By mid-February, it was already clear that 2023 was going to be a brutal and unrelenting year in legislative assaults on trans lives — particularly on the lives of trans youth. Even with that foresight, every day has been newly upsetting as these attacks have only escalated.
Each day we have seen new lows from politicians willing to demean, dehumanize and destabilize trans people: from Governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis escalating the terror they bring to families of trans youth, to Florida lawmakers criminalizing trans people using the restroom, to another 20 states acting to cut off lifesaving health care for trans adolescents.
We are living in scary times.
It was this cruel political climate that prompted a group of young people and their parents to reach out to me a few months ago with the hope and vision that they could organize something centered on trans youth voices and joy. We need to fight back against these anti-trans laws, but we also need to build forward with our own vision.
We need to fight back against these anti-trans laws, but we also need to build forward with our own vision.
Over the past three months, I have had the unbelievable privilege to be a part of building a beautiful, creative action that we hope can serve as a counterpoint to the vitriol, and call for change from the current modalities of political and cultural discourse around trans lives. With a steering committee of four brilliant young people from across the country, Peppermint (the singer, actor, activist and iconic drag performer) and I helped mobilize a team of experienced organizers. In so doing, we called upon the legacy of our queer elders and family, we let go of the frameworks that politicians and legacy media companies had been setting for narrating our lives, and we came out to party.
On May 22, after months of planning, 50 young people from 18 states, their parents and guardians, and 50 trans adults from across the country came together outside at the United States Capitol to throw the first-ever Trans Prom of its kind.
There were families from Texas in the midst of planning to uproot their lives and leave their homes to protect their trans children from the surveillance and punishment of Governor Abbott’s unrelenting cruelty and the legislature’s many assaults on trans youth health care, sports participation, restroom use and life.
Kids traveled from school districts where they have been navigating bullying for years, hoping just to survive while somehow still holding on to their light.
One young woman traveled from Mississippi at the last minute after her school refused to let her wear a dress to her graduation because, they claimed, she must dress according to her male-assigned sex at birth. She ultimately missed her high school graduation because the state decided that enforcing archaic dress codes was more important than honoring the hard work of students.
Other kids traveled from school districts where they have been navigating bullying for years, hoping just to survive while somehow still holding on to their light, their sparkle.
In a world that tries to take away their joy and their power, yesterday at the Capitol, trans youth were powerful and free.
Around 11:30 am, the 50 youth guests arrived by bus at the reflecting pool between the Capitol and the Washington Monument. Emerging from three buses, the young people were a vision of joy, laughter, possibility and hope. Looking fabulous and divine, they marched through a tunnel of love flanked with trans adults holding signs of love and then under an arch with a reminder — “you are loved” — and through walls of glitter.
Whatever else they were dealing with in this hostile world, this day was for them in all their resplendent magic.
We were the story of trans life that we wanted to tell — a story of people loving each other, caring for each other, relishing in their beauty and the dazzling potential that comes with freeing ourselves of the violence of the gender binary.
Over the next four hours, we stopped time. We were the story of trans life that we wanted to tell — a story of people loving each other, caring for each other, relishing in their beauty and the dazzling potential that comes with freeing ourselves of the violence of the gender binary.
For the youth, the day offered a reprieve from the constant vigilance of having to explain and defend themselves.
For the parents, the day offered a moment of peace: seeing their children held in joy and love, wanting for nothing, dancing with their friends — new and old.
For the trans adults, the day was part of our own healing — claiming back stolen childhoods and healing past trauma.
Even as the world has become so terrifyingly fixated on trans lives, we have made progress. These young people are a testament to that.
Across history, across living generations, we have beautiful stories of trans life surviving in the face of cruelty, transforming the world to make it more beautiful and more free.
Trans Prom was meant to be a pause from the daily reality of attacks on our existence — not just for us as trans people but for everyone. We don’t have to accept the conditions of the world as they are; we can dream so much bigger. And every time we feel the undertow of despair or overwhelm tugging at us amid so much anti-trans hatred, we can return to the joy-filled images and stories we brought into existence this week. Trans joy is transformational. Join our party.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We’re presently working to find 1500 new monthly donors to Truthout before the end of the year.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy