The chairs in the classroom of the Escuela Amaranta Gomez are organized in a circle. The crowd of children takes a while to simmer down, their ages ranging from 7 to 16. Tall, thin, and beautiful, Miss Antonia Jorquera presides before them, wearing a crown and a sash. She waves to the girls, who look at her agape as if she was a Disney princess. Antonia talks about her childhood in the Chilean south, where there was little to no television. A time when she adored pink.

“Like me!” a girl answers.
Antonia laughs. “I’d also put on my mom’s high heels,” she continues.
“Did you do it in hiding?” another girl asks.
“I’d wear them daily! But secretly, otherwise my mom would berate me.”
“My mom lets me,” another girl brags.
“My mom would also let me,” another voice joins.

The side conversation goes on for a while—the classroom brims with the noise of the children. Teacher Romina intervenes: “Could somebody in the classroom define what is a ‘Miss’?”

“A beautiful woman, a diva!” answer some girls. “It appears in the video games, whenever I miss a shot,” jokes a boy.

“What could you say about being a Miss, Antonia?”

“To be a Miss means a lot of things,” she answers, ever smiling, waving her hand softly as she speaks. “It doesn’t have anything to do with beauty standards. It’s about socializing things that are not shown—it is to represent the people who live in hiding.”

“No to fracking!” says a hand drawn poster on the wall. Below, a grieving Earth is filled with iron towers. “I’m radical because I want happiness for everybody,” quotes another. It shows legendary Communist politician and Pinochet critic Gladys Marín. In a corner, messages dangle from a string: “It doesn’t matter what you decide to do. Just make sure you’re happy”; “What’s broken can be forged once again”; “If it doesn’t hurt you, let live”;“It’s not a wrong body, it is mine, it belongs to me, it identifies me and I LOVE IT.”

To be a 'Miss' means a lot of things. It is to represent the people who live in hiding.
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Jorquera is Miss Chile Trans, and minutes later will be joined by Fernanda Muñoz, Chile’s representative for Miss Trans Star International. They’re there to talk to the children as a part of their Civil Formation Workshop, one of the landmark classes in this trans feminist school. Profe Romina and most of the children here are transgender.

The school was created a little less than a year ago by Evelyn Silva and Ximena Maturana, both mothers of trans girls. It is a project of Silva’s Selenna Foundation, which protects the rights of transgender children in Chile. Wherever there’s a trans child, Selenna is there—usually using the school structures—offering speeches and workshops aimed at normalizing transgender and non-binary identities. (Just this past November, Chilean President President Sebastián Piñera signed a measure—the Gender Identity Law—which allows transgender youth over 14 to legally change their names, and guarantees their right to be officially addressed according to their true gender.)

“We have 50 families, more or less, with whom we work actively,” says Maturana. “This a communal work. It’s child, family and school. The foundation establishes strong bonds with whatever schools its children are in.”

Maturana says she didn’t realize the radical immersion she would undergo when she found herself fully committed to the cause. She began her journey by participating with her daughter—who is now a teenager—wherever and whenever she could, always following Silva’s lead. But eventually, she got asked to give talks by herself; she compares her change of worldview with her daughter’s transformation.

“I realized that my life before my daughter’s transition wasn’t going to be the same after,” she says. “I suddenly felt super involved with this social change—I realized that I could not only support my child, but also other children who needed it and whose parents didn’t have the time to do it.”

As a parent, Maturana recognizes the difficulty of accepting the reality that once your child begins to transition, their life in school could inevitably become more difficult before becoming better. There’s a lot of self convincing: It’s gonna be alright, they’re going to respect my kid.

“The thing is, children remember,” Maturana explained to me. “They’ve got enough consciousness to say, ‘you were previously this and now you’re that’. Then it’s the trans child’s turn to do the explaining. Over and over. And over again. It’s much easier when you start from scratch with your chosen name than having to struggle with an old version of yourself.”

Inevitably, violence kicks in.

While it manifests in all kinds of ways, Maturana says school violence often emerges through everyday actions, like when she used to pick up her daughter at school and every parent’s eyes were fixed on her as she came out. “‘I’m okay with you, but don’t mess with my child’, their eyes said. Before you realize it your kid ends up being the only one not invited to birthday parties. It’s sad that everybody’s in the birthday picture except for your child.”

Usually, before trans children officially enter any school, their parents speak with the headmaster in order to explain the need for the Foundation to preemptively address the students to raise awareness and respect through speeches.“The first thing the director often says is, ‘But the parents, they won’t understand’… I don’t believe any excuse to be valid, but there’s no one who knows parents better than the directors,” Maturana says.

Parents are—painfully—often the first to object to the speeches the Selenna Foundation gives. “Why should my child learn this stuff?” they complain. Maturana says she finds this rather ironic, considering that the Foundation has received calls from schools regarding “concerned” parents who’ve reported that their children are dating a trans classmate.

“I think parents can be even more screwed up than the kids,” Ximena posits.

The Misses’ visit became venting ground for both them and the children on their experiences in the school system. A trans girl of around ten years talked about the time a teacher shoved his foot into her path, tripping her onto the ground. Another trans girl remembers a series of violent bullying episodes. A gay friend of hers was beaten and bullied so much he hid in the bathroom and broke his finger punching the wall out of rage; she described a second episode where she lashed out and beat up a girl after being bullied herself.

Before you realize it your kid ends up being the only one not invited to birthday parties. It’s sad that everybody’s in the birthday picture except for your child.
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Teacher Romina intervenes quickly at the tail end of these recollections to remind the children that violence isn’t the answer, which was quickly objected to by another student. She felt it is only natural to lash out when you suffer from so much rage.

Romina knows something about pent up anger. A history teacher and trans activist, she put her pedagogy studies on hold for ten years in order to transit successfully. She finally got her degree two years ago, just after she got to change her name. Around the time of our conversation, she was going to retrieve her diploma with her new name as well.

Parents often recognize that their child can’t handle being in the same school they previously attended while they’re also in transition, so they take them out and let their children stay home. Some keep up by taking standardized tests, but others don’t even do that. “There’s a kid here [In the Amaranta Gómez School] who’s 16 and is about to enter fifth grade,” says Maturana. For years the child would constantly change schools, but only ever lasted a few months before giving up.

The Escuela Amaranta Gomez exists to put an end to that stigma, shame, and derailing of education. Classes start at 9 AM and end around 2:15 PM. Maturana arrives earlier because one of the girls arrives around 7:15, the only time her parents can drop her off. “The idea is to be as uncomplicated as possible so the parents can come drop off their kids. There can’t be any excuse for them not to come.”

With 22 children, the classes are divided in two, according to age. The day is divided in three modules and, according to the day they may have language, math, science, history or English. They also have workshops, which can range from art therapy and yoga, to programming and the aforementioned Civil Formation.

“The focus of the Civil Formation Workshop is more about participation rather than political alphabetization, like knowing about institutions, voting or traditional politics,” says Profe Pedro, a cis male history teacher for the teenage group. The Workshop is the only time all of the students are together. “It’s more focused on community participation, where the kids recognize themselves as political subjects in daily life and get to see school as a space for democracy.”

The Escuela Amaranta Gomez exists to put an end to the stigma, shame, and derailing of education that transphobia can cause.
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Such a radical vision of school also means democratizing issues such as content. What do the kids want to learn? When I was interviewing Pedro, they were divided into groups of three tasked with drawing a comic on a different moment in colonial history.

Maturana discussed the merits of a roleplaying game the teens created:

“They made their own characters and through some chips and dice, they created a parallel world in which they travel through time. If you’re in a determinate space and time, in order to go further you have to get to know that place. So you have to learn if there’s a president, an emperor, what did they eat, how did they dress, if it was cold, whatever. They end up learning about science, history, human traits like empathy and responsibility, because your character also has qualities and defects.”

While trans children are the majority of the student population, the school’s not exclusive to them. It has also received cis children who have had problems with bullying or are sent by government support programs. The only requirement is for the parents to agree with the school’s priority: trans issues. Maturana talks about a cis boy who had suffered from a lot of bullying and had entered just three days ago: “His mom was telling me that yesterday afternoon he was feeling badly and that the only thing he wanted was to come here.”

There’s a reason it’s called Escuela, and not Colegio, two words often looked as synonyms in Spanish. If it’s Colegio, it means it has the approval of the Education Ministry. The approval of the Education Ministry means it fulfills certain requirements, which Silva and Maturana aren’t sure if they want to accomplish or abide by yet.

There’s no way a formal school would allow a child to enter just two weeks before closing the year. The Amaranta Gómez School does. The Education Ministry allows some flexibility in applying a different grading system rather than the traditional Chilean 1.0 to 7.0 (worst to best), but that’s not enough in this school. “It’s not like you’ve got to study for a test and that’s the all reflection of what you’ve learned,” says Maturana. “It doesn’t have to be a 7.0. It can simply be an accomplishment, a congratulations, and that’s something we don’t wanna lose.”

Profe Romina believes the Ministry’s focus doesn’t represent an adequate type of education. “It doesn’t give the teachers enough space to do the work we should really do, which is more oriented towards creation and not just obeying rules.”

Nevertheless, the Minister, Marcela Cubillos, actually came once and handed out a prize. “I forgot the name,” says Maturana, “but it was like ‘best relationship among the students.'” She still seems puzzled by the visit and no wonder, given that Cubillos is so conservative that when she was a Congresswoman, she voted against the legalization of divorce in 2004.

