the water later on.

Mattee was one of the Native youth whose life was shaped by the American neglect of Indigenous populations. Her decision to become sober at the age of 24 was the turning point. Three years later, she began identifying as trans, after she started working with the Coalition for Equality in New Mexico in the late 1990s, an organization that works towards a “reality of equity, full access, and sustainable wellness for LGBTQ New Mexicans.” Prior to that, she had never even heard the word “transgender.”

While Stephanie Byers of the Chickasaw nation has made history this year as the first Native trans person to be elected to office in America, Native trans youth rarely have the stability to become politically engaged. “Getting into politics wasn’t our priority,” Mattee explained. “How to get to the hospital, how to go to the grocery store, how to get transportation, our livelihood was first and foremost.” Due to high rates of homelessness, food insecurity, and unemployment, many Native LGBTQ people cannot afford to get involved in politics.

Over the last few years, Native issues have reached greater visibility, especially after the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline began in 2016. Columbus Day in many cities has been renamed Indigenous People’s Day. Meetings and rallies, particularly among community organizers, begin with an acknowledgment of the original stewards of the land.

That work took decades of pressure from marginalized communities. After centuries of erasure, evident in the loss of languages, Native culture is still being preserved by protectors like Mattee. Despite the dual layers of invisibility being both Navajo and transgender, Mattee proudly proclaims her sacred role in community spaces she enters. While trans issues have become a national discussion only recently, gender-variant people from Indigenous communities have been historically accepted and revered for their contributions to society.

“From what I’ve learned growing up, the elders would tell us that we’re special people,” Mattee recalled. “A family was blessed to have someone in their family who was LGBTQ. The riches were the knowledge they knew, the roles they played, the tasks they do.”

Trans people in Indigenous communities, across the world, added to the abundance of knowledge about the human soul. As with the Navajo nation, trans people in Vietnam, called chuyển giới, were traditionally mediums who helped people speak to their ancestors. In India, the gender-variant community of hijras were revered as having the ability to bless or curse marriages through fertility rituals. Among the Zapotec people of Oaxaca, transfeminine muxes are often artisans and craftspeople. The city even celebrates gender diversity in a three-day festival called Vela de las Intrepidas. In Hawai’i, the māhū were people who could embody both masculine and feminine spirits, and they were traditional healers, caretakers, and teachers. Since the beginning of the fight for Mauna Kea, a sacred mountain threatened with destruction through the construction of a telescope, māhū leaders have been among those at the forefront of the battle.

Through her advocacy work, Mattee educates on Native trans identity and has been viewed by her friends to exhibit cultural roles and characteristics of historical Native trans individuals such as Osh-Tisch. The name, which means “finds them and kills them,” refers to the two-spirit person from the Crow nation that earned her moniker through her fierceness in battle in the late 1800s. Osh-Tisch later was imprisoned by an American federal agent, who forced her to cut her hair, wear masculine clothing, and perform manual labor. The Crow nation stood by Osh-Tisch and found a way to remove the federal agent from their land. Chief Pretty Eagle called their treatment of her “unnatural” — a word often used today to disparage trans people rather than, in this case, the abuse of trans people. Since the time of Osh-Tisch’s life, the perils set up by colonizers have continued to plague Native trans people.

Mattee explains that for Native trans women, there are two overlapping phenomena: the ongoing genocide of Native people and the attack on trans bodies. The two are demonstrated through community-led initiatives meant to track the disappearance of these communities, one being Trans Day of Remembrance and the other being Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People (commonly shortened to MMIWG2S). In the face of heightened danger, many Native trans communities end up tracking their own community’s survival, not being able to rely on the government or media. “We have Native trans women who’ve been murdered in the State and in our tribal communities…I’ve had conversations with other Native trans women. Within our Native communities, we know where the girls are. If someone was missing, we’d know.”

Her work has been bridging the worlds of trans justice and Native sovereignty. Speaking at the United States Conference on HIV/AIDS last year, she asked a crucial question: “A lot of Native communities, especially trans communities… at a lot of the meetings, trainings, and national tables, we’re not included whatsoever. How many of you are including Native populations in the work that you do?”

Her demand for inclusion isn’t simply about weaving Native people into advocacy spaces. Mattee embodies the world that colonizers have tried time and again to eliminate. She is the manifestation of the trans wisdom her ancestors had celebrated. Each time she commands respect, she invites us onto the bridge with her: the bridge between binary genders, the bridge between trans and Indigenous movements, and the bridge between our past and the future. She invites us into that world where we’re allowed to be our whole selves without limitations, whether we know it or not. It’s our job to accept the invitation by giving her and every ancestor before her what they’re due. It’s our duty to remember.

30 Lesbian, Bisexual and Queer Trans Women Who Make Our Worlds Turn

This past March, on the Trans Day of Visibility, Abeni Jones wrote a powerful plea to balance “homicide-focused posting” with “equal amounts of trans-affirming material.” In recent years, there has been a push to commemorate today, The Trans Day of Remembrance, which exists to acknowledge and remember victims of anti-trans violence — who are primarily Black trans woman — as not just a time to remember who we have lost, but to honor who we still have. Abeni wrote:

Overall, the focus on trans murder has an admirable goal — publicly remembering our dead is at its core an effort to show the world that our lives matter — but the way we’ve gone about it has had myriad unintended consequences. If we’re going to shift a culture that does not value black trans women’s lives, we have to shift the way we report on black trans women — including and especially when we report on our deaths. I implore our peers in media, as well as our readers and everyone else who cares about trans people and especially about black trans women — to take this plea to heart and work on creating this necessary shift.

Today, we encourage you to visit the Trans Day of Resilience, an initiative of Forward Together, is an “annual culture shift campaign” designed to uplift the lives and resistance of trans people of color. The HRC released a new report today on the epidemic of violence against transgender people in America, which has claimed at least 22 lives this year. GLAAD has extensive resources on commemorating the Trans Day of Remembrance. You can find a list of honored lives and local events on the official TDOR website. You can find our archive of incredible writing from trans women of color we’ve featured on previous TDORs here.

Although transphobia and particularly transmisogyny permeate mainstream culture, over the past year, there has been a real, shall we say, elevating of anti-trans sentiment from within the queer women’s community specifically. So when thinking about what we could do today to offer hope, as a website targeted at that community and committed to the idea that trans women are women and also that trans women date and love other women, we decided to highlight lesbian, bisexual and queer trans women who are doing incredible things in the world, including, often, finding love with other women or non-binary people.

Some of these women you already know about; some you’ve never heard of. This isn’t a comprehensive list, by any means (and the sexual orientation of many icons we wanted to include was too elusive to grasp), but it’s a start. Tell us about the queer trans women you love in the comments — and remember that we’re always, always, always interested in paying trans women, and especially trans women of color, to write things for this website, and you can submit your work right here.

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Jari Jones

Model / Actress / Singer / Creative

In addition to having one of the most gorgeous instagrams in human history, Jones got her start in theater, appearing in The Public Theater’s “The Runaways,” Here Art Center’s “The Sex Myth: A Devised Play” and Lin Manuel’s “In The Heights.” She has been featured in Pose and recently finished filming a Scorcese film with Leyna Bloom. After successfully working as a fashion photographer, lately Jones has been clocking more time in front of the camera — modeling for Universal Standard, Chromat and The Phluid Project and walking in DapperQ’s New York Fashion Week. If you’re open to the idea that love is not a lie, Jari Jones appeared on Momotaro with her (also trans) girlfriend, Corey Daniella Kemster, looking cute as hell and adorably in love in a feature that detailed their radical, transformative relationship.

instagram: @iamjarijones

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Marcela

Performer and choreographer

Marcela is a founding member of St. Cloud’s premier burlesque and vaudeville revue, Carnivale Revolver, as well as a cast member of Visions of Sugarplims, and Dykes do Drag. She’s a multidisciplinary background interested in subverting conventional notions of eroticism who has performed at Queertopia, Patrick’s Cabaret, the Minneapolis Burlesque Festival, and regular Minneapolis queer variety night Daddy, where she femcees.

Instagram: @marcelampls

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Vivek Shraya

Musician, writer, visual artist

Shraya is multitalented, writing in a range of genres from poetry to literary fiction to Children’s/YA as well as working as a visual artist, with her photo series Trisha, and as a musical artist, most recently with her band Too Attached. Shraya has her own imprint with Arsenal Pulp Press; her most recent book project, I’m Afraid of Men, has been roundly celebrated and acclaimed since its release in August. We interviewed her back in 2016 and Kai Cheng Thom, also on this list, reviewed her latest album in 2017!
Twitter: @vivekshraya
Instagram: @vivekshraya

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Exquisite

Disco Musician, Sateen

Exquisite first got underground-famous in the New York nightlife as one-half of a “sensationalized ‘hetero drag couple’ with her wife and bandmate, Queen Sateen. Then she came out as trans, the two became “glamorous lesbian wives and, last year, released the Sateen EP, which OUT describes as “a flamboyant celebration of the couples journey, channeling their collective queerness into music that’s equally a political war cry and flashy pop project. Proudly femme and proudly independent vintage disco musicians with a very sexy instagram presence, they just wrapped up a national tour and were named one of the “50 LGBTQ Musicians You Should Prioritize” by Paper Magazine.

instagram: @sateenmusic
soundcloud: sateen

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Jess Herbst

Former Mayor of New Hope, Texas

Jess Herbst became the first openly gay mayor in Texas when she was appointed Mayor pro-tem after the incumbent Mayor passed away.  She served for two years. Prior to that, she served the city as alderman, road commissioner, and head of public works. In January 2017, Herbst made news by waiting in line until 3:15 am to speak in front of the Texas Legislature to opposed Lt. Governor Dan Patrick’s “bathroom bill.” When she was voted out this May, Herbst told NBC News she now has her eyes set on the state house of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Twitter: @_jessherbst

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Munroe Bergdorf

Model, Social Activist, Writer

Bergdorf is an Afro-Jamaican-English model from the UK who started modeling in her early twenties while hosting a club night called “Pussy Palace. She now regularly appears on television (including in her BBC documentary “What Makes a Woman”) and has been featured in magazines including Vogue, i-D, LOVE, Dazed and Playboy. In 2018, Cosmopolitan declared her ‘Disrupter of the Year’, she scored a spot on the Out 100 and she joined Dazed Beauty as their LGBTQ+ editor. She is in a relationship with the very hot and brilliant French photographer Ava Fersi.

website: mbergdorf
instagram: @munroebergdorf
twitter: @munroebergdorf

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Alexandra Billings

Actress

Alexandra Billings is on of the most celebrated trans actresses in TV history. Her resume includes ER, Eli Stone, Goliath, Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder, and a critically acclaimed role on Transparent. In 2016 she was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award and this year the Online Film & Television Association nominated her for Best Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. She’s also won the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award. If you watch her present the 2015 commencement speech at CSULB College of the Arts, you can hear her talk about how she originally met her wife when they were 16 years old!

