“Listen To Our Voices”
11 activists discuss the past, present, and future of the trans rights movement.
Help us make this history complete by adding your own memories and photos. What moments stood out for you?
1966
Compton Cafeteria Riots, San Francisco
Riots broke out at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. They set in motion a chain of events that laid the groundwork for lasting institutional change in the city. It was a story that was almost lost until historian Susan Stryker rediscovered it decades later.
“We just got tired of it,” riot survivor Amanda St. Jaymes told Stryker in her documentary, Screaming Queens. “We got tired of being harassed. We got tired of being made to go into the men’s room when we were dressed like women. We wanted our rights.”
Susan Stryker: The cafeteria was one of the few places in the Tenderloin that was open all night, where you could get something to eat. It was a place where young people could patronize and get off the street for awhile. The police would routinely come in to hassle the street kids and sex workers and gay hustlers and trans women. One night people just got sick of it — when the cops came in and tried to make arrests, one of the queens threw her coffee in the cop’s face. The place erupted — trays and plates and sugar shakers went flying. The cops retreated outside, reinforcements were called in, and the fighting spilled into the streets. A cop car was demolished and the corner newspaper stand burned down.
1969
Stonewall riots, New York City
The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village was a popular hangout for the city’s queer community. Like Compton’s Cafeteria it was also subject to police scrutiny and harassment. On June 28, 1969, cops raided the club. It was a breaking point: Angry crowds fought back against the police. Protests, led in part by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, continued for three days.
Miss Major: They had just buried Judy Garland. I remember watching it on TV and not realizing how tiny she was as a person. Her casket looked like a child’s casket covered in white lilies. It was simply the most moving, beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I went down to the club to visit some friends and to get out of the house because I’d been home all day. And shit just happens, you know?
Stonewall wasn’t a planned event, you know, it was just one of those things where the shit just automatically hit the fan. When you get in those kind of situations, you need to do something to piss off the cop you’re fighting — enough to get you knocked you out, so that they stop beating you. Once they knock you out, they step over you and go fight somebody else.
So my last memory was snatching this guy’s mask off and spitting in his face — and then the lights went out.
The riots are often heralded as a seminal moment in the modern queer rights movement; a visible resistance to routine oppression that sparked protest and organizing throughout the United States.
Alongside spontaneous protests, a subcultural drag ball and pageant scene thrived. With roots in Harlem, these celebratory gatherings were marked by elaborate costumes and dance performances known as vogueing. Groups called houses or families, often named after fashion designers, became important social networks and safe havens for transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
1980s–1990s
New York Ball Scene
Marcie Chase was a member of the House of La’Viticus:
When we were getting ready for the ball, I was the one doing the feathers and the beads. I got so much burn on my fingers from the hot glue gun, because in the balls, it was always feathers and beads and boas and all this kind of stuff.
Phoenix Natasha Russell was a member of the House of Norma Kamali:
There were clubs and coke and dressing up fancy in the ballroom, vogueing. There were feathers and boas and costumes…we would sew up beautiful outfits with linens and silk. Everyone became creative and developed their own flair.
I always loved the fluidity of vogueing, because I was a dancer — and that’s what vogue is: a form of dance. They would call the different categories and people would get up on stage and battle.There was a grace and an elegance to it. If the night was successful, the ball never started on time. The balls never started on time. Oh, my God, those were the days.
Even as the ball scene flourished, the ’80s — and the conservative cultural and political atmosphere that followed in the disruptive wake of the ’60s and ’70s — was a relatively quiet period for trans activism.
The 1990s, however, brought with it a changing political landscape and a new means of connectivity — the internet. Along with that arrived a tumult of in-your-face activism and policymaking.
What key moments have we missed? Tell us what to include.
1991
Transgender Nation forms
San Francisco’s Transgender Nation, co-founded by Anne Ogborn, agitated for broader recognition of trans issues within the gay rights movement, and instigated direct action protests all around the city.
Anne Ogborn: Queer Nation San Francisco had largely dissolved, so there was an attempt to put it back together that fall. [Fellow activist] Carol Kleinmeyer called me and said that we should have a trans presence when Queer Nation got reorganized. There ended up being a dozen of us trans folks at the meeting— most of the gay people in the room had never seen that many trans folks before. I said, “Look, we want to form a transgender focus group but we’ve got some demands. We don’t want to spend all our time working on your issues; we want to work on ours as well. And we want you to work on ours as well. Two, we understand your issues a lot better than you understand ours. We expect you to educate yourselves. And three, we want you to agree to not support anything that’s not trans-inclusive.”