What’s most important about being recognized by the Ministry, however, is that the school receives financing by the State. As of this moment, all eight teachers are volunteers, and the children’s families don’t have to pay anything. Meanwhile, they’ve found financing through two international NGOs, one from the United States, and another from Switzerland. Now they’re going to apply to the International Trans Fund.

Such a radical vision of school also means democratizing issues such as content. What do the kids want to learn?
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“What do you think about the people that criticize you because ‘that’s not how God made you’?” a boy asks Jorquera. “Actually, I’m a strong believer,” she answers. “Thanks to God I’ve achieved many things. I would say those people are wrong because he made us all according to his image.”

“When we went to the Civil Registry, there were a lot of religioses screaming at us,” remembers a girl, speaking of the bigoted protesters using their gender inclusive neutral form created by the trans community. As young as she is, she shows empathy even for those who are not willing to grant her the same.

Maturana doesn’t remember the episode in the Civil Registry, but she does remember a time they had a field trip to Congress. It was the first time protesters aimed their ire at the children. Religioses.

“That had never happened,” said Maturana, “and it was super uncomfortable, but the kids were very brave.” Usually it’s the parents who get all the bullets. They’re the degenerates, they’re the ones distorting the children. A news crew came along with the Minister during her visit, after which “a lot of people started writing on our page. Really nasty stuff.”

Luckily, there haven’t been any physical attacks, and Maturana believes the neighborhood has something to do with it. They feel safe there. Unlike other quarters in Santiago, this one boasts a hot history. The last bastion of social housing in Chile, the National Stadium nearby—created during the ‘60s—had served as a camp for torture and extermination during the days after the coup.

It was also there where, years later, a dozen freedom fighters in hiding were slaughtered by dictatorship soldiers. After the damages suffered during the 2010 earthquake, the neighborhood organized itself into an assembly that still exists today and offers services such as cleaning brigades, newsletters, recreational activities, and a mobile library.

For the moment, though, they’re still uneasy about posting their exact address.

Like so many places in the world, Chile finds itself in the crosshairs of two colliding forces. On one side, not only did our own Daniela Vega became the first trans person to present in the 2018 Academy Awards, but the film she starred in, A Fantastic Woman, won the Best Foreign Film Category. After a heavy debate, the Gender Identity Law was also approved, a process that until this legislation passed, could take years. (You can thank the 14 years limit to the concerned conservatives who, as always, issued their “think of the children” shields).

On the other hand, you’ll still find fascism. Pinochet fanboy, José Antonio Kast, lost his presidential run in 2017 with 7% of the votes and a unified base in the ultra right, among them evangelicals and neo nazis. A few months ago, the conservatives rallied against the “Gender Ideology”, a term they use to demonize anything related to gender equality, from feminism to trans rights. The gathering amassed thousands and featured quite a few gems: neo-nazi splinter groups going out of their way to beat up kids who were dancing to K-Pop, the police force—famous for gassing any kind of protest prowled the forefront stick in hand like guard dogs—and President Sebastian Piñera’s government defended the conservative demonstrators’ “freedom of speech.”

The jury’s still out on how long this hate-wave is going to last, but Romina is sincere with the teenagers. Given the life she’s had, her insight is useful, especially taking into account that at some point, they’re going to apply to colleges and jobs. “I believe they should learn to defend themselves. Not to make them rioters, but to make them aware that there is violence outside—it would be an irresponsibility not to convey that knowledge.”

Regarding the smaller children, Romina offers another strategy. “Personally, I just try to allow them to live their childhood. I don’t talk politics, gender or anything. As kids, they’re worried about the next Disney film, about Christmas, about screaming, playing and jumping.”

That’s Maturana’s strategy as well: “What they need the most is a mother’s complicity.”

As the Civil Formation Workshop was ending, and the younger children who had succumbed to uneasiness and had started slipping under the tables, sliding over the floor and playing, came back to their seats, Miss Fernanda provided some final words of advice: “What’s important is that we don’t put a shell on against the world.”

Peggie Ames is, quite possibly, the most important transgender activist you have never heard of. Ames, who died in 2000, dealt with issues that remain relevant within contemporary feminist and LGBTQ social movements. She played a significant role in the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier (MSNF), Buffalo, New York’s first gay liberation organization, though her membership was viewed with suspicion by some members of the gay community. Ames identified as a lesbian and experienced rejection by portions of Buffalo’s lesbian feminist community who saw her womanhood as suspect. Most importantly, she created a blueprint for trans activism in rural communities and mid-sized cities.

Ames was assigned male at birth when she was born in 1921, in Buffalo, New York, and her journey to self-identification was similar to other trans women of her era. From childhood she sensed she was “different.” She dressed in her mother’s and sister’s clothes and borrowed their cosmetics when alone. She enrolled in college and joined a fraternity in an attempt to fit in with her male peers. She married and had a child before being drafted into the Air Force during World War II. Honorably discharged a year later, she completed dual degrees in Business and Psychology at the University of Buffalo, opened an insurance business, and had three more children. All this time, she dressed as Peggie in secret, fearing discovery by her family and friends.

In the Cold War era, gays and lesbians were persecuted within the federal government and American society, and trans issues were virtually unknown outside of medical circles where they were highly pathologized. Ames found a role model in Christine Jorgensen, the first trans celebrity who brought the concept of “sex change” to the forefront of American consciousness. Ames followed her story in the media and observed that, although the well-dressed and witty Jorgensen was celebrated by some, many saw her as little more than a freak. Therefore, she hid her true self in what historian David Serlin refers to as “the Cold War closet.” She did not even learn the word “transsexual” until 1973.

That year, on a day when she was home alone, she fell asleep on the living room sofa, and her wife returned to find Peggie, not the husband she thought she knew. Now that Peggie was “outed,” Ames decided to live full time as who she was. The couple initially discussed living together platonically as two women, but Ames’ wife, a deeply religious woman, could not reconcile the fact that Peggie identified as a lesbian. Her children took the news even harder, effectively cutting her out of their lives and denying her access to her eight grandchildren. Ames’ second-eldest son, Daryll, committed suicide after community members harassed him about Ames’ transition, and he left behind a note citing her as the reason he took his own life. It would be years before Ames’ eldest son and her daughter, Marsha, would make tentative contact.

Ames and her wife divorced in 1973, and she struggled financially for the remainder of her life. To support herself she opened a furniture refinishing and antique restoration business that she operated out of her barn, and taught adult education courses on woodworking. The rural community of Clarence Center treated her much as her family did. In a letter, written to a lover in 1974, she described the harassment she faced:

Boys ran by the house last night screaming, ‘Peggie, you fucking faggot.’ The police won’t come. Last year the state trooper laughed in my face. Everyone tells me the only solution is to sell. They just want to get rid of this pest, this insidious blemish on their lives and community, this freak, this fucking faggot, this queer who is infecting their lives like poison like cancer. It is becoming too much.

Yet, Ames pressed forward with her transition. After consulting with doctors at the Harry Benjamin Foundation in New York City, she underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1974, which at the time cost around $8,000. She saw the same doctors as tennis player Renée Richards, one of the first out trans athletes.

Ames understood the importance of advocacy to fight gender and sexual discrimination. In 1970 she joined the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier. MSNF incorporated as a non-profit organization in May of 1970 largely to address the targeting and closure of gay bars by the Buffalo Vice Squad. MSNF took the name of an earlier homophile organization, founded in Los Angeles in 1950, though in belief and practice they were more similar to the gay liberationist organizations, such as New York City’s Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), that emerged in the post-Stonewall period.

Ames was elected secretary of MSNF — a somewhat unusual position for a trans person to hold within a gay liberation organization at this time — in 1973 and 1974 and was praised for the efficiency and skill with which she performed her duties. Buffalo was, in the words of longtime gay rights activist Madeline Davis, “a Rust Belt city on the edge of the Midwest.” MSNF’s membership was comprised of both college-educated professionals and blue-collar workers. The group, as such, was less concerned with the politics of respectability present in other post-Stonewall gay rights organizations in large cities and could therefore make room for a white college-educated trans woman such as Ames to occupy a position of leadership. Gay liberation organizations in large cities, such as the GAA, whose membership was comprised primarily of white college-educated men, often espoused a militant politics of liberation but did not allow gender non-conforming people to represent the organization in the press, and were reluctant to fund their causes.

Ames also participated in MSNF’s peer counselor training program, organized panels on transsexualism for Buffalo’s annual Gay Pride Week, and joined MSNF’s Speakers Bureau. In a 1978 profile of Ames written for the Courier-Express, a Buffalo morning newspaper, she estimated that she had lectured to around 12,000 people on the topic of transsexualism, primarily medical, nursing, and Psychology students at the University of Buffalo and other area campuses. According to Carole Hayes, a feminist psychologist who, from 1977 to 1979, taught an adult education course at the State University of New York at Fredonia called “Changing Lifestyles,” Ames was a brilliant speaker and often began her lectures by throwing a bag of rocks on the table to get the audience’s attention. “I need you to listen and understand what I’m going to tell you,” she would say, “because I have rocks thrown at me just for being who I am.” Students often wrote in their course evaluations that Ames’ presentation was the most informative and impactful part of their semester. Contemporary trans people still navigate medical gatekeepers to access transition-related care, but educational efforts by activists such as Ames brought about vast changes in the attitudes of medical professionals towards the transgender community.

Ames’ advocacy also had national reach. She was an established contact person for the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF) and later, when the EEF folded in 1977, the Janus Information Facility, based out of the University of Texas. Established in 1964 by the independently wealthy trans man Reed Erickson, the EEF became the leading organization to fund research into transsexualism and to provide information and support to trans people in need of guidance. Trans people, particularly those from the Western New York area, who called the EEF for support were often referred to Ames for peer counseling or transition-related guidance. She maintained an extensive “pen pal” network with other trans women and (cisgender) lesbians whom she met via her EEF contacts, as well as through a lesbian correspondence service called The League.

Educational efforts by activists such as Ames brought about vast changes in the attitudes of medical professionals towards the transgender community.
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By the late 1970s, Ames estimated she knew around 100 other transsexuals in the Western New York area, but she was one of few willing to be out in public. Though she faced great harassment for doing so, her physical presence helped to dispel common prejudices towards trans women. In her personal writings, she noted that while she admired Jorgensen and Richards, she had to forge her own path because, living in a rural community, her life was different from theirs in significant ways. Whereas Richards became a reluctant spokesperson after being outed by the press, Ames realized that staying quiet or closeted would do little to advance acceptance in her community.

Despite Ames’ activism, she was rejected by many members of Buffalo’s gay and lesbian community. Buffalo lesbian feminists, particularly the younger, more radical, lesbians associated with the University of Buffalo’s College of Women’s Studies, saw her as a threat to the local progress of women’s liberation. Ames was expelled from two Buffalo lesbian organizations. Gay Rights for Older Women (GROW) wrote her a letter stating they feared her presence would create an unsafe space that would compromise the organization as a whole. The women of GROW had trouble relating to Ames’ transsexual history and regarded her enthusiasm and outspokenness as evidence of her “maleness.” “Peggie just wanted to talk and talk about herself,” said Madeline Davis, “and many of the women saw that as an example of her ‘male energy.’”

Ames’ treatment reflected broader attitudes held by many lesbian feminists at the time. In 1973, Beth Elliott, a trans lesbian feminist folksinger, was forced to leave the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference (WCLFC), which she helped to organize. A radical feminist organization called The Gutter Dykes distributed leaflets proclaiming Elliott was really a man. Robin Morgan, the conference’s keynote speaker, amended her talk to address the ensuing controversy over Elliott’s participation, arguing that trans women reinforce patriarchal gender roles by taking on stereotypical signifiers of womanhood. Morgan further called Elliott “an opportunist, an infiltrator, and a destroyer — with the mentality of a rapist.” The anti-trans contingent of the WCLFC then insisted that a vote be taken as to whether Elliott could stay. When a majority of attendees voted to allow her to remain at the conference, the faction created such a fuss that Elliott gave a shortened musical performance and then left voluntarily.

Ames was also rejected by Buffalo lesbians due to her preference for a “high femme” 1950s style of dress at a time when feminists were challenging gender roles by eschewing traditionally feminine garb. Ames’ skirts, hot pants, makeup, and open-toed heels were construed as evidence that she did not fit into the feminist movement. But Ames, who transitioned at age fifty-three, was simply, finally, living as herself and exploring the woman she was not allowed to be during the first four decades of her life. Her age made her ever conscious of her desire to experience life to the fullest. Though some members of GROW perceived her femininity as antiquated and oppressive, her feminism may have been ahead of its time due to her stubborn insistence of trans women’s inclusion.

She noted that while she admired Jorgensen and Richards, she had to forge her own path because, living in a rural community, her life was different from theirs in significant ways.
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Gay men, too, regarded her as a curiosity, and many did not understand the relevance of trans issues to gay rights. Ron Brunette, a former member of MSNF, speculated that Ames was tolerated, in part, due to her friendship with Jim Haynes, a prominent and well-respected gay rights activist and founding member of MSNF, and his partner, Don Licht. “The atmosphere around her was mixed as people did not want to offend Jim Haynes,” Brunette said. “[Haynes’] friendship with Peggie created a shield that helped her. Was she accepted by most… No. Most accepted her because of Jim.” Ames also speculated that many gay men simply saw her as a drag queen, and while this false association produced a degree of tolerance, it ultimately erased her identity.

Ames was, however, able to form a relationship with Luella “Lu” Kye, a lesbian from Fredonia, New York, who she met at an MSNF meeting around 1974. The two began a romance that lasted for several years and they remained in touch until the late 1970s. “Everyone knew Lu was gay, but she didn’t care what anyone thought,” said Carole Hayes, a friend of Kye’s who invited Ames to lecture in her course upon Kye’s recommendation. Hayes further indicated that as a butch woman living in a rural community, Kye may have been more sympathetic to the ostracism Ames faced. Her acceptance of Ames also illustrates that some working-class lesbians living in areas without a “gay scene,” and who were not conversant in mainstream feminist thought, accepted trans women within their circles. Ames, in fact, listed Kye as a resource for local transexuals on a guide she prepared for MSNF’s Health Committee in 1976.

Despite the mistreatment Ames faced by both straight society and Buffalo’s gay and lesbian community, she was privileged in ways not shared by many of her contemporaries. She was white, college educated, and middle class for the first half of her life. Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, economically disadvantaged gender non-conforming people, were routinely targeted by law enforcement and marginalized within organizations like the Gay Liberation Front and the GAA. The multiple forms of “otherness” they embodied made them disrespectable in the eyes of the state and of white gay activists in a way Ames was not.

Ames’ work still resonates today. When MSNF disbanded in 1984, other organizations, such as Evergreen Health Services (formerly AIDS Community Services) and Gay and Lesbian Youth Services of Western New York (GLYS), more explicitly addresses trans concerns, and continue to do so to this day. Though Ames mostly withdrew from public advocacy after the early 1980s, she continued to educate and provide support via her correspondence, which allowed her to remain engaged while minimizing discrimination. The “pen pal” networks Ames, and other trans activists, created in the 1970s and ‘80s laid the foundation for the national and international communities trans people formed with the popularization of the internet in the 1990s, which contributed to a new wave of transgender activism. Ames’ belief that trans women should be included within feminist organizations and activism also anticipated the development of a unique trans-feminist perspective articulated by writers and activists such as Emi Koyama and Julia Serano in the late ‘90s and early aughts.

The ‘90s also saw the creation of the first transgender organizations in Western New York such as the Buffalo Belles and the Spectrum Transgender Group. In 2001, Camille S. Hopkins, the first out trans employee to work for the City of Buffalo, joined the organizing committee of Buffalo’s inaugural Dyke March, and was invited to speak at the end of the march. When Hopkins learned Ames’ story while being interviewed for an independent documentary film about the creation of the Dr. Madeline Davis LGBTQ Archive of Western New York, it provided her with a source of pride, inspiration, and strength. “I just wish I could have given her a hug,” Hopkins said, reflecting on the fact that, unlike herself, Ames was rejected by Buffalo’s lesbian community and had few role models to look to.

Ames’ life and work, most importantly, illustrate that effective activism in mid-size cities and rural towns, where people are more closely knit, involves creating change through building human relationships—such as those formed by her lecturing, correspondence, and work as a counselor—over large-scale direction action protests and civil disobedience. It’s a principle that remains true today.

Ames never did leave her historic nineteenth-century house, built in 1835, despite the pervasive mistreatment she faced. In refusing to be cast out, she turned the rocks, the tools of oppression, thrown at her into tools of education and change. “Three words that come to mind when I think of Peggie Ames are ‘Brave,’ ‘Strong,’ and ‘Stubborn,’” said veteran Buffalo gay rights activist Carol Speser. Ames dealt with many hardships, but was never solely a victim, paving the way for the work of future generations of trans and gender-nonconforming people. Though most, until now, have not heard her name, Ames was a mapmaker, not just a traveler on an already established path, and she is certainly one of the unacknowledged mothers of today’s Transgender Rights Movement.

This September, GQ ran a piece on the topic of lowering sperm counts, with the rather foreboding title “Sperm Count Zero.” Throughout the piece the author, Daniel Noah Halpern, asks scientists to take study data about sperm counts, and extrapolate on what that means for men. He starts the piece with a basic premise, which is that men are by definition people who make sperm, and that gender essentialism infects everything about the piece.

Reading it reminded me that while understanding science is deeply and profoundly important, after our schooling is done most of us are getting our scientific knowledge not from scientists, but from science journalists. And Mr. Halpern over at GQ isn’t the only journalist filling his articles with gender essentialism. In fact, science media as a whole has a massive gender essentialism problem. This problem is just as prevalent in new media as it is in old, just as likely to show up in hip publications as it is anywhere else, and it has massive implications for how we understand sex and gender as a society.

The conflation of sex and gender, and the use of gender essentialism and straight up sexism in science writing, contribute to an overall culture in which it’s easy for people to assume that sperm is what makes a man, that vaginas are what make a woman, and that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Mixing gender essentialism with science seems to give gender essentialism more weight and credibility, allowing bigoted ideas about gender to be assumed factual without being challenged.

Gender essentialism is so ingrained in the way that we talk about science, that unless you are looking for it, it can be difficult to even notice. It shows up in nature documentaries, when narrators often use heavily gendered language to describe animal behavior (I love David Attenborough, but any time he narrates animal courtship it is cringeworthy). There’s also more going on here than mere sexism.

Mixing gender essentialism with science seems to give gender essentialism more weight and credibility
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To understand the sex and gender issues at play in science media, it’s important to understand the terms. In general, biological sex is defined by a combination of physical traits such as chromosomes, genitals, hormones, and secondary sex characteristics (this includes stuff like whether or not you have a beard). Those traits are used to lump a person or animal into a category such as male, female, or intersex. Gender is the social and cultural stuff which is often, but not always, tied to sex. The simplified version of sex and gender that most of us learn when we start to dig into gender issues is that sex is physical, but gender is a social construct, or “sex is what’s between your legs, gender is what’s in your heart.” The truth turns out to be a little more complicated than that. For years transgender activists have been pointing out that the way we define sex is also socially constructed, and as this twitter thread from a scientist so beautifully illustrated, the two primary categories of male and female are hardly the best way to classify people.