Instagram: @therealalexandrabillings

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Noel’le Longhaul

Tattoo Artist & Musician

Broadly writes that Longhaul’s incredible artwork “combines the gloomy delicacy of an Edward Gorey illustration with the familiar nature iconography drawn from folklore: ravens, twisted vines and wildflowers, and beasts of prey. A self-taught tattoo artist based in Massachusetts, she also plays in the band Loone (“queer dirges and hymnals. Doom and flight”) and is part of Lupinewood, an arts, organizing and living collective by/for trans people in Western Massachusetts. According to her instagram, she is married to Beyon Wren Moor, a trans Cree/Ukraninan artist and activist.

instagram: @laughingloone // @noellelonghaul

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Angelica Ross

Actress

Angelica Ross is probably best known for her brilliant acting on Her Story (which was nominated for an Emmy Award for  Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama) and Pose — but she’s also founder and CEO of TransTech Social Enterprises, which she created to help trans people in the tech industry, after teaching herself to code. She’s also guest starred on Transparent and Doubt.

Twitter: @angelicaross
Instagram: @angelicaross

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Victoria Kolakowski

Lawyer and Judge

Kolakowski, who has served as the judge of the Alameda County Superior Court since January 2011, was the first openly transgender person to serve as a trial court judge of general jurisdiction in the United States, the first elected to a judgeship, and the first to serve as any type of judge in California. She’s also a retired ordained minister in the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, has been honored by the East Bay Lesbian/Gay Democratic Club, Equality California and the Minority Bar Coalition (among others) and, in 2008, married Cynthia Laird, news editor of The Bay Area Reporter. She’s currently hoping that Gavin Newsom will become the first U.S. governor to appoint an out trans person to a judgeship by appointing her to the California Supreme Court, which would make her the first out lesbian trans woman to hold that position.

twitter: @vkolakowski

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Jen Richards

Actress

Jen Richards starred alongside Angelica Ross in the Emmy-nominated Her Story, after which she became the first trans actress on CMT when she landed a role on Nashville. She’s also guest starred on Doubt, Better Things,Take My Wife, and Blindspot. She’s currently working on HBO’s adaptation of Miss Fletcher; she’ll play the recurring role of Margo Fairchild, “a transgender woman who teaches Eve’s community college writing course.” She’s also our friend and co-led an incredible film development workshop at A-Camp X.

Twitter: @SmartAssJen
Instagram: @SmartAssJen

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J. Jennifer Espinoza

Poet & Sad Girl

J. Jennifer Espinoza is a California-based poet who describes herself as “the gayest gay who ever gayed. Her poems have been published in Granta, Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Lambda Literary, The Offing and in her debut full-length collection, There Should Be Flowers, published in 2016; her first book, 2014’s i’m alive / it hurts / i love, and the chapbook she put out this year, OUTSIDE OF THE BODY THERE IS SOMETHING LIKE HOPE. Her work, wrote Kai Cheng, “articulates the expression of feminine sadness… as a necessary political theme, in opposition to prevailing social attitudes that characterize sad girls as frivolous and shallow.” Despite the sadness, she is reportedly happily married to a very lovely girl.

twitter: @sadgirlforlife

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Jazz Jennings

Actress

After appearing in several high profile interviews and documentaries in her childhood, pansexual actress Jazz Jennings started her own YouTube series, I Am Jazz. The concept was ultimately picked up and broadcast on TLC starting in 2015. It’s been running for four seasons. Jennings voiced a young trans character on Amazon’s celebrated animated series Danger & Eggs and has already published a memoir, Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen. Most recently, Tonner Doll Company announced a trans doll, the first of its kind, to be based on Jennings.

Twitter: @jazzjennings__
Instagram: @jazzjennings_

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Raquel Willis

Writer

Raquel Willis is a National Organizer for the Transgender Law Center and a Jack Jones Literary Arts Sylvia Rivera Fellow. Last year, Essence named her one of the Woke 100 Women. In addition to her activism, she is also a pop culture critic. Her writing has been featured all over the internet, including right here at Autostraddle dot com. She was also the last host of Black Girl Dangerous’ BGD Podcast.

Twitter: @RaquelWillis_
Instagram: @raquel_willis

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Gabby Bellot

Writer

Gabby Bellot is one of the most celebrated trans writers working on the internet today. She’s a staff writer for Literary Hub and her work has also appeared in “the New Yorker, the New York Times, The Atlantic, Shondaland, Guernica, Slate, Tin House, The Paris Review Daily, The Los Angeles Review of Books, New York Magazine’s The Cut, VICE, The Normal School, Electric Literature, Lambda Literary, The Toast, TOR.com, the Caribbean Review of Books, Small Axe” — and oh, hey, on Autostraddle!

Twitter: @gabbybellot

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Avery Edison

Comedian

London-based lesbian comedian Avery Edison has been published in The Bygone Bureau, The Guardian, McSweeney’s and The Toast and has performed across the U.S. and Canada. She also sells hot pics of herself and sexts she’s sent for money on the internet, which is an admirable side hustle. You can download her essay collection, Right Body Wrong Junk, here.

twitter: @aedison

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Hari Nef

Actress

Hari Nef made her modeling debut in 2015 at New York Fashion Week; afterward, she became the first openly trans woman to sign with IMG Models. During last year’s Golden Globes, her first L’Oréal Paris commercial — which she starred in with Blake Lively, Lara Stone, and Xiao Wen Ju — premiered. Nef if also an actress. She’s guest starred on HBO’s Camping and snagged recurring roles on both Transparent and Lifetime’s You.

Twitter: @harinef
Instagram: @harinef

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Teddy Geiger

Musician

Teddy Geiger got her start with Columbia Records in 2006 with her album Underage Thinking; her debut single from the album, “For You I Will (Confidence),” reached #29 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went platinum in the U.S. These days Geiger mostly writes and produces for other artists, including One Direction, James Blunt, and Shawn Mendes. She’s also very recently engaged to Emily Hampshire, an actress you may recognize from Schitt’s Creek. They are very cute.

Twitter: @teddygeiger
Instagram: @teddygeiger

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Gwen Benaway

Poet/writer

Celebrated poet with three currently published books available, Benaway has been published in many national publications, including CBC Arts, Maclean’s Magazine, and the Globe and Mail. In her most recent, Holy Wild, Benaway explores the complexities of being an Indigenous trans woman in expansive lyric poems. Benaway is of Anishinaabe and Métis descent; her fourth collection of poetry, Aperture, is forthcoming from Book*hug in Spring 2020.

Twitter: @GwenBenaway
Instagram: @RunawaySupernova

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Tourmaline Gossett

Filmmaker, speaker and trainer

Tourmaline Gossett wrote, directed and produced Happy Birthday, Marsha! along with Sasha Wortzel, and has served on the Activist-In-Residence at Barnard College’s Center for Research on Women, where she produced and directed No One Is Disposable. Along with Eric Stanley and Johanna Burton, Tourmaline is an editor of the forthcoming New Museum anthology on trans art and cultural production to be published by MIT Press in 2017. She’s currently working on a short animated film, The Personal Things, about Miss Major. We spoke with her about everyday activism back in 2015!

Twitter: @tourmaliiine
Instagram: @tourmaliiine

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Laura Jane Grace

Musician

Laura Jane Grace famously came out in 2012 in the pages of Rolling Stone as the already-famous frontwoman of Against Me! She later also penned Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout. Her newest project, Laura Jane Grace and the Devouring Mothers, released their debut album Bought to Rot this month.

Twitter: @LauraJaneGrace
Instagram: @laurajanegrace

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Ryka Aoki

Writer

Ryka Aoki is the author of Seasonal Velocities, He Mele a Hilo (A Hilo Song) and Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul. She’s been in the recent documentaries “Diagnosing Difference and “Riot Acts,” and was the inaugural performer for the first ever Transgender Stage at San Francisco Pride, and is a former national judo champion and the founder of the International Transgender Martial Arts Alliance.

Twitter: @ryka_aoki
Instagram: @rykaaoki

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Martine Rothblatt

Lawyer, author, and engineer

Rothblatt is the CEO of GeoStar and the creator of Sirius XM Radio; she’s also an aviator who flew the world’s first electric-powered full-size helicopter. She’s married to Bina Aspen and the couple have four children; she has also explored building robots and AI sentience, including of her of her wife. She’s also a pastor for the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via mind uploading and geoethical nanotechnology.

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Andrea Jenkins

City Councilwoman in Minneapolis

In addition to her political career, Jenkins is a performance artist, poet and writer who has worked with Trans Lives Matter, served as the Grand Marshal in the Twin Cities Pride Parade, and has masters’ degrees in creative writing and community economic development. She worked for 10 years as a vocational counselor in Hennepin County before winning her election to City Council in 2017 with 70% of the vote.

Twitter: @andreaforward8
Instagram: @shesgotgame1

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Kai Cheng Thom

Writer and social worker

Kai Cheng Thom has written two literary books, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir and poetry collection A Place Called No Homeland, as well as cowriting children’s book From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea. Cheng Thom has also published essays and critical work, including on Autostraddle.com. She is the recipient of the 2017 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBT Writers.
Twitter: @razorfemme

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Sophie Bee

Party hostess, speaker and organizer

Sophie Bee is resident host of Formerly Known As, and self-described bisexual transsexual as well as advocate for sex workers. She organizes for sex workers’ rights, autonomy and safety in the Chicago area.

Twitter: @pogform
Instagram: @vontenbateau

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Gigi Gorgeous

YouTuber, Socialite, Actress & Model

Gigi Lazzarato has grown up on YouTube, and in 2017 released her full-length documentary This is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous. She’s also appeared in the short film I Hate My Selfie, and appeared on TV series like Me and My Grandma, Nightcap, and Project Runway. She’s now engaged to Getty heiress and clothing designer Nats Getty, has appeared on the cover of Paper Magazine and been featured in Galore, People, Refinery29 and Out.

twitter: @TheGigiGorgeous
instagram: @GigiGorgeous

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Fallon Fox

MMA Fighter

Fox is the first openly trans athlete in MMA history, as well as having served in the US Navy. She came out as trans in 2013, and was inducted into the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame in 2014. In the face of public controversy and attacks from opponents like Ronda Rousey, she’s used her platform to speak out and educate about the realities of trans athletes competing in sports divided by gender.

Twitter: @fallonfox
Instagram: @fallon_fox

PHOTOESSAY: Transgender Day of Remembrance in West Hollywood

For Transgender Day of Remembrance, I went to the City of West Hollywood’s event and talked to some of the community and those elected to serve about what TDoR means to them, what they’re doing to fight for the living, and what we can do every day.

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What does TDoR mean to you?

Alexis Sanchez, Vice Chair of the West Hollywood Transgender Advisory Board

I try to only speak to my own experience and my very first TDoR was the thing that sprung me into advocacy — sitting in a room with community and just recognizing the challenges that we face and the hatred that’s out there for us. My first TDoR made me say, ‘ya know I want to be an advocate and I want to work towards normalizing trans identities so this list gets shorter and shorter every single year.’ Aside from that, it’s a really great chance to meet other members from the community and every now and then I can connect with someone and either I’ve been where you’re at or you’ve been where I’m at and it’s okay and we’ll be okay.

Jaye Johnson, Chair of the West Hollywood Transgender Advisory Board

TDoR is really about highlighting the lives that were taken through violence and to pay tribute to those people. It’s a time for our community to mourn and then celebrate the life that is still here and for allies to really see how our community is impacted by violence in such a very powerful way.

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What can allies do everyday?

Alexis Sanchez

My favorite thing that has been circulating on the internet today is give a flower to those of us that are still here. It’s helping to advocate for us to have access to services or even just flowers or a little bit of love here and there. I think as a trans person I never realized how marginalized I would feel, how everyday I’m stressed out about whether I’m going to get looks at the supermarket or trying to get on the bus so any moment of kindness I receive is so healing and recharging.

Aubrey Sassoon

Fight like hell for the living basically, as the rallying cry goes. Support trans people especially trans people of color living their lives. Help trans people survive in society in such a difficult political atmosphere.

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To the elected, what are you doing in West Hollywood to protect the trans community?

John Heilman, Mayor of West Hollywood:

We have a transgender advisory board — they work closely with our sheriff’s department and other agencies. We have this day and we have series of programs geared towards the community.

Karina Samala, Transgender Advisory Board Member:

My community is my family. I always encourage them because we have gone through so much discrimination. Chosen family is so important. People call me ‘Mother Karina,’ because I try to help them and fight for the community. We were the first municipal area to have a separate transgender advisory board from the LGBTQ advisory board. We advise the city and the city council and all the agencies on issues concerning the transgender community specifically.

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The Program

Trans Day of Remembrance Roundtable: What Chosen Family Means To Us

Once again it’s Trans Day of Remembrance and once again I’m writing that it’s been the deadliest year on record for trans people in the United States. It can be an especially sad and difficult and lonely day for trans people, and especially for Black trans women and other trans women of color. On this day each we’re reminded how many people and how many societal forces and institutions are stacked against us and how much damage they can do. This year we’re reminded that the majority of voters decided to elect a government that has tried and, in some cases, succeeded, in passing laws that prevent us from using bathrooms, going to school, serving in the military, and finding housing and jobs.

There have been twenty five trans people murdered in the US this year. That’s cruel. That’s evil. That’s miserable. It’s impossible to make it through a year like this alone. For those of us who have lived through this year, we’ve had to rely on the love and help and support of our chosen families to make it as far as we have. Chosen family is important to all queer people, and for trans women of color, it’s often the difference between life and death. Here are a few of the trans women I know and love expressing how chosen family has helped them this year.

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Luna Merbruja

This year, so much has been taken from us. It feels like the barrage of political terrorism and natural disasters have revealed a new apocalyptic world that’s been brewing for the past decade. I couldn’t have made it without the wisdom of my professor Lara Kiswani who broke down each executive order in our Grassroots Organizing class and taught us ways to resist, or the crew of neighbors who helped me move when I was violently evicted from my first home, or my partner who has loved me through every emotional breakdown I’ve had this year. This year has been a struggle, but it’s also shown the power of unity.

This unity has created many sacred experiences. I have been blessed to co-facilitate a room of trans women of color writing jokes and laughing together, who performed magnificently in Peacock Rebellion’s Brouhaha. I have sat in a room of QTPOC survivors of child sexual abuse and we spent two entire days together dreaming, healing, and paving our pathway to liberation. I have traveled to Mexico (twice!), had two separate short stories published in trans anthologies, and stayed in therapy all year. As much as the world feels like it’s falling apart, I also know that we are healing and living liberation, too.

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Niko Balcom

Honestly, I’m not even sure where to start with family right now. Family is advertised as this fucked up notion, that if you’re blood related, things are all sunshine and rainbows… and, well, I’ve never really been able to participate in this. Being adopted is weird. Someone basically buys you, and then you’re family? Growing up, I guess it was kind of sunshine and rainbows, and since I arrived on Christmas day, this time of year has an extra layer of special (it’s kind of like a birthday, but not really?). Childhood ignorance is real. Skip ahead tens of years, add a lot of experiences, several identities, multiple levels of awareness, and now chosen family is everything to me. I still don’t really know how to define family, or at least how I define it, but the closest I can come is the people that make me feel safe; the ones I can relax around. Unsurprisingly, it’s those that have the most shared experiences with that set me at ease. Just being near other queer people, other POC, or other trans women, gives me strength. Shared history, however indirect, is what makes me feel like I’m not alone in this world.

I’m constantly struggling with what family is. I’m told that I’m supposed to love my parents, but how do I do that when they vote against my basic rights in this country; when they don’t see the systems that oppress me, my communities, and the people I love. Is it my duty to love them, and be their child, because they adopted me? I don’t know. I feel like I owe them some sort of debt for adopting me, but I don’t even know what my life would have been like had they not, if I grown up in Korea. Societal notions of family are complicated, and they leave me feeling a bit empty distraught. What isn’t complicated are the people that I can relate to, the ones that occupy the space at the center of the Venn diagrams of my identities. I guess what it comes down to, is that family seems to be the group of people that you have shared experiences with, and if you can have that with people you’re blood related to, great? If you can’t, that’s great too. I have managed to find family in the queer, POC, and trans communities, and I’m happy with that. So, thank you for making me feel like my existence matters, and thank you for being my family.

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Abeni Jones

Chosen family saved my life.

When I was at my most miserable, suicidal and hopeless, one friend who me crying on the couch and asked what I needed. I didn’t reach out. I didn’t call my father. It was my best friend, my former lover turned sister, who saw my distress, reached out to me, dropped what she was doing, bought me cat food, and then drove me to the ER.

I made a choice to invest in building deep, intimate, familial friendships with other Black queer and trans people, and I’m here as a 30 year old gainfully employed Black trans woman because of it. The importance of community building, of devising ways to care for and love each other despite the overwhelming odds we are facing, cannot be understated.

I am one of the lucky ones, in that my biological family supports and affirms who I am and what I’m about. But it’s my chosen family, the community members with whom I build and grow on the ground, who are the ones that not only saved my life but give me life, who encourage and support me, who gas me up, give me hope when I’m at my last thread of sanity, who have always been there for me and for whom I will always be there.

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Xemi Tapepechul

Without my QTIPOC community I would probably not have life. I would have starved. I would’ve frozen out on the streets. I would’ve killed myself. I would not be here today. Because of my QTIPOC communities’ protection, I am able to breathe today. My name is not being spoken along with the other siblings that have been taken from us. This family I have chosen, which includes my Two-Spirit Siblings in DC, my spouse in New Jersey, and my online community, has uplifted me when I was at my lowest. They have blessed me in ways unimaginable.

Lately, binarism has really been triggering my dysphoria. The need to pass, the automatic othering within all binary communities, and the self-disgust has really hurt my self-image, and has led me to make changes to my physicality. Despite this dysphoria, my QTIPOC chosen family has continued to support me, respect me, and uplift me. That’s what we have to do for one another. The world wants us to hate ourselves. By living in our truth, we inspire others to do the same. By holding space for one another, we inspire each other to grow. By choosing each other as family, we let the world know that people like us to deserve space, love, and life.

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Mey Rude

This summer I got a tattoo that says “How can we not talk about family when family’s all that we got?” They’re some lyrics from the theme song to the seventh Fast and Furious movie, but they also mean so much to me. I’d be lost without my family, both birth and chosen. It was my family who supported me when I came out. It was my chosen family of trans people I had met on Tumblr who helped me get the confidence in the first place. My chosen family of queer and trans people then gave me the life I have now. They helped me with emotional, physical and financial support, they gave me advice and courage, they gave me love and understanding.

Recently, it was my chosen family who saved my life by putting me in a hospital when I needed to go and making sure that I followed that up by working on my issues and being in a better place. It’s exhausting and stressful and terrifying and sad being a trans woman of color in public, and it’s my chosen family, especially my queer friends, my qtpoc friends and my trans friends who help me make it through. And they have and are continuing to make sure that I’m making it through every day.

Family is one of the most important things in the world to me. Without my mother and the rest of my immediate family, without my friends and coworkers, without all the people who I chose to call family, I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am. When I think about Trans Day of Remembrance and how I’ve survived to see another one, I know that it’s because of my family.

Miss Major Stars in “The Personal Things,” a Powerful and Inspiring Animated Short for Trans Day of Remembrance

Today is Trans Day of Remembrance/Resilience, a day when we remember all the trans people who have been the victims of violent attacks over the past year and we remind ourselves that we are still resilient. In honor of that, Reina Gossett, Hope Dector and the Barnard Center for Research on Women produced the animated short “The Personal Things,” starring legendary trans elder Miss Major Griffin-Gracy.

The Personal Things from BCRW Videos on Vimeo.

Miss Major has always been a badass, and in this three minute long animated video, she’s no different. With all the spirit in the world in her voice she explains how we can each use our own personal acts to make political change. “You have to find your own way to strike back,” she says, inspiring all of us to be ourselves and reminding us that doing that, especially when you’re trans, is a radical act. Our existence as trans people is beautiful and powerful and amazing. It’s exactly the kind of message we need to hear on a day where we’re reminded that our existence is also something that threatens a lot of people and is hated by a lot of people. This is a beautiful short and Miss Major has some beautiful things to say.

The short was directed by Gossett, features art by Micah Bazant and animation by Pamela Chavez. You can buy posters of the artwork featured in the video in order to support Miss Major’s retirement fund (and wow, has she deserved a happy retirement) online.

On Trans Day of Remembrance We Look Back on the Worst Year Yet and Prepare for a Terrifying Future

feature image via Shutterstock

I’m writing this with tears streaming down my cheeks, a sick feeling in my stomach and a hole in my heart. I’m sorry I don’t have have something more hopeful to tell you today.