1992
Protest against Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival
In 1991, Nancy Burkholder, a trans woman, was turned away from the Michigan Womyn’s Music festival because of the event’s anti-trans policy. The next year, Anne Ogborn and friends organized a protest.
Anne Ogborn: We passed out buttons that said ‘I might be transsexual’ to anybody who would wear them. There was some gender chaos, like…we’re not going to tell you who’s cis and who’s trans — and we’re going to let you cope with that and the fact that you’re driving people into the closet.
We also printed up a whole bunch of myths about trans women on the fluorescent sticker paper and stuck on the inside of the porta-potties. By the end of the festival, people were asking if they could get a set! The whole idea was: “Is this really how we want to run our lives: driving drag-trans people into the shadows and persecuting them? Is that what we’re going to build a lesbian movement around?”
1993
National March on Washington
With some estimates placing attendance at one million, the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation in 1993 was a major event — but it came under fire for failing to include the transgender community in the name.
Susan Stryker: The National March on Washington in 1993 was where Transgender Nation, with its new San Francisco queer style of trans-militancy, first got on the national stage. Even though trans people were excluded in name, there were a lot of trans folks meeting other trans folks. That’s where I met Martine Rothblatt, that’s where I met Phyllis [Frye], that’s where I met Leslie [Feinberg]. It was a great networking event. Anne [Ogborn] and I were also doing little guerrilla actions, like printing up stickers that said, “Fuck Your Transphobia,” and pasting them over the words “men” and “women” on the porta-potties.
As we were marching past the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, I thought, “We need to do something here.” I always carried the letter from my therapist that said, “This person is under my care for gender identity disorder. They’re not a prostitute, they have a mental illness they’re being treated for.” It was what one was told to do at the time as a precaution. And as we were marching past the White House, I decided, “Yeah, I want to burn my psychiatric seal of approval letter.” Anne took a picture of me lighting it on fire with the White House in the background.
1993
Protest at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting
When the APA convened at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, they were met by protesters who called for an end to the pathologization of transgender people. Ogborn and her group took one step further, spray-painting bold slogans across the front of building.
Anne Ogborn: The American Psychiatric Association was having its annual convention, and we decorated the outside of the building with spray paint so it said “Transsexual Rights” and “Richard Green tortures children” in my handwriting across the front of the Moscone Center.
For years, you could faintly read ‘Transsexual Rights’ down the side of the building. They tried to remove it but they just sandblasted the paint off, effectively sandblasting the words into the surface. We got arrested for doing it, but that really started some change.
It was not so much the definition of “transgender” — it was this medical colonization that was incredibly destructive. I don’t know quite how that’s gotten erased from history, but it was a huge issue and we shouldn’t forget it because it’s always lurking in the background — and it’ll come back if we don’t watch it.
1994
San Francisco extends legal protections to transgender people
In 1992, activist Jamison Green addressed San Francisco’s LGB HIV committee about including the transgender community in their efforts. Two years later his efforts paid off.
Jamison Green: We basically said “you should really be including trans people in your protections because we’re really suffering and nobody pays attention to us.” And they said, “Well, we’re not interested in trans people because we’re here about our sexual orientation.” And I said, “Well, all trans people have sexual orientation, and some trans people are gay or lesbian identified. Trans people are getting HIV and trans people are discriminated against for the same reasons that gay people are discriminated against. So from a civil rights and human rights perspective there isn’t any difference because nobody understands us.”
The work that Green and other activists did with the LGB HIV committee (later renamed the LGBT HIV committee) led to a hearing with the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. Later that year, the city passed a law making it illegal to discriminate against people based on gender identity, especially in regards to housing and employment.
1998
New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy is founded
Pauline Park co-founded NYAGRA, the first statewide transgender advocacy organization in New York.
Pauline Park: It was a very hot day in June and there were seven of us sitting in David Valentine’s living room in the Village. Everyone decided that legislation was crucial, because at the time, there was no city or state law that included gender identity and expression. And, obviously, transgender people face pervasive discrimination, abuse, harassment, and violence. We decided to approach the Pride Agenda about the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act, the “gay rights bill,” that only talked about sexual orientation, not gender identity or expression. They told us, “we don’t think that’s a good idea.” That was the impetus for focusing the campaign on the transgender rights bill, which eventually passed in 2002.
The early 2000s saw leaps in organizing and legislation. Two important legal groups, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the Transgender Law Center, were both founded in 2002. Seven years later, the first federal law protecting transgender people was passed. Then, in 2011, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force published a groundbreaking report that provided an unprecedented picture of the difficulties faced by the community. In 2012, the American Psychiatric Association declassified being transgender as a disorder.