All of this is easy to mix up with the scientific concept of sexual reproduction, which is just a form of reproduction that uses two cells in order to make a new organism. Many organisms reproduce sexually in ways that look nothing like the “two sexes” system we’ve come to expect. For instance, many slugs all carry both male and female sex cells, and during mating both fertilize each other. However, when humans look at the animal world, we seem to have a tendency to interpret in a way that makes it a little more human, and therefore a little more gendered. I can’t overstate enough that this is humans adding our own cultural biases to data that doesn’t usually conform to them. Scientists themselves are not immune to this, but science writers, in their attempt to make the data relatable and interesting to the public, take it even further. As journalists, they have a responsibility to convey the information accurately, and to attempt to check their biases at the door, but often they conflate sex and gender, fall back on sexist assumptions about sex and gender, and simplify the concept of sex so much as to make it inaccurate.

When writers (and to some extent, scientists themselves) reach for metaphors to describe scientific information, they often rest on gendered assumptions. The way we talk about sperm is a classic example of that; we tend to see sperm as aggressive and masculine when they are, in fact, just tiny cells. We also tend to assume that sperm production is for men, when in fact not all men make sperm, and not all people who make sperm are men. The popular science blog IFL Science ran an article called “Why Do Men Exist” which, no surprise here, was specifically asking about cisgender sperm producing men. Other winning IFL headlines include things like “Suffering From Man-Flu Not Attractive, Science Confirms.” As a transgender man and a science nerd, reading these articles can be anything from mildly amusing to incredibly irritating, as most of the time, I am not included in their definition of “man.”

When humans look at the animal world, we seem to have a tendency to interpret in a way that makes it a little more human, and therefore a little more gendered
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This gender essentialism can be found at all levels of science reporting. The WNYC show Radiolab has won a National Academies Communication Award “for their investigative use of radio to make science accessible to broad audiences,” and its unique approach to sharing scientific knowledge has made it a great way for people, myself included, to get interested in science as adults. Given its position as a cool, weird science radio show and podcast, you might expect a deeper and more accurate look at issues of biological sex, and a more progressive look at gender issues. However, in their 2008 episode about sperm, called simply Sperm, co-host Robert Krulwich referred to spermatozoa as “the wiggly cells that, along with male pattern baldness, seems to describe everything you need to know about being a man.” One would think that equating a single cell with the entire concept of manhood would be offensive not only to trans men, but to everyone, but the theme persisted throughout the entire episode.

I was cautiously optimistic when Radiolab announced a new series of episodes about reproduction and the human body, all under the heading of “Gonads.” The six episodes promised in-depth reporting by producer Molly Webster, and the name suggested some acknowledgement of the ambiguity between the sexes. The first episode, sadly, offered more of the same simplification and essentialism I’d come to expect. When describing the primordial journey of the cells of the gonads themselves, there was never any indication that there was any possible outcome other than testicles, which would make the fetus a boy, or ovaries, which would make it a girl. Even though intersex conditions are about as common as red hair, and have everything to do with how a fetus develops, they were left out of the conversation of fetal development. Later in the series, when, in all fairness, a slightly more nuanced and complex take was given, sex was still presented as a binary, and it was still taken for granted that simply having ovaries would make one identify as a girl. One episode featured a lengthy interview with Dana Zzyym, who is intersex, and that interview was handled with sensitivity… but that didn’t undo the rampant gender essentialism of the series as a whole. In a separate episode, chromosomal variations outside of XX and XY were casually referred to as “aberrations.”

Science writers often have to simplify big complex issues like sex and gender in order to explain the science to the general public. The problem is that these omissions, sexist metaphors, and gender essentialist assumptions are everywhere and they add up. And they do not happen in a vacuum. Right now transgender people are more visible than possibly ever before, but with that visibility comes a very vocal and often dangerous opposition. Transphobes want to be able to point to science and say “look, there are only two sexes!” and “having a penis makes you a boy, that’s just how it works.” Science doesn’t actually back up their bigotry at all (in fact, it confirms that both gender and sex determination are extremely varied), but science writing sure makes it look as though it does. As we’ve seen with climate change and vaccine issues in this country, what the actual science says often has less of an impact than public opinion.

But don’t just take my word for it, there’s even been a study showing that bigotry against trans people is fed by “scientific” information that seems to support that men and women are somehow wired differently.

The problem is that these omissions, sexist metaphors, and gender essentialist assumptions are everywhere and they add up.
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So what can be done? Well, science writers can be careful about journalistic standards, and avoid extrapolating study data based on their own gendered assumptions, for one. We could also all stand to be a bit more direct and say what we mean when discussing things like reproduction. If we’re talking about people who have testicles, we can very easily say “people with testicles” rather than “men,” for example. We need science writing that isn’t afraid to dig into that complexity, because that’s where the real story is.

Back over at GQ, Halpern fell right into the standard essentialist assumptions, even referring to cisgender men with lower testosterone as “less male.” I read the whole article with my mouth opened in not to so much shock, but amazement that a single article could so perfectly encapsulate everything I had come to hate about science writing. Through all the hand wringing about falling sperm counts runs an endless commentary about men, and he doesn’t have to say it for me to know I’m not included. At the close of the article, he offers up a few potential scenarios for the species. Either sperm counts will drop so low we’ll go extinct, we’ll become completely reliant on fertility treatments to reproduce, or we’ll figure out how to get pregnant using stem cells that have been converted into sperm with “no need for any males.”

Unsurprisingly, it’s pretty clear that Halpern thinks the final scenario would be worst of all.

1. Keep your business within the stall under two and a half minutes. Any longer and the Cisgendered person becomes suspicious. If you still need to go, use a different bathroom.
2. Be as quiet or still as possible. They can’t see movement.
3. Use as little toilet paper as possible. I mean, they’re judging the shit out of you already, don’t give them more of a reason. This is more the case in any government building or library. They don’t want their taxpayer money going to a Transgirl’s ass.
4. Similarly, when washing your hands, sing ‘Happy Birthday’ in your head twice, but don’t use too much water. Use minimal soap. When drying your hands, make sure you’re thorough but also not using the air dryer too long or too many paper towels. They’re analyzing how many resources you’re taking up.
5. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES MAKE EYE CONTACT.
6. If there is no one in the bathroom at the time you enter your stall you may act as if it was a single stall bathroom. But remain vigilant…
7. If someone enters the bathroom while you are in the stall you must believe they are a Cisgendered person.
8. If you see another Transgirl in the bathroom, even if you personally know them, you must not acknowledge their presence as stated in Article 3, Section 21.b of The Official Transgirl Handbook. The only exception is when there is no one else in the bathroom and you know the other Transgirl personally. But this is risky since a Cisgendered person may enter the bathroom at any moment.
9. In fact, don’t talk to or acknowledge anyone when inside a multi-stall bathroom. The only exception is when a Cisgendered person says “Hello.” If they do, you must greet them as well. If they ask you any questions you must respond but make your answer brief.

Following these steps is critical to maintaining the slim levels of respect we have from the Cisgendereds. This respect helps alleviate some of the pains of awkward family reunions, co-workers, and those people who you sorta vaguely knew in High School and thinks of you as one of the Cisgendereds. Keeping the respect of Cisgendered persons in bathrooms is a collective effort! They will hold any slight misstep against all Transgirls complaining about it to no end. We must look out for our fellow Transsisters (Article 1, Section 7). I don’t care if they don’t respect or see all my identities and lifestyle choices,  I just want to be able to have some sort of passing respect and to not worry about pissing or shitting my pants.

Or, y’know, be physically assaulted.

“This is just between us, right?” one of my students asked, her voice trailing off as she adjusted her navy blue backpack and got up to leave.

I reassured her that this was a confidential, safe space to share any feelings, experiences, or questions that she may have. “Ok” she replied, looking relieved, her shoulders relaxing, “see you next week.”

As a mental health clinician practicing in a large school setting, students talk to me about many issues, including their gender identity, gender dysphoria (defined by the American Psychiatric Association as a conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify), and sexual orientation. And they talk to me because they trust that I will keep what they share confidential.

There are certain legal exceptions to student/provider confidentiality. If school clinicians suspect a student is being abused or neglected, or if a student expresses suicidal ideation, we must follow a clear intervention plan to protect the student.

However, with the overwhelming majority of issues and experiences that students come to talk about, it is the privacy of the space that prompts them to come and seek support in the first place. It is the understanding that they can speak freely and those words do not go beyond the walls of this office.

But if Republicans in many states get their way, this guarantee of confidentiality will be destroyed.

Ohio Republican Representatives Tom Brinkman and Paul Zeltwanger recently introduced legislation, House Bill 658, which, if passed, would require school therapists and teachers to “out” transgender students to their parents.

HB 658 states, “If a government agent or entity has knowledge that a child under its care or supervision has exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner opposite of the child’s biological sex, the government agent or entity with knowledge of that circumstance shall immediately notify, in writing, each of the child’s parents and the child’s guardian or custodian.” 

The law would also punish therapists with felony charges if they do not comply with outing children.