Every year Trans Day of Remembrance is a tough day. It’s hard to think about all the trans people we’ve lost. It’s hard to think about how we don’t even know the names of many, many more who were killed and misgendered or unreported. Every year, both in the United States and globally, most of the victims of anti-trans murders are Black and Brown trans women. Last year was exceptionally hard for a lot of us, because more trans women were murdered in the United States than any previous year on record. We were heartbroken and devastated. We felt hopeless. But we also were determined to be strong and to fight to make things better and to protect trans women, especially Black and Brown ones, and to make sure the United States was a safer place for trans women.

We were determined to keep in mind the intersectionality that puts trans women in danger. We wanted to focus on how racism and anti-Blackness contribute heavily to the murders of trans women, how most trans women who are killed are murdered by men they sleep with, how trans women who are poor or sex workers are more likely to be murdered. We talked about all of those things. We said something needed to be done to stop the most vulnerable from being killed at pandemic rates.

In 2016, the murders didn’t stop. The violence didn’t slow down. Instead here we are in November, and more trans people have been murdered in the US than were murdered last year. The numbers globally are even worse. Our goals were not met. Trans people are in the spotlight more than ever, with characters in movies, TV shows and books, but that’s only led to us being more at risk. Trans women, especially the ones who were already most at risk, are now hypervisible. Men who sleep with us are more afraid than ever that they’ll be found out. Politicians who hate us are targeting us in ways they never have before. People who want to commit violence against us are braver than ever before. Things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse.

These are the names of the trans people we know of who were murdered this year, but only those we know of. We cannot forget them. We cannot ignore them. We cannot sweep them under the rug. If you have the strength, please fight for them and for the people who will be on this list next year, and the year after that. Contact your congresspeople, donate to trans organizations, call out transphobia and transmisogyny when you see it, volunteer your time. Don’t just talk about being an ally, actually do the work.

Monica Loera, 43

Jasmine Sierra, 52

Kayden Clarke, 24

Veronica Banks Cano, 40

Maya Young, 25

Demarkis Stansberry, 30

Kedarie/Kandicee Johnson, 16

Kourtney Yochum, 32

Shante Thompson, 34

Keyonna Blakeney, 22

Reecey Walker, 32

Mercedes Successful, 32

Amos Beede, 38

Goddess Diamond, 20

Dee Dee Dodds, 22

Dee Whigham, 25

Skye Mockabee, 26

Erykah Tijerina, 36

Rae’Lynn Thomas, 28

T.T., 27

Crystal Edmonds, 32

Jazz Alford, 30

Brandi Bledsoe, 32

Noony Norwood, 30

I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty. I’m not saying that anyone should give up. I’m not saying to lose hope. There are plenty of people who have fought tooth and nail, and given up gallons of blood in this fight. If you’ve been fighting, if you’ve been working, thank you. But, also more of us need to work, and more of us need to fight. And we need to figure out new ways to do those things. We need to figure out how to make sure that white people and men and conservatives lose the power they abuse. We need to figure out how to make sure our hope turns into progress and protection.

I’m going to be honest. I think this is only the beginning. Our nation just elected a president and vice president who have already started the work to roll back protections for trans people. Not only that, but their public unrepentant homophobia, racism and violence against women is emboldening many across America to no longer hide those violent parts of themselves. I’m preparing for this year’s record to be shattered next year, and each year that Trump is in office. When people say we need to give him a chance, that if he’s really this terrible, we can vote him out after four years, or even impeach him after one, what I think of immediately is the thirty or forty or fifty or sixty trans people who are going to die each of those years because that will be the reality of Trump’s America.

Trans people, including trans kids have started killing themselves in order to make sure they don’t face a more violent fate at the hands of someone emboldened by our new administration. Trans children are so scared of the sixty million people who voted for Trump that they’ve decided that being dead is a better option. How did we get here? No, we’ve always been here. This is a nation of slavery, of genocide, of lynchings, of legal rape, of internment camps, of hate crimes and conversion therapy. This is a nation where a rapist is elected president. This is a nation where someone who wants to torture children until they hate themselves is elected vice president. This is nothing new for us, no matter how much we’d like to say it is. This is the direction we’ve been heading in since white people came to this country.

I’m not going to call these dark times. These are the palest of times. America is a pile of pale, broken bones, the bones of Black people murdered by police, the bones of immigrants murdered for coming to this country, the bones of children and church-goers and people out trying to have a good time who were brought down by mass shootings, the bones of Muslims murdered for not being Christian, and the bones of trans women murdered for existing in public. There is a cloud of smoke rising up from the fires of hatred lit by those who hate marginalized people. White Supremacy and White Christianity and White Conservatism teach Americans that it’s not only acceptable to hate all of these groups, but that it makes you more of a man, it makes you more of an American, it makes you more of a Good Person.

I don’t know how to be hopeful right now, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing or working or fighting, and I know everyone at Autostraddle stands firmly with me. I’m not asking other trans people to stay fighting with me, take care of yourself first. But I do ask that you at the very least stay alive. We need you. If you are feeling hopeless or need help, please reach out to someone or call the Trans Lifeline at (877) 565-8860 in the US or (877) 330-6366 in Canada. The Trevor Project can be reached at 1-866-488-7386, and they also have text and chat lines. The general National Suicide Prevention Hotline for the US can be reached at 1-800-273-8255.

You are beautiful and wonderful and deserve happiness and life and love. We love you and we’re going to keep on working and we’re going to figure out how we can do things that will make real change.

Make a Trans Woman Smile on TDoR By Buying Her a Pizza Online

feature image via shutterstock

This Sunday, November 20th, is Transgender Day of Remembrance, the day each year we take stock of all the trans people who have been murdered in the previous year and we memorialize and remember them. We’ll be publishing a more solemn post addressing the day on the 20th, but we also want to offer all people who aren’t dmab trans people a chance to let dmab trans people (who are by far the most targeted group in anti-trans murders) know that there are people who care about them. We’re offering a platform through which you can buy a trans woman or other dmab trans person a small pizza of their choice from their favorite pizza place and delivered to their house on Sunday. While this isn’t going to solve all the problems trans women face, it will be a nice way to comfort some of us on a day that reminds us how hard we have it.

Last year, someone did something like this in the Unofficial Autostraddle Facebook Group (thank you to whoever organized that), and this year we’d like to make it a little more official. Note: Since publishing this article we’ve found out it was Astrid Tanner, so thank you very much to to her for coming up with this idea and doing it last year.

In the United States, at least 23 trans people have been murdered this year, and at least 21 of them have been trans women. Most of them are trans women of color, most are Black trans women, and most are trans women who sleep with men. Across the globe, it’s the same thing. Trans women of color and trans people of color who were designated male at birth are by far the majority of the trans people who are being murdered. As trans women, we often feel like the whole world is against us, and TDoR is evidence of that. Buying a trans woman a pizza is a small token of kindness on this dark day.

If you are a trans woman or dmab trans person, here’s a google form for you to fill out in order to get your pizza. This form is safe for you, and we won’t share this information with anyone. You can even order gluten free or vegan pizza. If you’re lactose intolerant, you can link to a different place that delivers a food that fits your dietary restrictions, and in the “type of pizza” section explain what food you’d like, but please keep it about the same price as a pizza. This fund is first come first serve, and we’re incredibly sorry if not everyone gets a pizza.

If you’d like to donate to the pizza fund, please use Square Cash using the tag $pizza4tdor. If you don’t want to use that app, you can use PayPal and send it to Alaina. If you can donate $20-$30 that would be amazing, but any amount helps. When you donate, it will say the funds are going to Anna, that’s us, don’t worry. Thank you.

On The 6: Confronting the Mortality of Girls Like Me

Feature Image via Shutterstock.

It’s Trans Awareness Week, the week leading up to Trans Day of Remembrance on November 20th. When we say that Autostraddle is website primarily for queer women, we want to be 100% clear that that includes queer trans women and that it’s important to honor trans women year-round, not just in obituaries. So all week long we’re going to be spotlighting articles by and about trans women, with a special focus on trans women of color. We hope you’ll love reading everything as much as we’ve loved writing and editing it.

Today is Trans Day of Remembrance, the day we look back and remember the trans people who’s lives have been taken in the past year. This was an especially bloody year for the trans community, resulting in a record number of murders against trans people in the US, all of whom were trans women, and nearly all of whom were Black and/or Latina. The names of the trans women who have been murdered this year in the US include Papi Edwards, Lamia Beard, Ty Underwood, Yazmin Vash Payne, Taja Gabrielle DeJesus, Penny Proud, Kristina Gomez Reinwald, B. Golec, Keyshia Blige, Mya Hall, London Chanel, Mercedes Williamson, Jasmine Collins, Ashton O’Hara, India Clarke, K.C. Haggard, Shade Schuler, Amber Monroe, Kandis Capri, Elisha Walker, Tamara Dominguez, Keisha Jenkins and Zella Ziona. For a more complete list of trans people killed around the world in the past year, please visit the Trans Day of Awareness website.

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Assembling myself for the daily interrogation of my femininity is a careful procedure. As a woman in New York City I must be desirable enough to navigate public spaces of transportation comfortably, but subdued enough to be left alone. As a trans woman, getting catcalled is the relief of my gender being read correctly muddled with the fear of my name appearing on social media in honor of my life the next day. When I’m riding the uptown 6 train on my way to work in the very privileged and beige Upper East Side, violence isn’t supposed to exist. Trauma wasn’t meant to happen at 9 a.m. on that August morning. Not when I was running on time, and somehow missed the long line for the day’s first cup of coffee. Nothing could have warned me that the meticulous construction of my person would be unraveled while my peers watched from their own cocoons of solitude.

Before that day in August, I associated the 6 train with Jennifer Lopez’s first album, On the 6, referencing her daily commute from the Bronx to Manhattan. It was the only album of my older sister’s that I was not allowed to touch, which only cemented its importance in the tapestry of femininity that I was assembling. With lyrics like If you want to live your life, live it all the way and don’t you waste it we followed J.Lo’s lead into our earliest concepts of agency and re-claiming space. The dance beats and affirming lyrics could mean whatever we needed them to mean as we co-existed in our own varying degrees of girlhood. I imagined a purposeful Jennifer riding into Manhattan, drowning out the voices of catcallers with the promising vibration of the city that would eventually launch her into the small blue stereo that my sister kept beside her bed. When I arrived in New York City, I was able to call upon the memory that resonated across all the distinct representations of girlhood in my family. On that unassuming morning in August, my attacker intruded on this fortifying recollection. Every train ride has turned into a return to the scene of the crime, with my time being spent calculating the minutes between each stop until I reach my destination. Sexual assault has stained the details of my life while revealing itself in my daily actions. The decision to wear a skirt has become a confrontation with my mortality, and the mortality of girls like me has become a trending topic.