Despite these civil rights achievements, violence against trans people has remained the most urgent and troubling issue. Between 2008 and 2012, roughly 1,179 trans people were murdered in the world.
2012
Trans Justice Funding Project is started
Trans organizations have always struggled with funding. The TJPF, co-founded by Gabriel Foster, distributes small, unrestricted grants to groups run by and for the trans community with budgets under $250,000 throughout the U.S.
Gabriel Foster: We needed something different. There’s some power when you make what you need, when you stop asking other people to make it for you, when you stop waiting and hoping for other people to do it for you, when you come together as a community and you get organized. That’s pretty powerful. Everyone needs funding — but what we really needed was unrestricted funds because our communities are more creative in how we survive.
Over the last three years the organization has given roughly $400,000 to a wide swath of grantees.
2013
The arrest of activist Monica Jones
In 2013, student activist Monica Jones was arrested and subsequently convicted for “manifesting prostitution” under a vague Arizona law that allows police to arrest people for such things as repeatedly stopping to talk to passersby. Jones and her supporters suspected all she was guilty of was “walking while trans.”
Monica Jones: “Walking while trans” is the bias and discrimination that trans people face at the hands of the police and passersby and everyone else. I knew there was an issue with me walking down the street. There was no word for it — it was just what I had to deal with, walking being trans. I’m on-guard. I’m always worried, thinking, Oh, my God…Are they going to stop me?
Jones’s conviction has since been thrown out and the Arizona ACLU is challenging the law.
Were you there? Share your reactions, pictures, and memories by hitting ‘Respond’ below.
2015
White House pride reception
On June 24, a crowd gathered for a Pride reception at the White House to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage. But activist Jennicet Gutiérrez was not there for the champagne — she was part of a planned protest to disrupt the event and draw attention to the plight of undocumented transgender people. Just as President Obama began to speak, Gutiérrez shouted “Don’t torture and abuse trans women in detention centers!”
Jennicet Gutiérrez: If I could go back and talk to the people who booed me, I would say, “With all due respect, our community — we are dying.” If that doesn’t get through their heads and their hearts, I don’t know what will. We are facing a lot of discrimination. You might have a job, you might have a home to go to — we don’t. I would tell them that they were standing inside the White House because of trans women of color and non-gender-conforming people like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who fought so hard against police brutality. And now they have that privilege to be here and listen to the so-called progress we’re making when we are not making any progress — we are dying. If I could go back and say that, I would.
2011–2015
A Time of Trans Visibility
In 2011 Janet Mock came out publicly as trans. Laverne Cox played a break-out role in the Netflix hit series, Orange is the New Black. That same year, whistleblower Chelsea Manning came out as trans. This past June, Caitlyn Jenner became the first openly transgender woman to be featured on the cover of Vanity Fair. The glut of media coverage has raised visibility, but brings with it frustrating complications.
Alok Vaid-Menon, artist and activist: We’re in this really weird moment where so many people mistake visibility as something that means we’re done. I’m like, ‘No, we’ve just begun.’ I get frustrated when I meet a lot of people who talk about gender non-conformity or trans-ness as new. This is ancestral and sacred, and I worry that we’re trying to reinvent the wheel when there are already indigenous trans folks across the world who have always been outside of the binary.
Gabriel Foster: I feel like the trans movement is different than I’ve ever seen it before. It’s becoming more organized. My arm hair is constantly standing up. I feel like there’s something in the air, there’s a lot of energy. I’m not trying to be cheesy, but I do feel like a revolution is on the way in a lot of different ways in this country so this seems like a pretty pivotal moment for trans justice organizing.
Pauline Park: We can’t be satisfied simply with getting legal change and policy changes, as vitally important as that is. We have to change hearts and minds.
Jennicet Gutiérrez: Listen to our voices. Listen to our journey. Listen to our challenges. That’s when we will start seeing change in a positive direction. If you try to silence us or don’t give us the space for discussion, this violence will continue, the discrimination will continue.
August 2015
Repainting of the Stonewall statues
The Stonewall riots are commemorated in New York by statues in Christopher Park, across the street from the Stonewall Inn. All four are stark white. In August, two anonymous activists painted the statues brown, dressed them in wigs and colorful flowers, a floral bra and purple scarf. A sign adorning the statues read “Black + Latina trans women led the riots, Stop the whitewashing.”
Monica Jones: I was so happy. We’re going to make this last. We’re going to keep on painting it; we’re going to keep on. And what we’re going to do now is we’re going to go paint a big ol’ trans flag!
What significant moments would you add? What images should be here? And what do you hope comes next? Help make our account complete!
Compiled by Andy Wright. Interviews have been edited for clarity.