HB 658 perpetuates the dangerous belief that if we forbid children from receiving therapy, if we scare them with the threat of being outed by a trusted therapist and we impede their ability to gain any validation and gender-affirming support, then their gender identification isn’t real. Then all of this will just go away.

Republicans claim the reason for this proposed bill is a supposed concern for “parents rights.” The belief is that parents should have to consent to any form of treatment, including just speaking to a school therapist, regarding a child’s gender identity or gender dysphoria. 

Yet despite the pretext for this law, the fact remains that parents rights are not being impeded; their rights are still overwhelmingly protected by state law.

State law already requires that parents give consent for a transgender child to begin hormone blockers, take testosterone or estrogen, or have gender reassignment surgery. But now Ohio is trying to infringe on whether or not a student can even talk to a school therapist or teacher about their gender identity, effectively turning school providers into gender informants.

And Ohio isn’t the only state trying to violate transgender student rights. There has been a startling increase in legislation targeting transgender children. In the last three years 44 anti-transgender pieces of legislation have been introduced in various states, with 23 of those targeting transgender children in schools and in playing school sports. 

Ohio is trying to infringe on whether or not a student can even talk to a school therapist or teacher about their gender identity, effectively turning school providers into gender informants.
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These types of legislation are particularly dangerous given that transgender students are already at an increased risk for anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and becoming homeless due to parents kicking them out (after discovering their gender identity). 

A study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, led by Sari Reisner and Mathew Mimiaga, research scientists at the Fenway Institute and Harvard University, found that transgender youth are at a higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and self harm than non-transgender adolescents, and that the need for gender-affirming mental health treatment and other support services is essential to their well-being. 

Currently, of the 1.6 million adolescents and young adults who are homeless in America,  40% of them identify as LGBTQ, according to research done at the Williams Institute at UCLA Law. 

In addition, 46% of homeless LGBTQ youth left the home because of their family’s refusal to accept their sexual orientation or gender identity; 43% were kicked out by parents, and 32% reported enduring sexual, emotional, or physical abuse in their family home. 

How many more will be abused or become homeless after they are forcibly outed by their schools?

Jenn Burleton, executive director of the TransActive Gender Center, reports that “Many transgender kids living with unsupportive parents may be able to hold on, emotionally, because of support through school counselors or Gay-Straight Alliances. But in one fell swoop, this bill would eliminate any support system at their schools…their goal is Draconian.”

How many more will be abused or become homeless after they are forcibly outed by their schools?
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In many ways HB 658 creates a state-sanctioned witch hunt. Where does it end? The proposed law says that any student who “exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner opposite of the child’s biological sex” must be reported to their parents. 

Are schools now supposed to be spies for any possible non-conforming gender expression? 

“Who is the judge of which gender is allowed to do what? If Jane signs up for shop class, will her parents receive a government letter? If Jordan doesn’t want to play football, do his parents get a letter? What if Alex wants to attend a meeting of the student LGBTQ group–does the school email that to Alex’s parents? Just what stereotypes are they expected to enforce?” states Ohio’s Equality Now in response to this bill.

In addition, forcing clinicians to report non-conforming gender expression or gender dysphoria to parents, even though many of them may react violently, would only cause students further harm and violates our duty to protect children.  

Therapists cannot ethically report a child’s gender expression or dysphoria if it is told to us in confidence, and even more so if we know that child will then be at an increased risk for abuse or being thrown out of their house. 

The repercussions of the proposed Ohio law (and many other pieces of anti-transgender legislation in other states) would be catastrophic for all transgender students—and those who are the most vulnerable will no longer seek out support if they now have to fear being “outed,” which then elevates their risk for depression and self-harm. 

The National Association Of Social Workers (NASW) has condemned HB 658 stating, “We are outraged by the legislation that is so clearly in violation of everything the profession of social work stands for.” The American Counseling Association (ACA) also weighed in on HB 658, stating the bill “negates client rights to confidentiality and attacks the very basis of a key mandate for counselors: to provide counseling to those who need it and have nowhere else to turn.” The risk to students is especially pertinent in Ohio, where abuse of transgender students has already been well documented. 

A recent study found that 64%of LGBTQ youth in Ohio have heard disparaging comments about being LGBTQ from family members and only 23% of LGBTQ youth in Ohio have come out to close family members about their sexual orientation. The study also found that 12% of LGBTQ youth in Ohio were sexually assaulted/raped due to their presumed or actual LGBTQ identity, 69%of LGBTQ youth in Ohio are harassed in school, and an alarming 70% of LGBTQ youth in Ohio have received unwanted sexual commentary and inappropriate and lewd jokes in the past year.

While the legal challenges to this law, if it passes, are inevitable, this type of anti-transgender legislation that is exploding around the country, plays into the larger cultural battle of denying transgender students their basic right to exist, to seek support, and to have their own autonomy.

Students will no longer have the ability to come out when they are ready, they will be forced out. And even those who have more support and aren’t at risk for abuse at home will still be forced to come out on someone else’s terms.

Corey Vickman, a 15-year-old transgender student in New York City, shared that “While I have a supportive family and school, coming out can still be terrifying for many transgender students. I can only imagine how devastating it would be to have that option taken away from you, especially by someone you have confided in.”

Even those who have more support and aren’t at risk for abuse at home, will still be forced to come out on someone else’s terms.
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You can’t scare a child into not being transgender or non-binary. No amount of threats, rules, or regulations will keep someone from experiencing dysphoria. School clinicians are there to support students, and requiring them to “out” children, to put students at an increased risk for harm and to betray their trust, violates the core principles of what we do.

And we will do everything we can to stop this dangerous legislation. 

**Names have been changed to protect the identity of minor children**

The World Health Organization released the International Classification of Diseases, ICD-11, on June 18th of this year, to the excitement of some transgender activists. In past years, the ICD defined being transgender as a disorder; a form of deviance in need of treatment. But this year was different. The latest update forgoes diagnoses such as “transvestic fetishism” in favor of the far friendlier “gender incongruity.” Having someone’s lived gender experience changed from a deviant “fetish” to a simple contradiction felt like a step forward.

Despite much celebratory discussion of this as a progressive step, there are numerous troubling factors in this re/de-classification that are being ignored. This friendly term is still a sexual health condition listed in a classification of diseases. Gender non-conformity is still pathologized, just differently costumed.

The ICD does nothing to “destigmatize” gender incongruence by renaming it, because it still rests on the presupposition of disorderly bodyminds. In defining “disorder,” it must draw arbitrary dividing lines between the real trans experience and the things outside it. They suggest that there is a concrete and diagnosable difference between gender non-conforming (GNC) cis people, and people who are legitimately transgender. And that the only person who could tell that difference is a doctor.

In defining 'disorder,' it must draw arbitrary dividing lines between the real trans experience and the things outside it.
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This notion of gender incongruence reifies the concept of biological sex as the only “real” bodily experience, which is used to further power structures and gender norms under the guise of what is “natural.” For example, cultural norms of male aggression are biologically validated when erroneously connected to testosterone. Cisgender women are pushed toward motherhood because of an imagined “maternal instinct.” But the maternal drive—often arising from pregnancy itself and certainly not from the mere fact of being assigned female—is cultivated, not inherent. Sometimes, this cultivation begins in childhood, but it is still not inborn. The idea that men are born to fight and women are born to birth, instead of being culturally expected to adhere to these norms, is a damaging consequence of the social construction of sex and gender.

Some activists, educators, and others argue that sex is not gender and gender is not sex, in an attempt to to distinguish the “fact” of biological sex from the ‘feeling” of gender. But this distinction will not save us, either. This is especially true when doctors are in the business of diagnosing what is understood as deviant behavior. Contrary to what the ICD—and well-meaning allies—might say, it isn’t that gender is mutable and only sex is concrete. There is no such thing as “incongruent” sex and gender because, as Judith Butler illustrates in Undoing Gender, there is no sex without gender; no gender without sex. The two produce and naturalize each other, just as testosterone and aggression do.

The ICD’s new rules for real-transness were not meant merely to de-pathologize some experiences in favor of others. Instead, they are part of an ongoing process to assign more specific diagnoses to certain experiences; to widen the pathological catalogue. In doing this, it draws arbitrary dividing lines between the real trans experience and the things outside it, suggesting that there is a concrete and diagnosable difference between GNC cis people, and people who are legitimately transgender.

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This is a common practice that Michael Foucault discussed in Madness and Civilization. The trend of meticulously diagnosing difference is a relatively recent phenomenon, Foucault argues. Though we presume these diagnoses to be natural and timeless because a medical authority declared them so, this paradigm is only about two centuries old. It was invented as a means to mark some people as deviant and others as sane—not as a way to realize an essential “truth.” Diagnoses shift not due to a gradual march toward accuracy, but instead as a means of accommodating shifting social (and thus, psychological) conditions.

By these rules, one is only really transgender when one is interpellated that way by some authority figure, like a doctor. I only become “really me” when some authority recognizes me. Introduced by Louis Authusser, “interpellation” happens when a subject is recognized as such within a certain ideological framework: in this case, gender and disease. The classic example of interpellation is a police officer shouting, “hey you!” at a subject. The “hey you!” is the moment of interpellation. Similarly, according to ICD logic, a subject “becomes” trans not when they determine they are, but when a doctor names them gender-incongruous by the WHO’s guidelines. The idea of gender-as-interpellation contradicts the prevailing assumption that transness is intrinsic, and reveals this as a major flaw in the ICD’s thinking.

If we are only trans when some authority hails us that way, I was not trans until age 18. At 18, I began seeing a therapist and had my gender dysphoria “diagnosed,” all with the express intention of getting a bilateral mastectomy covered by my insurance. Although many trans people are “undiagnosed” until adulthood, we are also expected to produce lengthy historical testimony proving our lifetime of transness, divulging the intricacies of dysphoria that supposedly should have afflicted us since childhood.

If we are only trans when some authority hails us that way, I was not trans until age 18.
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If one isn’t trans until marked that way, but must also have been “born that way,” transness-as-diagnosis is revealed as a paradox; it simply doesn’t make sense. And what do we make of trans men and women who choose not to receive sex-reassignment surgery; who are comfortable with and even enjoy the genitalia they were born with? What do we make of the “Borderlands” (a borrowed term from Gloria Anzaldúa’s work) between butchness and transmasculinity, as Jack Halberstam discusses in Female Masculinity? How do we come to basic conclusions about what “normal gender” is so as to define incongruity in the first place?

If we look to Judith Butler, who notes the ways in which gender is an ideal to be imitated and not a fundamental truth, it would appear that efforts to nail down a true trans diagnosis are grounded in efforts to further clarify (primarily Western) gender roles in general, by defining those who violate them. Pathological incongruity helps to mark normative gender’s outer limits.

In attempting to find an ontological difference between true trans people and mere “cisgender GNC people,” the ICD cordons off trans identity that needs to be validated by medical authorities. The layperson is presumed to be unqualified to determine who is diagnosably trans and who isn’t. It also seals up gender norms for all people; in the shadow of the clearly-set rules for gender incongruity are the un/spoken expectations around correct gender congruity.

What Trans People Really Think Of Your Dress Code
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Furthermore, in reserving transness for only those who qualify under its medical definition, others in our community are denied the solidarity they need. Medical notions of true transness appear in trans communities themselves, leading to the harassment and vilification of those deemed “not trans enough.” To qualify as real in the first place, one must submit to the scrutinizing eyes of the medical establishment (and be able to afford being seen by a doctor in the first place), and beg to be seen.

In order to qualify for medical transition, I had to strategically choose not only the medical and psychological professionals I sought diagnosis and permission from, but also which aspects of my health history to disclose. In doing transness with a bilateral mastectomy as my goal, I monitored my behavior, clothing choices, vocal pitch, placement of my feet and hips, and disclosure not only of diagnoses but also of aspects of my personality. I wore an oversized men’s shirt and jeans from the boy’s section, hoping that their bagginess would convincingly hide the shape of my body. I spoke with my chest-voice while hiding the fact that my chest was unbound beneath my shirt. An apparent lack of chest binder or improper attire, I feared, could arouse suspicion of my realness. In order to track down the essence of physical dysphoria, guidelines such as the ICD’s push me toward sheer performance of proper gender incongruity. This is not performance in the Butlerian sense, even, but in the literal sense: I was putting on a show.

The ICD’s classificatory shift of transness is by no means worth celebrating, as that “shift” only works to conceal the workings of the medical system; to make onlookers more amenable to its decisions. A long history and present of pathology leaves all people unable to imagine gender (non-)conformity without medicine and psychiatry. This ICD update only draws slightly different distinctions between the “real” (dysphoric) and “fake” (insufficiently dysphoric) trans people. Its depathologization of the latter group will, paradoxically, do more harm to some than good: it forecloses the possibility of getting surgery and hormones for those not trans enough to diagnose.

Those who are diagnosed receive gender-affirmative care, but only at the cost of being marked as a psychological deviant. All of these situations naturalize sex even as they claim to transcend assigned gender. Compared with the real ramifications of the ICD-11, the romanticized notion of a trans-inclusive medical establishment is dangerous at worst, and incongruous at best.

Queer identity and expression is often seen as a very au currant issue in today’s society. I often hear statements that queer identity “didn’t exist in my time” and that queerness is a “problem of the millennial generation,” specifically when dealing with trans individuals.

This is simply not true.

Questions surrounding sexual orientation and gender expression have existed since long before modern times, even before the 20th century. As David Halperin, author of How to Do the History of Homosexuality, states, “We have preserved and retained different definitions of sex and gender from our premodern past.”

It is through this variety of definitions of sex and gender passed down through the ages that premodern people also struggled to define what it meant to be a “man” and what it meant to be a “woman”; they also wrestled with the nature of their sexuality.

In fact, during the Middle Ages, there are several key figures who expressed a queer identity analogous to a modern trans identity. These figures—both fictional and historical — challenged and complicated the prevailing definitions of gender identity, much like trans individuals do in our society today.

As Heather Love writes in her book on lost queer history, Feeling Backward:

“Paying attention to what was difficult in the past may tell us how far we have come, but that is not all it will tell us; it also makes visible the damage we live with in the present.”

Because queer history has been obscured and erased throughout time, non-binary identities are readily framed as “problems of a modern age,” when in fact, they are questions and identities we’ve had for centuries.

By surfacing the trans identities of the Middle Ages we can reclaim some of our lost history, as well as challenge homophobic and transphobic claims surrounding them.

In the 13th-century French romance, Le Roman de Silence, or Silence, the titular character is born a woman, but lives as a man in order to inherit their father’s land. As they grow, they are raised as a knight and constantly praised as the “best man in England.”

Pretty soon, though, Nature (personified) feels she has been cheated as she has made Silence more beautiful than “a thousand of the most beautiful girls,” yet no one recognizes them as female. A whole comical debate breaks out between Nature and Nurture about Silence’s gender, prompting Reason to step in and, ultimately, she sides with Nurture — Silence was raised a man and should continue to be a man.

As Silence concludes, “I have a mouth too hard for kisses/and arms too rough for embraces. One could easily make a fool of me in any game played under the covers.”

As the romance makes clear, gender is not a clear cut issue—even in the Middle Ages.

Trans people are often thought to be going “against” nature for expressing their identities, and Silence is presented in much the same way. Silence often feels conflicted over their biological sex and their gender identity, echoing the body dysphoria felt by many trans individuals.

Even though Silence “deviates” from Nature’s intended role, they are only able to catch Merlin—a vital piece of Silence’s prophecy is “Merlin will only be fooled by a ‘woman’s trick’”—because of their queerness.

Within the romance, Merlin is depicted as more animal than man, a mad hermit living in the woods. In order for Silence to fully become a retainer of the king, they must capture this elusive man-beast. Their biological sex technically fulfills the prophecy, but their gender expression—which determines their position as a knight—is what allows for the quest to occur and succeed.

Gender is not a clear cut issue — even in the Middle Ages.
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To read Silence’s character as a trans man vastly expands the possibilities of trans history and reveals it’s far more than a modern phenomenon. As this medieval romance reveals, gender and sexuality are presented as ever and always in flux; there is no clear resolution between Nature and Nurture’s argument on Silence’s gender, and there doesn’t need to be.

Even at the end of the romance, when Silence’s “true” gender has been revealed and they are married to the king, we still have the king bedding the most beautiful and skilled knight in all of England.

Silence is not the only trans figure in the medieval period. The historically real case of Eleanor (John) Reykener, a medieval sex worker who lived as a woman, but was born a man, again suggests gender and sex have been fluid for far longer than our current dialogue accounts for.

On a Sunday in December of 1394, Eleanor Rykener and John Britby are arrested by London authorities for presumed prostitution.

The authorities—and the court—were shocked to discover that Eleanor Rykener was actually John Rykener and that they had been “posing” as a woman. In their testimony, Rykener admits to working as an embroideress under the name of Eleanor, and having sex with at least three other men. (As well as several women, too.)

Their continued confession recounts various religious and secular men that they had slept with either for money or pleasure. As Carolyn Dinshaw arguesin her book Getting Medieval: “It is impossible to discern what Rykener’s various customers wanted,” but it is also too limited to assume their desires were strictly heterosexual in nature.

The Left’s Long History Of Transphobia
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Even the legal documents had a hard time defining Eleanor/John’s gender identity as the author continually slips between referring to them as male and female in the same brief.

Again, like Silence, Rykener’s gender identity is similar to modern trans identity in that their identity resists categories. Even the crime itself—either of sodomy (primarily a male crime) or prostitution (of which only female cases are recorded)—is left open to interpretation in the legal document.

While Rykener’s identity does not fully account for the varied trans identities we have today, their life is, according to Ruth Karras, “transgender-like.”

Like Silence’s and Rykener’s bodies and gender expressions suggest, sexuality and gender identity were complicated and nuanced in the Middle Ages. Both literary and real figures openly questioned traditional gender norms, and even then those definitions were not solidified.

Is Silence a good knight because they are born that way or because of their social upbringing?

Is Rykener’s crime prositution or sodomy?

These questions are subjective at best and suggest that medieval people did not have clear answers for them.

Fast forwarding to the present, we find ourselves still struggling with these questions. As trans people become more visible, dialogues abound in both social and legal settings on how to define trans bodies. With current travel laws and the ever-infamous bathroom laws, trans bodies are always forced to be put into categories — categories that even premodern people recognized as unstable.

‘Is It Safe Now?’ The Trauma Of Bathroom Laws
theestablishment.co

As author Carolyn Dinshaw says, “Laws based on clear and apparent sex differences” are made inadequate when dealing with “queer desires or queer truths.”

Dinshaw’s point is correct because laws that rely on rigid definitions of gender and sex cannot fully account for queer bodies or queer desires. Queer people resist tidy categorization by their very nature. As trans identity and other queer sexualities and identities become more visible, laws based on basic definitions of heterosexuality and biological gender become increasingly inadequate.

