Violence against Black trans people is often left out of the national conversation.
If you’ve been supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s important to include LGBTQ+ people in your fight and actively fight for all Black lives to matter.
White supremacy, racial capitalism, cisheteropatriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism intersect in the lives of Black queer, trans, gender nonconforming and intersex people, fueling state violence, family, domestic, interpersonal, and community violence.
Discrimination, harassment and violence against trans, queer, gender nonconforming and intersex people pervade virtually every institution and setting, including schools, workplaces, systems of policing, prisons, parole and probation, immigration, health care, and family and juvenile courts.
Black LGBTQ+ people experience high levels of poverty, criminalization, health disparities, and exclusion in the US. Black trans women and gender nonconforming people in particular experience some of the highest levels of killings, violence, poverty, policing, criminalization, and incarceration of any group in the US.
Almost 30 trans women of color were murdered in 2019. According to the Black Census, sixty-two percent of Black gay and lesbian respondents report feeling threatened or harassed several times a year.
https://youtu.be/4Jc54RvDUZU
A conversation between two of our most iconic LGBTQIA leaders, Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin (1971)
Become Informed
Don’t be part of the problem! Take time to become informed on queer identities.
Gender is a social construct. Gender refers to socially constructed roles, expressions, behaviors, and identities. Depending on your context and location, rules may vary. In some cultures men wear skirts, makeup, and jewelry.
Sex is the classification of a person as male, female, or intersex. The sex assigned to us at birth is based solely on one’s genitals, however sex characteristics also include chromosomes, gonads, and sex hormones. Our sex assigned at birth may or may not correspond to our gender.
When someone shares their gender identity with you, it’s inappropriate to assume or try to deduce that person’s sex. Rather, believe others when they share their gender identity with you and support them.
Common Genders
Cisgender: people whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth.
Transgender: people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. Many transgender people will transition to align their gender expression with their gender identity, however you do not have to transition in order to be transgender.
Nonbinary: people who experience their gender identity and/or gender expression as outside of the male-female gender binary. Many other words for identities outside the traditional categories of man and woman may be used, such as genderfluid, genderqueer, polygender, bigender, demigender, or agender. These identities, while similar, are not necessarily interchangeable or synonymous.
To misgender someone means to use the wrong name or pronouns for a person’s gender. Whether misgendering happens as an innocent mistake or a malicious attempt to invalidate a person, it is deeply hurtful and can even put a person’s safety at risk if they are outed as transgender in an environment that is not tolerant.
Purposefully misgendering is not OK. You can be a good ally by standing up for others if you witness someone being harassed for their gender. If you misgender someone by accident, apologize swiftly without any drama. Show that you care by doing better.
By learning to support transgender and nonbinary people, you can help to create a safer, kinder, more accepting world. To learn more, visit www.thetrevorproject.org.
Support the Equality Act
The Equality Act, a landmark LGBTQ non-discrimination and civil rights bill, would specifically expand existing federal laws to protect people from discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.
If passed by the House of Representatives, the bill will protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans from discrimination and strengthen protections against discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, and sex in businesses that serve the public.
The Equality Act is a vital next step in ensuring the promise of equal opportunity reaches all Americans.