While commuting during the 9 o’clock hour, one must maintain the appearance that they are on a solitary mission, looking anywhere but the eyes of the people pressed up against them. On that morning I was successful in mirroring the performance of my peers until I felt an unwelcome intrusion on my backside. I was ready to chalk it up to someone’s gym bag, but gym bags don’t lift up your dress and grab your arm. All of the feminine voice training disappeared, and I could only plea for help through desperate glances around the train compartment. As he exposed my flesh to the cold air conditioning of the train, I knew he was moments away from discovering the part of my body that had caused an incorrect assignment when I entered this world. I felt myself becoming a social media fixture, my Instagram selfies being shown across news stations.

As the headlines misgendering me appeared in my mind’s eye, the train stopped and I was able to pull myself free and stall the death that had felt inevitable ever since my first injection of estrogen. By this time my voice had returned, and my cries were unapologetic. The morning continued all around me, and New Yorkers granted me privacy while on their own linear paths. I had become one of the distractions that cause everyone to turn up the volume on their headphones.

During those desperate moments of looking for empathy in any form, I called myself to task for all the times I turned up my own headphones to avoid the sounds of another person’s pleas for aid. The daily requests for kindness become part of the scenery after five years in this city. It wasn’t until I was asking for help that I realized the resentment New Yorkers experience towards the people brave enough to request a helping hand. Strength, in New York, is measured by the ability to master pain in solitude, and vulnerability is the biggest threat towards this notion. Our self imposed isolation keeps us from salvation. We resent the courageous for asking for tenderness from their peers, something largely unlearned in the name of maintaining an air of control. As we see the lives of trans women being extinguished, especially black trans women, this also becomes apart of the landscape of our virtual lives. We honor these women as long as they are not a threat to the online presence we carefully curate. Let us say the names of the lives taken from us while being proud of the trans women that have survived up until this point. Let’s allow the trans women amongst us to enrich our lives, and enable their journeys to exist alongside our own.

Extending a hand to the trans women we know, and especially to the trans women we do not know, can feel like it has nothing to do with our development or our experience. Trans women are all around us, and they have always lived among us. It’s in all our best interest to make sure these women are cared for, loved and heard. When the people we coexist with are taken care of, it heightens the quality of our own lives. When the most marginalized group in our culture is given shelter, it’s a triumph for every corner of our society. It brings us closer to the idea of community that only seems to exist in essays and think pieces. It loosens the grip of the constraints placed upon all of us by gender. It takes us from running around in circles of discourse to making sure tangible basic needs are being met. Trans women deserve to contribute to the world and no longer carry its weight, often standing at the intersections of race, class and expression, which only makes the weight heavier.

Most women, cis or trans, have been the recipients of genital-based oppression. Most women, cis or trans, have been told they are not feminine enough or not beautiful enough to deserve love. Our issues are the issues of anyone who wishes to abolish being told who you are before you have introduced yourself. The deaths of trans women this year, especially black trans women, tell us that visibility has not challenged the specific brand of misogyny that is killing us. It has only reassembled itself around the most vulnerable in our community. Women like me haven’t been able to heal from the stark reality that our bodies are unwillingly political statements, as we fear our death being the next number added to the growing list. This doesn’t end here, as we must get used to the possibility of that one of our sisters will be taken from us. A casual stroll through our Instagram feed turns into images of women like us who have been taken and debates over our humanity.

Including trans women doesn’t have to be a disruption to anyone’s lives. Adjustments of people’s language and shifts in people’s thinking can be small reminders that our lives are no longer an afterthought. Pausing for a moment before we use words like ‘penis’ to be synonymous with men, or ‘vagina’ to be synonymous with women. Dissecting the public interest with genitalia. Stopping the simplification of people down to their body parts. All of these are simple things you can do. As a woman with a penis, I’ve always felt shame during intimacy with new partners. Small alterations to the way we speak could save women like me from the feeling that words like ‘shame’ and ‘trans’ are interchangeable. This is a collective shift that begins with cis people, but could end up saving all of our lives. A shift that asks all people to question gender, and trusts they will seek out their own answers, not just requesting trans women to confront identity when we all could benefit from asking necessary questions. Releasing trans women from the responsibility of having all the answers about gender and identity. Ultimately leading us to conclusions that will allow our children to not be confined by the genders that were assigned to them, and to give them the space to have relationships with their own bodies.

Invoking the girl I was before that very public assault took place is impossible. I’ve resigned to the fact that she is now a part of the tapestry of my own womanhood that I will develop for the rest of my life. In order to ride the same train every day, I have had to bring the woman I aspire to become to the surface, and her presence can be felt in waves. I stand near other women on the train, hoping for a comrade in the diurnal scrutiny of our bodies. My comfort is in the mother, wife, and sister I envision myself to be, alongside all of the other trans women that are still using their lives as an example of the highest form of morality. The women who manage to face the world every day, despite their life expectancy being 35 years old. Now, being On The 6 means more than just my favorite childhood album, but I can still rely on the old familial practice of re-purposing her lyrics to mean whatever I need them to mean. The lyrics You gotta do it your way, you gotta prove it, you gotta mean what you say is a mantra to remind myself of the work left to be done, the hope of being alive to see the fruits of our labor, and instilling trust in young trans girls that their older trans sisters are working tirelessly to make their lives fuller and safer.

Transgender Day of Remembrance: Critique is Resistance; Resistance is Revolution

feature image art by Wriply M. Bennet

I am L’lerrét Jazelle Ailith. I am Lourdes Ashley Hunter. I am Janet Mock. I am Laverne Cox. I am Isis King. I am CeCe McDonald. I am Islan Nettles. I am Mia Henderson. I am Shelley Hilliard. I am Brittany Stergis. I am Tiffany Edwards. I am Gizzy Fowler. I am Marsha P. Johnson. I am every black trans woman that has had to live her life fighting the systems and people around her that seek to eradicate her existence. I am the woman that you have beaten, taunted, harassed, fired, and shamed. I live authentically in my truth, blazing a fiery path behind me that actively melts away the icy, exclusionary aura of the world that I must navigate. My hands are outstretched and am grasping every single one of my sisters that the TDOR lists are trying to engulf. I am them. They are us. We stand in solidarity to redefine our own realities and to rebuild our community that was broken apart at the hands of white supremacy and colonialism. We stand against the entrapment of the boxes of gender normativity and rebuke those who seek to place invisible cloaks across our claimed identities and articulated narratives. We refuse to operate in ways to fit systems and institutions that are inherently built to keep us out or seek to subjugate us. We are the revolution. We are stronger than the commodified victim narrative that has been forced onto our lived experiences. We are greater than the pity and sensationalization of all the TDOR events around the nation.

I want to take a moment to honor all of my sisters who have been murdered for living in their truths. If it weren’t for them dying for what they believe in and dying for each and every other sister that walks this Earth, I wouldn’t be here owning my voice. I wouldn’t be able to stand strong and unwavering proclaiming and owning my transness, blackness, queerness – hell, my penis! – if it weren’t for those Goddesses who owned those things and never let go. I wouldn’t have been inspired to love this skin I’m in if it weren’t for their legacies. But I also uplift the sisters by my side who live and love and teach me each and every day to never apologize for my authenticity. While we are all at our TDOR events or celebrating trans lives throughout the week, let’s begin to push our analyses a bit further. Let’s begin to engage in dialogue that acknowledges intersectional identities.

I implore you to sit back and ask yourself how you contribute to the violence and injustice against trans women of color. How do you reinforce the marginalization and ostracism of myself and my sisters? It’s all fine that we become aware of our lives but we need more than for you to finally see that we are walking this Earth. We need you to hear us. We need you to sit quietly, take notes, and begin to conceptualize what a restructured system that is void of misogynist, racist, ableist, etc oppression would look like. It’s not enough to read the names of my sisters killed off by the normative nature of this capitalistic system. Moments of silence are not enough. Calling us courageous is not enough. Having one or two trans friends is not enough. We need to begin to develop more complex analysis of the world in which we live. We need to rebuke assimilationism. It is an imperative to eradicate the prison industrial complex and the criminalization of sex work in all forms. I implore you to begin to question what has been engrained in you since birth. Own yourself and you can begin to see the truth.

I envision a period where being a black trans woman in all her glory is not deemed “courageous” or “revolutionary.” It is a ridiculous notion to think that one being themselves is revolutionary. I want to be able to walk to McDonald’s at 9:00 at night and not have to worry about being killed by transphobic bystanders, sexually molested by misogynistic jerks, or both of those things being perpetuated by police officers. I want to see my sisters out of jail cells. I want to see my sisters with jobs. I want to see them happy. I want to see black trans brilliance everywhere and until that day comes, we will not stop. The movement will always continue. Our voices will forever be the loudest. We will always walk with the fervor and passion that our fore sisters embodied. We are the revolution. We are Goddesses. Our lives matter. I am the Trans Women of Color Collective. Our voices slay.

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November 14th-20th is Trans Awareness Week, leading up to Trans Day of Remembrance on the 20th. This is a week where we raise visibility for trans people and address issues that affect the trans community. For Trans Awareness Week this year, we’ve asked several of our favorite TWoC writers to come in and share their thoughts and experiences with us. TWoC started the entire LGBTQ movement in the U.S. And they continue to be the victims of most of the anti-LGBTQ violence and discrimination. If we aren’t centering things on them, we are failing.

Remembering Us When We’re Gone, Ignoring Us While We’re Here: Trans Women Deserve More

Feature image via transascity.org

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There’s an interesting phenomenon that I’ve witnessed over the past few years. The names of trans women of color will be in the mouths of the queer community after they’ve been murdered, but support for us while we are still alive is sporadic at best. Trans women are pushed out of queer spaces by cis people, dfab genderqueers, and trans men, just to name a few. Women’s spaces are frequently hostile to us because we aren’t “real women” but trans men almost always get a free pass. And I’ve seen more than one cis queer say that trans women are “appropriating” the gay rights movement, totally ignorant of the fact that we started the damn thing. I have seen more than one cis queer say that we have nothing in common with them, that our issues are completely unrelated. We have a hard time finding dates, finding support, finding community. And when we dare to call people out for their transmisogyny, we are labeled crazy, hysterical, divisive. I have been called Austin “queer scene’s” number one enemy. All for daring to share my thoughts on the world around me.