Queer identities — specifically trans identities — are not a part of modern culture, but rather have existed and evolved through time. While a queer future is important, we should also not forget about the past.

We as queer people deserve a history just as rich and varied in order to combat homophobic and transphobic ideas. Sex and gender have evolved — and will continue to do so. It is through revisiting what was considered “normal” in the past to see that these definitions have changed.

By turning to older literature and willingly reading characters or works as queer, we can reclaim some of our lost history; this is one of the only ways we can continue to have access to queer people in the premodern world and honor the voices of the past who have paved the way for our future.

By Katelyn Burns

Originally published on Everyday Feminism.

The cycle of systemic poverty and homelessness is nearly impossible for anyone to break out of. The combination of not having enough funds for everyday necessities under capitalism and a lack of a suitable shelter under which to sleep can be crushing to the human spirit.

Under structural transphobia, trans people are at increased risk for unemployment and homelessness, with trans women of color — who are three times as likely as the general population to be unemployed — bearing the brunt of this oppression.

When I began my own transition, of course, homelessness lingered as a fear in the back of my mind. I’d watched too many trans women be run out of their jobs under suspicious circumstances and subsequently struggle to find another job to believe I was entirely immune to the possibility.

Housing insecurity is a major issue for the trans community and already sparse shelter resources could potentially be a hostile environment for a trans woman, myself included.

As a trans woman, I have a natural fear of cis-operated spaces, as the potential for transphobia is ever present. For example, the Salvation Army has been accused several times of harassing or even banning trans women from their shelters. I wouldn’t even risk availing myself of their services.

Taking into account that a great many shelters and anti-poverty charities are affiliated with or operated by churches, I would be leery of seeking the same help as a homeless cis person.

Housing insecurity is a major issue for the trans community.

And with trans people making up just 0.6% of the population, it’s especially difficult for organizations to provide appropriate local trans-specific resources and a welcoming support system in order to help folks breakout of the systemic poverty cycle.

In order to figure out the best ways to help trans people breakout of systemic homelessness, I turned to the trans-run organization Hypatia Software Org.

According to President/CEO, Lisa-Marie Maginnis, Hypatia’s mission is “to end homelessness and the disenfranchisement of people who experience transmisogyny through peer mentorship, emergency cash relief, and community building.”

Here are 4 ways they say we can help get trans people out of poverty now:

1. Let trans people who have been homeless take the lead

The centerpiece of Hypatia’s approach is their peer mentorship program which recruits trans people who have struggled with extreme poverty to mentor trainees as they work through a year-long course in software development.

Says Maginnis, “The idea is that if you see a peer who has gone through a similar experience as you but is not currently experiencing homelessness, you’ll feel like it’s now attainable and it’s not an impossible proposition to change your life experience.”

The program is a unique boon for a population that has always struggled with extreme poverty and pays homage to the cultural idea of paying it forward that sometimes runs strongly through the trans community at large.

Our community’s prospects have been raised by previous generations, and it’s up to each successive generation to leave the world a better and safer place for those that come out after us.

Maginnis continues, “Hypatia is founded on the very idea that together we can raise each other up out of homelessness and into the IT world.”

2. Share decision-making responsibilities among the whole group

According to Maginnis, every major decision that HSO makes is voted on by both the students and volunteers, all of whom are trans themselves.

“It’s a formal consensus process where any member if they have an idea, we wait seven days and debate it, and if we all agree, the proposal becomes part of Hypatia’s mission… This enables the very people your organization is supposed to serve to have power and run their own community as opposed to being told what to do.”

This dynamic has manifested itself in several positive ways.

If You’ve Never Lived In Poverty, Stop Telling Poor People What To Do

Hypatia itself began as a loosely organized effort with a mission to help homeless experiencers of transmisogyny break out of the poverty cycle. Most people within the trans community define transmisogyny as the unique intersection between misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia exclusively experienced by trans women, and so, at first, Hypatia only assisted trans women.

However, a vote within the membership at large ended up changing the internal definition of transmisogyny to include anyone who identifies as experiencing transmisogyny, including those who may not be trans women.

As a result, Hypatia is now open to any homeless trans person, not just trans women. It’s just one example of why letting those who the program is meant to help make the major decisions can turn out with positive results.

3. Help trans folks find employment in trans-friendly industries

Trans people are marginalized in a number of unique ways within employment settings, and employment law has not yet fully caught up with the fairly recent growth of out trans people across the US.

As a result, employers willing to allow trans people to thrive are vital in helping them build a stable enough employment history to break free of the bonds of poverty.

While there are very few industries that are specifically supportive of trans employees, Hypatia believes that the tech history has proven to be particularly welcoming.

Employment law has not yet fully caught up with the fairly recent growth of out trans people across the US.

“We push for technology jobs because we find the tech industry, while still problematic, to be one of the more friendly industries for trans people. There seem to be more trans people successfully employed in the IT world than there are other industries, visibility-wise.” Said Maginnis.

By focusing on the tech sector, Hypatia can offer their training program nationwide online in an accessible setting.

When students graduate from Hypatia’s year-long training program, they’ll be certified Python developers, a valuable qualification that is very marketable to potential IT employers.

Historically, the tech industry, with heavy ties to the San Francisco Bay Area, has a long history of support for the gay and lesbian community, and that history has translated into a relatively supportive environment for trans tech workers.

4. Support initiatives that provide sudden cash infusions for trans folks

When you’re homeless, every day is a financial crisis and most of Hypatia’s fundraising efforts go towards assisting students with enough cash to be able to keep attending classes. Enter Hypatia’s emergency cash relief fund.

“It’s used for food, transportation and access to medicine for students who would drop out of the program otherwise,” says Maginnis of the thought process behind the fund. “By stabilizing them, we allow them to complete the program, by completing the program, they’re left with their first open source project for their portfolio.”

While there are social media hashtags like #transcrowdfund (created by black transfemme J Skyler) and organizations like the Jim Collins Foundation which helps fund gender affirming surgeries for trans people in need, that can help with these emergency funds, Hypatia takes it one step further and becomes a one-stop shop for both valuable employment training and dispersal of direct assistance cash.

Often students in the HSO program have no access to a laptop, and so must raise enough funds to grab a bus to the library to complete their one hour/week program. Because of this, Hypatia is rolling out extensive fundraising efforts for 2018.

The fact is: there’s no easy answer to systemic poverty within the trans community. It will take several generations to deconstruct the social attitudes that make employers less likely to hire and retain trans employees, so in the meantime, it’s survival mode for us.

Key to that survival are organizations, such as Hypatia Software, that continue doing the real work.

THIS WEEK’S WONDERFUL NEWSLETTER BROUGHT TO YOU BY

Pleasure with a purpose.

DID YOU GET YOUR TICKETS YET?!

WE’RE THROWING A STORYTELLING PARTY!

TOMORROW. 7 PM. SAN FRANCISCO.

COME MEET US AT HOLIDAZE!

Do you have anxiety dreams?

Boy oh boy I do.

Some are pseudo recurring — my brain likes to trot out the classics like loose teeth, being naked in public, and standing on stage waiting to perform lines I’ve never learned — but it also has some special visions all its own.

In addition to pulling long worms from my mouth where their tails are down down down my throat and I just keep pulling, pulling, pulling, I also have anxiety dreams about tattoos.

I think — in a quick and dirty psychoanalysis of myself — that this is a very direct commentary on my fear of permanency.

I can barely wear the same sweater two days in a row so the idea of living in one house for 45 years or a lotus blossom on my back is just about inconceivable.

It fills me with dread.

But recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how to lance these psychological blisters — how do I conquer all this anxiety without quaffing valium or becoming a yoga teacher because let’s be honest my “spiritual life” is basically
a howling void.

I started thinking compulsively about the phrase, “this too shall pass.”

Every joy is fleeting so let it fill your goddamn heart. Every sorrow is fleeting so don’t let it consume your goddamn heart.

It’s the most beautiful framing I’ve ever found for my brand of nihilism which is, essentially, nothing matters so EVERYTHING MATTERS.

Finally I had thought about it so much I told my best friend Andrew who knows all too well about my tattoo phobia and he said…

“That’s so weird. That’s actually a parable in the Mars book I’m reading right now.”

So I looked it up. And basically? A king (sometimes King Soloman) asks his advisors for a ring that will make him happy when he is sad, and sad when he is happy.

And they bring him a simple gold ring engraved with, “This too shall pass.”

And I think I might give myself that same strange gift this year.

But engraved on my own body.

With love + rage,
Katie Tandy
Co-founder | Creative Director

When We Body-Shame Sexual Abusers

By Suzannah Weiss

Instead of discounting what sexual abusers have done or making excuses for them — President Trump’s open support of Roy Moore stands out as an egregious anomaly right now — people are finally holding some of these men, as well as the deeply embedded patriarchy that supports them, accountable.

What’s not as heartening or progressive is the way they’re gleaning that accountability, however.

As long as we keep acting like sexual abuse is wrong because the abuser is physically unattractive or sexually deviant, abusers deemed attractive and “normal” will get away with it.

Bad Advice On Judging Your Friend’s Gross, Slutty Instagram Photos

By The Bad Advisor

Do warn her that if she continues this little online charade, she may diminish your camaraderie — and with it, her access to the invaluable aesthetic judgments that you, duly credentialed as a man, so graciously offer her.

If this young lady recoils at your suggestion that she modify her comportment, take heart! Allow her to take her appalling judgment and offensive visage elsewhere, leaving you to all that you deserve as a man of your disposition.

