LGBTQ+ advocates and reproductive justice organizers are coming together for an unprecedented demonstration next month in support of bodily autonomy for everyone. Scheduled for September 14 in Washington, D.C., Gender Liberation March is intended to call attention to threats against the right to make decisions about one’s own body, whether in the form of gender-affirming care or getting an abortion. The event will begin at 12pm with a march, followed by a series of speeches and performances at Columbus Circle.
The demonstration is certainly well-timed. Nearly nine months into 2024, more than 640 bills have been introduced in the U.S. seeking to deny basic rights and protections to trans Americans, the largest number put forward in any single year in history. According to Trans Legislative Tracker, at least 165 of those bills target the rights of trans people to access medical care that meets their specific needs. Many states have already severely restricted gender-affirming care: To date, 26 states have enacted at least some limitations on the kinds of transition treatments that can be offered to minors. Those policies have increasingly begun targeting adults, with states like Florida, Missouri, and Ohio all attempting to limit adult transition care.
In the midst of the many political vulnerabilities that queer people face, co-organizer Raquel Willis says the Gender Liberation March is about centering the radical power of trans joy. She says the event is a moment to resist the multiplicities of oppression but that it’s also about celebrating the strength of community. “Joy is the thing that helps us sustain our energy in this lifelong commitment to collective liberation,” she tells Them. “It’s something that we have to put just as much energy into as we do the rage and the sadness that animates us toward this work.”
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These challenges will only continue to escalate in the coming months, with the Supreme Court scheduled to hear a monumental case regarding the constitutionality of trans youth health care restrictions later this year. The hearing won’t take place until December or January and a ruling isn’t expected until next summer, but Eliel Cruz, a member of the diverse team of organizers behind the event, hopes that the Gender Liberation March can help educate the public about the high stakes of the case. Considering that the Supreme Court potentially could effectively ban health care for countless trans youth living in conservative states, Cruz hopes the demonstration shows that “the public is paying attention” to the outcome. “We have a short window to show up,” Cruz tells Them.
Many of the Gender Liberation March organizers were involved in putting together the 2020 Brooklyn Liberation March, which called attention to the ongoing epidemic of homicides targeting Black trans people. That event saw an estimated 15,000 people gather outside the Brooklyn Museum to help raise greater awareness about the historic anti-trans violence recorded the year prior: In 2020, 45 trans individuals had their lives taken from them, and the vast majority of victims were Black women. That figure is still the largest number of any single year in history.
As trans people continue to grapple with these escalating attacks on both their human rights and their everyday safety, the Gender Liberation March recognizes that their ability to move through the world is also being restricted in other ways. Following the 2022 repeal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, at least 14 states now have a total abortion ban in place, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Access to safe abortions is a major concern for trans and nonbinary people who can become pregnant, and to center this conversion, organizers brought in Sarah Sophie Flicker, a co-founder of the Women’s March, as a member of the organizing team. Cruz says the goal in bridging the movements for trans equality and reproductive justice is to “create some solidarity between groups who may have in the past been siloed.”
“We understand gender liberation as a framework to address both those immediate issues around medical access to abortion and gender-affirming care, but also as a larger lens to look at our democracy, understanding that there’s a throughline around gender,” Cruz explains. “We know that the Heritage Foundations and Alliance Defending Freedoms are making these connections between abortion and gender-affirming care. It’s really important for us to do that, both as movements and as individuals in community with each other.”
The Gender Liberation March intends to create conversation regarding bodily autonomy by inviting speakers with We Testify, an advocacy group that engages in storytelling efforts around reproductive justice, to address the crowd. What is often neglected in mainstream conversations on these issues is that “abortion care is gender affirming care,” says Ash Orr, a communications lead with the event. Both involve the rights of people to “choose what happens to their bodies” and access to the resources necessary to “live long, full, and happy lives,” Orr adds. Those privileges are being taken away even in states where abortion is still technically legal: Just nine states in the entire country allow fully unrestricted access to abortion care without gestational limits, per the Kaiser Family Foundation.
As both a former abortion patient and a queer Appalachian, Orr is pleased to see rural communities being included in discussions regarding bodily autonomy. Orr, who also serves as the press relations manager for Advocates for Trans Equality, says that abortion care was widely inaccessible for the vast majority of Appalachians even before the fall of Roe. The region has long been declared a “health desert” for reproductive medicine, and Orr’s state of residence, West Virginia, has the country’s sixth-highest infant mortality rate. An estimated 19.7% of West Virginians lack easy access to medical care that meets their reproductive health needs.
“We do not have ways to get to medical appointments because we do not have reliable infrastructure in place to get folks where they need to go,” Orr tells Them. “People often say, ‘Oh, if it’s that bad, you can move,’ but we can’t do that. Our region has so much generational poverty. I want to make sure that our voices are being heard because there are so many folks here that have had abortions or need abortions, and we deserve to have access to this life-saving health care.”
Other organizations partnering for the Gender Liberation March include Gen Z for Change, a nonprofit that educates younger Americans on issues like climate change and income inequality; Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative, a Black trans and queer-led organization focused on building leadership and political power; Trans Latin@ Coalition, a Los Angeles-based service provider offering resources to trans immigrant women; and Familia: TQLM, which fights for racial justice by advocating for the abolition of immigrant detention.
Jennicet Gutiérrez, the co-executive director of Familia: QTLM, says that bodily autonomy is central to what her organization is fighting for. If LGBTQ+ immigrants do not have freedom of movement or the freedom to determine their own health care, Gutiérrez says they are not truly free, pointing to the 2018 death of Roxsana Hernandez. Hernandez, an undocumented trans woman fleeing persecution in Honduras, suffered fatal cardiac arrest in a New Mexico hospital after she was reportedly denied medical treatment at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility where she was being held. At the time of her passing, Hernandez was reportedly experiencing dehydration, as well as complications from being denied HIV medication.
Gutierrez, who made national headlines in 2015 for protesting the Obama administration’s policy on immigrant detention during a White House Pride event, has spent years fighting for justice for women like Hernanadez. She is pleased to see the Gender Liberation March be allies in that mission and hopes to continue building these kinds of intentional partnerships. “One of the things that really drives me to continue to get involved is that we have to really believe that there is a better world out there,” Gutiérrez tells Them. “Trans people and LGBTQ+ immigrants deserve the right to exist, to be here, and to fight for their rights. I see that driving the Gender Liberation March to understand the importance of intersectionality and make sure that the issues that LGBTQ+ immigrants are facing are not forgotten or erased.”
Although the threats facing trans people are as alarming as they are multifarious, organizers hope that the Gender Liberation March will help the LGBTQ+ community find solace in the midst of struggle. Cruz describes the event as an “immersive experience” akin to a festival, one that will include drag performances, food trucks, and the distribution of free water, masks, morning-after pills, and banned books. He says the intention, as with the Brooklyn Liberation March, is to foster a space that “all people, all bodies, and all folks of different abilities, are able to show up and enjoy.” It’s about creating the world that organizers want to see, he says, one that centers joy as a necessary means of resistance.
In reasserting the inalienable right of trans people to experience euphoria, even in the darkest hours, Willis is looking to the Gender Liberation March as a means of reclaiming the narrative of queerness. Too frequently, she notes, queer lives are defined by those who don’t want marginalized people to exist. “This is just the start,” she says. “This is really just the debut of the Gender Liberation Movement, and we’re working toward a complete paradigm shift. Our agenda is gender liberation, and for us, it’s a world where everyone is less stifled by gendered expectations.”
You can sign up for the Gender Liberation March here and donate here.
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