Trans Day of Remembrance is filled to the brim with the names of murdered Black and brown trans women, but is a single evening of remembering enough? And what does it mean that TDoR doesn’t explicitly talk about race and is often dominated by white people? Here in Austin there’s this tradition of calling the names of the dead and then having an audience member sit in a chair that represents where the dead trans woman would sit. The seats are always filled with white people and non-trans women. What do our deaths mean when our bodies, our lives, the physical space we take up, is appropriated by white folks? How can I mourn for my sisters when the space set up for that mourning is so thoroughly colonized? And how can I even see hope of living a full life when I don’t see myself reflected in what is supposed to be my community?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to honor those women who came before us, those women murdered by colonial patriarchy. But it seems like more often than not, the queer community at large is content with just remembering. We only hear about trans women after their deaths. And even our deaths are not our own. A week doesn’t go by without a white queer citing the deaths of trans women of color as the evidence of how oppressed they are. These stats are often used in service of their own assimilation; meanwhile, they’re happy to leave us out in the cold. We don’t even have dignity in death, nor the ability to decide what it will mean for us.

Support for trans women dwindles when we are still alive. Nowhere is this clearer than in fundraisers run by and for trans women. There have been some success stories, but they always seem to be few and far between. More often than not, a trans woman’s fundraiser will get a few signal boosts, maybe a couple of dollars and then languish. Meanwhile, trans men’s fundraisers for transition related care often get fully funded. This funding disparity is also clear institutionally, where organizations that focus on the concerns and issues of trans women of color get a miniscule amount of all the money from LGBTQ foundations. This is especially true in the South, where LGBT organizations only get 3-4% of domestic LGBT funding. Again, cis, white, rich institutions are quick to use our murders in their statistics then turn around and spend their money on organizations that look like them: cis, white, and rich. Organizations that push for assimilation.

Obviously financial support isn’t the be all end all action to support trans women of color, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. And the fact that it’s a struggle for trans women to acquire financial assistance is symptomatic of our society’s priorities. It points to who is valuable and who is disposable. At the bottom of this article is a list of fundraisers and organizations for trans women that I would strongly encourage you to support. If you’re not a trans woman and you’re reading this, think long and hard about the ways that you’re supporting trans women in your community. Do you see trans women in public community spaces? How are your actions pushing them out? Don’t think that just giving money nullifies your collusion in transmisogyny. Financial support is important but it is not the only step. As we honor the memory of those girls who have been murdered, ask how you’re helping the living.

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Fundraisers to Cover Living Expenses

Backing Biko
Support Cherno Biko in advocating for folks like us!

Love Aaryn
Help Aaryn reach her dreams!

Support CeCe
Support CeCe’s work!

Lift Up Lourdes
Support a trans leader!

Save Fake Cis Girl from Financial Apocalypse
Help a trans woman of color keep her lights on!

Support Monica Roberts
Help Monica stave off homelessness!

Operation Zipzap
Help a trans woman go to electrolysis school!

Support Michelle
Help Michelle get money to go to school!

Miss Major Monthly Giving Circle
Help support a TWOC elder and living legend!

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Fundraisers to Cover Transition Related Care

TRANLATIN@ needs HELP for Surgery
Help a Pervuian trans women get access to gender affirming surgery!

Support Vanessa on her medical need
Help Vanessa get chest reconstruction surgery!

Proud Trans Latina seeking help with GRS
Help Naiymah get access to gender affirming surgery!

Sophia’s Breast Fund
Help Sophia access breast augmentation surgery!

Help a Homegirl out!
Help a trans latina get access to transition related care.

Ida’s Surgery Fund
Help writer and activist Ida access surgery!

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Fundraisers for Organizations that Serve Trans Women

Support the TWOC Collective
The TWOC Collective in NYC needs your support!

Alexis Documentary
Help a documentary about a trans woman activist get off the ground!

MagniFLY!
Donate to support TWOC filmmakers!

Trans Tech
Support an organization giving trans women the tools to support themselves!

Quirell
Help a social network by and for marginalized folks get started!

El/La Para Trans Latinas
Help fund an organization working to advocate for trans latinas!

Trans Latina Coalition
Support an organization doing national movement work!

Support Casa Ruby
Help a community center stay afloat!

If you are aware of any other similar fundraisers, please share them in the comments.

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November 14th-20th is Trans Awareness Week, leading up to Trans Day of Remembrance on the 20th. This is a week where we raise visibility for trans people and address issues that affect the trans community. For Trans Awareness Week this year, we’ve asked several of our favorite TWoC writers to come in and share their thoughts and experiences with us. TWoC started the entire LGBTQ movement in the U.S. And they continue to be the victims of most of the anti-LGBTQ violence and discrimination. If we aren’t centering things on them, we are failing.

A Thank You Letter From One Trans Woman To The Others in My Life

Dear trans sisters and mothers and abuelas and aunties and daughters and nieces and cousins,

Thank you for everything.

You are my life. You are my reason for being alive. Like, literally, when I was a young, closeted trans girl, and I became a part of the disturbing statistic that is 41% of trans people who attempt suicide, it was all of you who helped me get through. I saw you and I knew there was hope for me. I read your words and knew I had a future. I saw your lives and knew that I could have one too.

It was you who I looked to to find the courage to come out and it’s you who I keep looking to every day. Without you paving the way for me, I wouldn’t have had the options that I did. Thank you for that.

It took me years and years and years to feel beautiful, and thanks to all of you, now I do. You make me feel beautiful even when I’m at my least passable. You make me not even care about passing anymore. You give me the strength to say “fuck you” to the whole concept of passing. But that’s just for me, if you need to pass to survive or thrive, go do your thing. Put your safety and happiness first.

Thank you for showing me how to be my femme best. You gave me tips on how to apply lipstick, which colors make me look the best and which looks make me the most intimidating. You taught me how to look good in dollar store makeup and 80% off clearance dresses.

Thank you to all the trans women and trans feminine folks who came before me. You get erased so often and you deserve better. We should be teaching about you in our history classes. We should be learning about you on the History Channel. We should be seeing statues and murals celebrating you.

And thank you especially to my trans women of color sisters, you are pure divinity. You are heaven sent and you are the power in my life and in the world.

Thank you for the modern trans movement. Thank you for the entire modern LGBTQ movement. Thank you for standing up at Stonewall and refusing to back down or let the “respectable” queers silence you. Thank you for everything you’ve done and everything you continue to do. You face more discrimination, more hatred, more oppression and more violence than anyone else and you still stand in the front and lead us to a better place.

You are the power behind the movement and the light at its front. And you should be the focus of it.

I’m so sorry that we fail you so often.

My white father has given me privilege that I need to better use to support you. You’ve done so much for me and for every other trans woman and queer woman and queer everyone and I haven’t even come close to starting to pay you back.

Thank you for continuing to fight for our rights even as the rest of the “LGBTQ” movement continues to throw you under the bus.

Thank you for giving me a legacy to be proud of. It makes me beam with pride knowing that it was a fellow trans Latina who was one of the leaders at Stonewall, who fought for the rights of STARs to shine, who shouted and demanded rights for her and for people like her and refused to let others shout over her. It makes me proud to know that at every stop on the road to where we are today, you’ll see trans women of color standing there, fighting and loving and living.

Thank you for showing me that I have the strength within me to change the world. Y’all hustle so much harder than anyone else I’ve ever seen. Although so much of the world tries to stop you, the world stands absolutely no chance against you. And now I know that it stands no chance against me.

Thank you Sylvia Rivera, Miss Major and Marsha P. Johnson. Thank you Octavia St. Laurent. Thank you Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, CeCe McDonald, Reina Gossett, Carmen Carrera and Monica Roberts. Thank you Annika, Luna, Morgan and countless others. I love all of you and owe you everything.

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November 14th-20th is Trans Awareness Week, leading up to Trans Day of Remembrance on the 20th. This is a week where we raise visibility for trans people and address issues that affect the trans community. For Trans Awareness Week this year, we’ve asked several of our favorite TWoC writers to come in and share their thoughts and experiences with us. TWoC started the entire LGBTQ movement in the U.S. And they continue to be the victims of most of the anti-LGBTQ violence and discrimination. If we aren’t centering things on them, we are failing.

No Excuses: California Bans Gay and Trans Panic Defenses for Anti-LGBT Violence

feature image via shutterstock

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It’s been a banner summer for progressive action in California. Just a few weeks ago, California became the first state in the US to push their state universities to adopt more rigorous standards for what constitutes sexual consent. Last week, Governor Jerry Brown signed the “Respect After Death” law that will help ensure trans people are able to have their gender accurately reflected on their death certificate. Yesterday marked another important historic first for the state when Brown he signed AB2051, a bill banning the “gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses for assaulting or murdering members of the LGBTQ community.

The gay and trans panic concepts seem to come up very frequently when a hate crime is committed against a queer person, and it’s been at least partially employed in some of the most heinous murders of LGBTQ people in the last 20 years. When Gwen Araujo, an 18-year-old trans woman and the inspiration for the International Transgender Day of Rememberance, was brutally beaten to death in 2002 by four men who discovered she was trans, their attorneys unsuccessfully argued for a conviction for manslaughter, citing overwhelming anger at what was then referred to as “sexual deception.” In 2008, when another 18-year-old-trans woman, Angie Zapata, was beaten to death, her murderer also claimed it was a “crime of passion” after discovering that Zapata was trans. Earlier this year, a man charged with the beating of two trans women in Atlanta similarly invoked the defense, and was only charged with a misdemeanor. Unfortunately, this list could go on and on with examples of attempted justification for anti-queer hate crimes. Even more unfortunately, the argument does occasionally work.

The bill was introduced by Democratic California Assemblywoman Susan Bonita. It easily cleared the Assembly by a vote of 50–10, and marked the completion of Equality California’s goal to obtain passage of 100 pieces of LGBT legislation. It represents a considerable strengthening of the 2006 legislation that added specific language about bias defenses to California jury instructions, a bill named for Araujo. That law was shown to be considerably lacking after the mistrial in the case of the murder of 15 year old Larry King. This legislation updates the California Penal Code’s definition of “sudden quarrel or heat of passion” to exclude sexual orientation and gender identity:

“For purposes of determining sudden quarrel or heat of passion pursuant to subdivision (a), the provocation was not objectively reasonable if it resulted from the discovery of, knowledge about, or potential disclosure of the victim’s actual or perceived gender, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation, including under circumstances in which the victim made an unwanted nonforcible romantic or sexual advance towards the defendant, or if the defendant and victim dated or had a romantic or sexual relationship.”