Science Made Sexy

Our sense of pleasure is as unique as we are — as unique as snowflakes! — from foreplay and fingering to how we experience orgasms.

For instance!

What do a volcano, wave, and mountain have in common?

They’re orgasm patterns!

Explore the newest insights in female sexuality with Lioness.

The Lioness Vibrator uses unique data and technology never. before. seen. outside of research labs to support self-experimentation, leading to better sex.

And that’s something we could stuff our stockings with or thank Hashem for.

Lioness can help you discover things you never knew about your own body — what you like, dislike, and would like …
(a lot!) but don’t know it yet.

You can get yours by 12/25 if you order before the end of this week!

Check it out here.

Why We Need To Talk About Queer And Trans People And Birth Control

By Neesha Powell

Trans, gender nonbinary,and queer folks experience barriers to culturally-competent reproductive healthcare because most doctors don’t understand our bodies or our sex lives. Legislative attacks on birth control make it even harder for us to get the good care we deserve.

One of Trump’s most recent attacks on reproductive healthcare happened on Oct. 6, when the Department of Health and Human Services issued new rulesthat allow employers to opt out of covering birth control on their health insurance plans based on moral or religious reasons.

Strict Alcohol Policies At Holiday Parties Won’t Protect Women

By Erin Gee, Erica Ifill, and Bailey Reed

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, human resources departments — not wanting to join the deluge of companies firing people for allegations of sexual violence — are reconsidering their policies around drinking.

As such, the 2017 holiday party circuit might seemdifferent this year — a little more formal, slightly stuffier, and probably a lot drier (in both conversations and libations).

Limiting alcohol consumption to protect against sexual abuse might seem reasonable and well-intentioned. In reality, it contributes to the rape culture that puts so many people at risk of assault in the first place.

Bitter Holiday Horoscopes To Warm Your Icy Heart

By Alison Stevenson

GEMINI

Going home for the holidays is especially hard for you because your brother is so much more well-adjusted than you are. Unlike you, he is able to commit to one woman and they are very happily in love.

You see that this love is real. You see that it’s possible.

Yet, you still choose to send me paragraphs and paragraphs of texts about men’s “biological need” to sleep with as many women as possible, because that’s what the cavemen did, while at the same time insisting that monogamy is “archaic.”

When we talk about birth control, we need to remember that cis straight women aren’t the only stakeholders.

Vimeo

By Neesha Powell

Originally published on Everyday Feminism.

I ’ve been on and off different types of birth control for the past 15 years. Last year, I got Mirena, an IUD that’s 99 percent effective in preventing pregnancy and lasts up to 6 years.

While dating cisgender straight men in the past, I used birth control to prevent pregnancy. And although I can’t get pregnant by my current sexual partner, my IUD is still a lifesaver because my periods have become lighter, shorter and less painful.

Queer and trans people of color, like myself, however, are almost never reflected in the visible fight for birth control rights. The poster child of the mainstream reproductive rights movement is usually a middle-class, cis, heterosexual white woman — everything that I’m not.

In the resistance against Pres. Donald Trump’s war on reproductive rights, stories like mine aren’t centered due to myths that LGBTQ+ folks don’t use birth control, get abortions, or have kids. In reality, we do all of these things, and we desperately need better access to them.

Queer and trans people of color, like myself, however, are almost never reflected in the visible fight for birth control rights.

Trans, gender nonbinary,and queer folks experience barriers to culturally-competent reproductive healthcare because most doctors don’t understand our bodies or our sex lives. Legislative attacks on birth control make it even harder for us to get the good care we deserve.

One of Trump’s most recent attacks on reproductive healthcare happened on Oct. 6, when the Department of Health and Human Services issued new rules that allow employers to opt out of covering birth control on their health insurance plans based on moral or religious reasons.

This is a part of Trump’s plan to dismantle Obamacare, which made contraception a preventative service and required employers to pay for it. These new rules open the door for future laws that allow discrimination against LGBTQ+ people based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

When we talk about birth control, we need to remember that cis straight women aren’t the only stakeholders. As a pansexual nonbinary woman, birth control changed my life for the better, yet narratives like mine are missing from the media.

The erasure of LGBTQ+ folks from conversations about birth control is harmful, for a number of reasons. Here’s why trans and queer voices must be centered in the fight for just access to birth control:

1. We need birth control for the same reasons as straight folks: to prevent pregnancy and to treat medical conditions.

This may be a surprise to some, but trans and queer people have the ability to procreate and to engage in sex that results in pregnancy. It’s frustrating that birth control is only marketed to cis straight women when LGBTQ+ folks need it just as much.

Evana Enabulele, a Black queer parks and recreation worker living in Seattle, uses a birth control implant called Nexplanon for both pregnancy prevention and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), which causes irregular periods that are abnormally heavy and long.

She enjoys telling others about her birth control implant because many people think their only option is taking pills. It takes as little as 10 minutes to insert the tiny rod into the upper arm and is more than 99 percent effective in preventing pregnancy.

What To Know About That New Study Linking Birth Control To Depression

Being on birth control makes Enabulele’s life more stress-free, not only because she can’t get pregnant, but also because she now gets a regular period. When her PCOS was untreated, she worried about not ever being able to conceive because her periods were so irregular.

Enabulele feels personally attacked by the Trump administration’s new rules allowing employers to deny covering birth control.

ChiChi Madu is a Black queer LA resident working in the startup industry who got an IUD for free at Planned Parenthood 6 years ago when she was low-income. She’s also appalled by Trump’s actions.

“I think it’s downright evil to take away someone’s ability to access healthcare,” says Madu, who got on birth control to prevent pregnancy when she had cis male sexual partners, as well as to regulate her mood and decrease the flow and frequency of her period.

Although she now gets health insurance through an employer that holds progressive beliefs, she knows that other LGBTQ+ people aren’t so lucky.

“I have to think about all these people who don’t have my same circumstance and so it’s aggravating and disheartening. It’s tough to think about, to be honest,” Madu says.

2. There are challenges keeping us from getting birth control when we need it — including fear of discrimination from medical providers and lack of access to health insurance — but not being able to get birth control can have harmful consequences for us.

Going to the doctor is not fun for a lot of trans and queer people, especially when we have to talk to them about the most intimate parts of our lives.

Lucia Leandro Gimeno, the director of Q/tpoc Birthwerq Project in Seattle, says that accessing reproductive healthcare can be an anxious experience for trans and queer people, especially trans and queer people of color.

The fear of being discriminated against by their medical provider is a major barrier. The fact is that most medical providers do not get adequate training in working with LGBTQIA+ folks.

“I think that if you’re white and trans, it’s not easy, but whiteness generally helps you better navigate a lot of systems, whereas if you’re a trans person of color, doctors just kind of look at you sideways,” says Gimeno, who’s an Afro-Latinx queer transmasculine femme.

Most medical providers do not get adequate training in working with LGBTQIA+ folks.

While seeking out reproductive healthcare, LGBTQ+ people are often shamed for our sex lives or treated differently because of our marginalized identities. Even well-intentioned doctors don’t know much about how we have sex and how birth control impacts our bodies.

Additionally, LGBTQ+ Americans have barriers to getting birth control because we’re almost 10 percent less likely than straight Americans to have health insurance, and 20 percent of us are living in poverty.

23-year-old Enabulele’s scared of what will happen if Obamacare’s repealed because she could be kicked off her dad’s insurance plan. Her birth control implant was only $10 under her father’s insurance and would have cost $800 without it.

When trans and queer people can’t access the reproductive healthcare we need, we’re forced to go underground to get it. Some trans women buy hormones on the black market because they can’t get them from a doctor, and they sometimes end up being toxic.

Trans and queer folks deserve access to birth control that is safe and low-cost or free. That can’t happen when we’re left out of conversations about contraception.

3. We’re excluded from the reproductive rights movement, even though we actually have the hardest time getting adequate healthcare.

Our society loves to gender things, which led to “reproductive health” becoming synonymous with “women’s health” — cis women’s health, in particular.

Cis women refuse to prioritize trans women’s reproductive rights because they’re afraid of being forgotten about. But in reality, the reproductive rights movement isn’t winning because they’re ONLY representing cis women.

When we fight for barriers to accessing reproductive healthcare to be removed for trans and queer people of color (POC), everyone benefits, even cis straight women, because they face some of the same challenges.

Doctors Must Stop Shutting Out Marginalized Groups

Furthermore, trans and queer POC are currently leading countless grassroots movements to achieve social justice for us all. It’s only right to center their health and well-being when they’re literally putting their bodies on the line.

Gimeno says that reproductive rights organizations should include trans people of color (TPOC) in leadership and decision-making bodies, build projects that center TPOC and work in coalition with TPOC without tokenizing them.

Reproductive rights organizations should also embrace the values of reproductive justice, which centers women of color, LGBTQ+ folks and other historically oppressed groups and their right to make their own decisions about their bodies and their families.

When we approach birth control access with a reproductive justice lens, we acknowledge that certain groups, including trans and queer people, have a more difficult time getting contraception than others.

Fighting for the most oppressed to have access to birth control is the only way to ensure that birth control is one day accessible to everyone who needs it.

The state of Oregon recently achieved a huge reproductive healthcare victory, passing the Reproductive Health Equity Act of 2017 that covers all reproductive health services (including birth control) at no cost to all residents, regardless of gender identity, income or citizenship status.

It’s going to take a lot of work for similar legislation to succeed in other states, but I believe it can happen if the reproductive rights movement fully embraces trans, gender nonconforming and queer people.

Birth control rights will continue being eroded if our leadership isn’t centered.

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