After the Assembly’s approval of AB2051, Equility California’s Executive Director John O’Connor stated:

“We’re glad that the Assembly Public Safety Committee agreed that this manufactured defense that plays upon homophobia and transphobia has no place in California’s justice system. The law should not treat victims of crime any differently because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and that includes eliminating anti-LGBT bias as a ‘reasonable’ basis to mitigate the punishment for violent crimes against them.”

Last year, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution calling on lawmakers across the country to ban these kinds of defenses. Following the adoption of that resolution, president of the National LGBT Bar Association D’Arcy Kemnitz, published an op-ed making an impassioned push for national wide adoptions of these standards, writing:

“If courts in the South and the Midwest refuse to let this “defense” take root, it would be a huge step forward in our movement’s work to win not just legal equality, but indeed, legal validity and respect for LGBT people. A lot has changed in our country over the past 15 years. But we haven’t changed nearly enough until we’ve said, as a nation, that every life is valuable and no one can be attacked, murdered, or demeaned in our country or our courts because of who they are.”

Unfortunately, anti-LGBT violence remains frighteningly common, and the situation is particularly dire for trans women of color. This summer has been one of the deadliest in years for trans women of color across the US, and the overall rates of anti-trans violence appear to be on the rise. While a lot more work needs to be done to stem this horrific rise in violence, laws like these will at least give some hope for justice for those who fall victim to hate crimes for little more than daring to be themselves.

“It Was Personal”: Why I Don’t Take Part in the Trans Day of Remembrance

In the beginning, the Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR) had only one name. Rita Hester.

She was a well-known figure in Boston’s trans community. On November 28, 1998, she was found in her apartment, brutally stabbed to death. The news sent shockwaves among the local community. Exacerbated by the thoughtless news coverage and the inaction of the police, people sprang into action.

On December 3rd, 50 members of the Lesbian Avengers and Queer Riot protested the offices of the Bay Windows and Boston Herald. The next day, a week after Hester was found, a candlelight vigil was held. It drew 250 people, both inside and outside the trans community.

Charito Suarez, who attended the event, said,”It was personal. I’m not talking just about another transgender person. I’m talking about a person I actually knew. I knew her character and I knew her heart. I’m doing it for her. We must speak for her.”

It’s considered a turning point for trans rights in Boston and the US. The next year, San Fransisco activists began the “Remembering Our Dead” project, which morphed into the Trans Day of Remembrance.

Hester’s killing remains unsolved.

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Let me save you some time.

I don’t participate in the Trans Day of Remembrance because in 2011 I read a pair of essays by Morgan M. Page and Alyssa Caparas.

The basic gist: TDoR appropriates the narratives of poor trans women of color. It exploits them to create a culture of fear and advance a political agenda that will do nothing for the people named.

In short, the dead aren’t ours to remember.

That’s what I’m arguing. There’s also names. People. Some are trans women, some aren’t. Some were killed, some weren’t. Some have their names on the TDoR website, some don’t.

Who’s who is complicated.

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In October, Miguel Inostroz was sentenced to 112 years for the murder of Lucie Parkin, a Bay Area trans woman.

This wasn’t justice. Inostroz had attacked Parkin, an acquaintance, over a debt. One of Parkin’s friends intervened, and in the ensuing scuffle, Inostroz’s gun went off, killing Parkin.

The prosecution knew this, but still charged Inosroz with second degree murder. His sentence is based on California’s third strike rule.

Parkin’s name isn’t on the TDoR website. A couple of local organizations held side memorials for those who knew her to pay their respects.

Rita Hester’s personal connection to her community was central to her memorial. It’s what drove people to organize like never before.

Just over a decade later, and that personal connection was a side piece. It’d been replaced by an official memorial, full of names of people they’d never known until that day.

But not Parkin. The TDoR is for people who are considered to be the victims of ‘anti-trans’ violence.

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So, what does it mean to be killed by transphobia? We can think about it by looking at Matthew Shepard, maybe.

His murder was a lightning rod for the LGBTQ community. It was the catalyst for hate crimes laws. It renewed interest in the Brandon Teena story, resulting in the movie Boys Don’t Cry. The disparity of the coverage between Shepard’s murder and Rita Hester’s sparked the protests that became the TDoR.

Since then, Shepard’s murder has been reenacted, either directly or not. And, I suspect, it’s become the archetypal anti-LGBTQ hate crime, the standard by which all other crimes are judged.

This year, Steve Jimenez came out with a book claiming our account of it was wrong. Matthew Shepard, Jimenez claimed, was a meth user and dealer, who’d had sex with one of his killers. He was killed because of drugs, not sexual orientation.

There’s been considerable debate around whether or not these claims are true, partially true, etc. I don’t know enough to offer an opinion.

Honestly, though, I wouldn’t be surprised either way.

Criminality is part of the queer/trans* community. It’s a way to earn a living when you’ve been pushed out of the workforce. There’s fewer barriers to entry, so it’s easier to circumvent discrimination.

But it comes with extra dangers, including being targeted by people who know you won’t – can’t – go to the police. That’s what police suspect happened to Tyrell Jackson and 3 other ‘transvestite prostitutes’, who were all robbed at gunpoint on April 4, 2012. Jackson was shot trying to flee, and died.

Jackson is on the TDoR website.

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In her article, Morgan Page quotes Mirha-Soleil Ross saying that if trans activists factored sex work into the Trans Day of Remembrance, the list would lose half its names. She also talks about how the names are used to advance a culture of fear for political purposes.

I think about those comments when I see the argument of anti-trans violence. Say this, do that, and you’re Just As Bad as the people who kill trans people on the street.

More than the culture of fear being used for politics, the politics of fear has become the main justification for our existence.

And it’s a problem.

It’s a problem because it inherently removes the complexity of the people whose names we call. And it’s a problem because it removes the nuance of transphobia.

Because, yes, sometimes it is what you’d expect. But it’s also not being able to get a job because you have no legal ID. It’s your soon-to-be-ex trying to get ‘incriminating’ pictures of you so they can take the kids. It’s the government not recognizing your new family like they did the old one. Sometimes, yes, it’s sex work and dealing. Or, it’s getting a temp job in a warehouse and saving pennies for an out of pocket surgery.

It’s rough. And sometimes it’s violent. But it’s more complex than the perpetrator-victim model. And when we reduce it to that, it distorts how we organize against transphobia.

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On January 8th, The New Statesman published Suzanne Moore’s contribution to Red, the Waterstone’s Anthology. It contained an oblique reference to the “Brazilian transsexual” ideal.

She was questioned about it, a fight erupted, and, on January 11th, she left Twitter.

On January 13th, her friend Julie Burchill published a defense of Moore in The Observer, using every transphobic term she could think of.

It unleashed a torrent of criticism from the online feminist community. Hundreds wrote to the Press Complaints Commission, saying that Burchill’s words were personally threatening to them. On January 14th, The Observer removed the piece and issued an apology.

That same day, The New Statesman published a story about one Lucy Meadows.

She was a primary school teacher who’d made the difficult decision to transition between the Fall and Spring semesters. In response, a couple of parents went to the papers, decrying the situation.

The papers ran with the story. Richard Littlejohn issued his own transphobic op-ed calling for Lucy to leave her job. Papers suppressed the accounts of supportive parents. Reporters were camped in front of Meadows’ door.

She’d filed her own report with the Press Complaints Commission. This, incidentally, is the type of behavior they were meant to police: when journalists invade privacy, target non-public figures, suppress parts of a story.

But hers was the only complaint filed. There was no one to protest the Daily Mail, or the other papers involved. No one to organize supportive neighbors into filing more complaints. People were busy protesting Julie Burchill for threatening the trans community.

Three months later, Meadows committed suicide. Posthumous complaints poured in. But by then it was too late. Littlejohn’s op-ed was removed, but he kept his job.

Just to recap: everyone who wrote to the PCC saying how Burchill’s writing threatened them is still alive. Lucy Meadows is not.

Incidentally, Suzanne Moore’s piece is still on The New Statesman. It still says “Brazilian transsexual”.

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Lucy Meadows is not on the TDoR.

Suicides aren’t included. You can be hunted by the press to the point of despair, but if you kill yourself, it doesn’t count. If you overdose, it doesn’t count. If you go in for unlicensed injections and get pneumonia, it doesn’t count. If you die from complications because a doctor refuses to treat you, it only counts if you die that night.

There are a thousand ways to die from being trans. But they’re only included if they can be made as sensationalist as possible. Nevermind that all these things kill you just the same. Never mind that self harm, substance abuse, and suicide are some of the biggest killers of trans women around. Nevermind that there’s a whole generation of us relying solely on black market medicine, potentially creating a host of medical issues.

Nevermind the reality of the trans community, as long as it makes a good story to browbeat someone with.

What, exactly, is being remembered? And what isn’t?

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A couple of weeks before the TDoR, some members of the local queer community held a small, public memorial. It commemorated the lives of queer/trans* friends lost in the last year.

The list was small, and the cause of deaths weren’t dramatic (one died in a car accident). The memorial wasn’t widely attended. Its record wasn’t widely shared.

But if I had to choose, that would be the memorial I’d attend.

If you want to fix the TDoR, I only have a small piece of advice: don’t read the name of someone you don’t know. I don’t care how they died, or when they died, or if they were an asshole. But know them.

If you don’t have a name, wonderful! Great! Be there for the people who do. Make it about the trans community as a place of support, not suffering.

If the person talking isn’t trans, okay. As long as the person they’re talking about is trans. Transphobia doesn’t just affect trans people, but also their lovers, family, friends. Have this be a place they can go to, and share the stories of the people they knew and loved.

And, maybe, don’t call it the Trans Day of Remembrance. Maybe have it be its own thing.

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We have a need to grieve. We’re human.

And in the queer community, that need is often taken away from us. We’re denied access to our loved ones. Legal families disrespect their identity in services.

It’s why people fought so hard for gay marriage. They wanted the chance to mourn those who died in the AIDS crisis. They couldn’t stand being torn away from their loved ones’ beds any more.

To some extent, the Trans Day of Remembrance can be a conduit for that mourning. But it can also be a barrier to it.

But more than the TDoR, our mourning needs to be for us. Trans people and allies, who do share in a lot of the same trials and tribulations. It shouldn’t be about building the narrative. It should be about listening to know what the narrative is.

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On November 20th, a trans woman was found at the base of a bridge. It was deemed a suicide. She was a Youtube personality, and fellow trans Youtubers delivered a tearful eulogy, and shared on an online support. The rest of us took turn offering condolences.

Yes, I know it’s online. And you wouldn’t have to do much work to find out who this is. All the same, I don’t feel comfortable sharing it here. It’s personal.

The UN Includes “Gender Identity” in Resolution Condemning Discrimination-Based Killings

On Tuesday, the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) made great strides in terms of LGBT rights when it voted to keep sexual orientation and include gender identity in a resolution condemning executions for reasons of discrimination. This is the first time in history that gender identity has been included in the resolution. It’s a big step for the United Nations, considering that only two years ago, the UN nearly dropped the category of sexual orientation from the list of condemned discrimination-based killings.

In 2010, an argument broke out in the General Assembly over whether gay people should be singled out for the same protections given to other persecuted minorities. Condemnation of executions for racial, national, ethnic, religious, linguistic reasons, as well as because of sexual orientation, were already specified in the resolution; but a committee-level change brought forth by Arab and African nations dropped sexual orientation and replaced it with the far-more-general discriminatory reasons on any basis. Luckily, “sexual orientation” was reinstated soon after it was erased from the resolution, but again, this year, many countries opposed its inclusion and were against the proposal, introduced by Sweden, to include the category of “gender identity’ to the resolution. Trinidad and Tobago were concerned that the specific referral to “gender identity” would present a “particular challenge” for their country. Egypt said that it was “alarmed at the attempts to make new rights and new standards.” Alhough it was opposed by the Arab Group, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the resolution still passed with 109 votes in favor, 1 against, 65 abstentions, and 18 absent. Those countries in favour of the resolution included the United States, Brazil, and South Africa. Asia has often been silent in matters of LGBT rights, but this time, the Asia Group voted to keep “sexual orientation” and add “gender identity” to the resolution, and Japan even made an impassioned speech stating:

We cannot tolerate any killings of persons because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Our delegation voted against the proposed amendment to this paragraph because we think it is meaningful to mention such killings from the perspective of protecting the rights of LGBT people.

The historic resolution comes a year after the U.N sanctioned research on international violence and discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Last year, South Africa presented the proposal for this study to the High Commissioner for Human Rights. It was the first time the U.N took steps to research violence and discrimination faced by LGBT people.

Graeme Reid, the LGBT rights director at Human Rights Watch, said,

“The Human Rights Council has taken a first bold step into territory previously considered off-limits. We hope this groundbreaking step will spur greater efforts to address the horrible abuses and discrimination against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The research found that, unsurprisingly, the human rights of LGBT people around the world are being violated. Same-sex relationships are criminalized in 76 countries, punishable by arrest, prosecution, imprisonment, and in five countries (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Mauritania) the death penalty. The study also found that LGBT people face systemic discrimination when it comes to healthcare, education, and the labour market. As Reid had hoped, the UN has indeed “spurred greater efforts” to tackle discrimination by including “gender identity” and leaving sexual orientation in the resolution condemning unjustifiable executions.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon spoke about the research’s disturbing findings and pointed to the importance of ending silence around issues of gender identity and sexual orientation:

Some say that sexual orientation and gender identity are sensitive issues. I understand. Like many of my generation, I did not grow up talking about these issues. But I learned to speak out because lives are at stake, and because it is our duty under the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to protect the rights of everyone, everywhere.

But unfortunately, the UN still has a long way to go. Although the resolution has passed, two-thirds of UN members have still refused to sign a separate statement condemning all human rights violations based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The U.S didn’t even sign this statement until 2009, once Obama had been elected as President.

Though UN resolutions and statements are not legally binding, they are still important in setting an international standard on what is accepted. The past few years, the U.N has made great strides in showing that though individual countries still have a long way to go, the international community at large does not accept discrimination and violence against LGBT people.

As Jessica Stern, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission summarizes it well:

With [Tuesday’s] UN vote, a majority of governments worldwide decisively rebutted the ideology of hate and affirmed the simple but fundamental premise that LGBT people have a right to exist. By some measure, this is a low bar, but progress is incremental and every step must be celebrated in advancing human rights for everyone, everywhere

OPEN THREAD: Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today is the 13^th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. The event, which is observed internationally, was founded in the wake of the 1998 murder of Rita Hester, a trans woman of color. It’s is a day to honor the memories of thousands of people who have lost their lives simply for having the courage to be themselves— victims of pointless and horrific transphobic violence. It’s a time for reflection—both on the how far the trans* community has come in its pursuit of equality and also on how far we have to go before social justice for trans* people becomes reality. Even in 2011, trans* people are routinely attacked, bullied, harassed, and ridiculed, and discriminated against in schools and at work. According a report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, transgender women accounted for nearly half of all anti-LGBT murders last year. Trans women of color, in particular those who are attracted to men, are especially at risk. Despite all this, many people still find it appropriate to question whether trans* people should be legally protected, including at my alma mater.

Eliminating anti-trans* violence isn’t something that can be achieved by changing discrimination laws, although it’s a step in the right direction. Today is a reminder that we all must take responsibility for combating transphobia. It’s about making our voices heard and taking a stand against bigotry and hatred. It’s about creating a future in which the next generation of trans* kids can feel safe and proud of who they are.

Until then, we must honor our dead. Please feel free to share your stories and feelings in the comments section below.

International Transgender Day of Remembrance: We Will Win the Coming Revolutions

TRANS REMEMBRANCE DAY:

Yesterday was the Transgender Day of Remembrance, where we honor the memory of people who have been murdered for being trans or for having a different body/mind/heart/soul than someone thought they should have. There are a staggering number of people that we find ourselves honoring this way, a number that is so large it seems impossible and could easily incapacitate you for the rest of the day just trying to process it, could incapacitate you for the rest of your life. For some people it has.

It’s when we remember those who have lost their lives and remember that for those trans people who survive, there is a constant threat of changing groups, of joining the ranks of those who are remembered next year. C.L. Minou of The Second Awakening and Tiger Beatdown says,

“I will remember because that body lying somewhere unmourned could be me. Because it is me… I won’t shrug or carp about how there’s so much death brought up today. Because there is a lot of death. And that needs to be remembered, to be brought up, to be shoved in the face of those who are indifferent to it until something changes, really changes, and trans people are allowed to join the human race.”

Today isn’t the Transgender Day of Remembrance, it is Sunday Funday. So without making light of or de-emphasizing yesterday, I want to suggest that today be a celebration. If you’re remembering the dead, it means you’re still here, and probably that you have a network of people who love you and have your back no matter what and they got you this far and they’ll get you even farther. If you’re reading this, you’re still here, and so am I.

As Queerty says, “Transgender Americans are making strides worldwide, whether on the basketball court or the sorority house or the workplace, and that’s because of increased visibility and the queer community supporting members of our own.”

And even when we’re not making what look like strides worldwide, even when the community is grieving and hurt and in constant physical and psychological danger, we are still moving forward, because just existing in a culture that hates you is a big fuck you to that culture, just getting up and going to work is a huge deal. Even on days when you don’t do that, when you can’t quite make it there or don’t have a job because no one will hire you, you are moving forward. I was recently led to the badass pamphlet QUEERS READ THIS from a really great tumblr and I wanna show you this part:

“The strong sisters told the brothers that there were two important things to remember about the coming revolutions, the first is that we will get our asses kicked. The second, is that we will win.”

Ok? Remember that. Write that down. We’re getting our asses kicked every day. But we’re going to win.

HARRY POTTER:

Do you really care about anything besides Deathly Hallows right now? My tumblr dash and the comments on this post would indicate that you do not. SO. Let’s get down to it. I haven’t seen the movie so we’re not going to talk about it in specifics. I just wanna know your thoughts/feelings. Did you go to the midnight showing? Did you dress up? Was it hot? Here is a rundown of 10 good Harry Potter costumes. They are pretty good I guess but I feel like you guys can do better. Also, would you like to look at this roundup of pictures of Emma Watson in magazines? Yes. I don’t like the one where it looks like she’s poking her eyes out b/c it’s scary but I like this one, it’s my favorite. (@mentalfloss) (@ontd)

Also – and this is really the entire point – here is a tutorial on making your own hyperrealistic magic wand out of PAPER. I don’t care if this is news or not, it is awesome. Ok so maybe you also need glue. I think you guys can handle that. Omfg don’t even wait to finish this post just go make a wand RIGHT NOW. (@instructables)

GARDASIL:

The FDA advisory committee has recommended that the HPV vaccine Gardasil be approved for treatment of young boys as well as young girls, which is great news because it represents a recognition that some of those boys are going to grow up to have sex with other boys and therefore be at risk for cancer and other negative health effects if exposed to HPV. It’s like if sex positivity met the medical field. What a thing. (@queerty)

GAY ON GAY TV:

There is something so pleasingly symmetrical about this – Emmett Honeycutt (Peter Paige) from Queer As Folk comments on Kurt (Chris Colfer), saying that he thinks his presence on Glee “does a lot of good.” Specifically, “I think any time we’re getting into people’s living rooms showing them complicated, interesting, relevant portrayals of gay people, we’re doing something right. It matters.” It is hard to argue with that sentiment, given its source! (@ontopmag)

QUEER YOUTH:

We Are The Youth is a photographic journalism project recording the stories of queer kids and teens all across America. Jezebel featured the story of Audri, from Laurel, Mississippi, and it is all kinds of perfect/heartbreaking. “I came out at, like, 12-years-old, first as bisexual. I thought I liked guys a little bit but I really did like girls a whole lot. I came out to my mom before I came out to everyone at school. I was like, “I have something to tell you…” and I couldn’t get it out. And she said, “You’re not sexually active, are you?” And I’m like “God no. I’m kind of bisexual.” She’s like, “You’re 12. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Go back to sleep.” But now my mom is a PFLAG mom and has rainbow stickers all over her car.” (@jezebel)

ANNE HATHAWAY ON GLEE:

I’m sorry, but this is perfect. Anne Hathaway (who left her church because she wouldn’t accept its views on her gay brother) has already planned out her fantasy guest spot on Glee. “I would want to play Kurt’s long lost aunt, his mother’s sister, who is also gay, who comes back to help him deal with his sexuality, and I would sing “You Are Not Alone” from Stephen Sondheim’s epic show Into The Woods.” OKAY. SIGN HER UP. (@foreign)

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS:

IT’S COMING BACK, BITCHES (@ontd)

ZOMBIES:

This is an article about the history of America’s zombie fascination. What. It’s interesting. World War Z was actually a really good book. YOU DON’T HAVE TO CLICK ON IT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO OK. “In America, the legends of zombies grew out of the cultures created by African slavery and colonialism in the Caribbean. Folklore experts have traced the idea of the zombi back to Vodoun practices in Haiti, where tales have long been told of people brought back from the dead as shambling shadows of themselves. Sometimes these zombis are under the control of a master, and sometimes they simply wander mindlessly.” (@i09)