Want to Honor Trans Day of Visibility? Fight With Us Like Your Life Hinges on It

Today is Transgender Day of Visibility — a day meant for celebration and for being seen. But right now, many in my community are afraid to be visible.

Some are making plans to leave the country just to survive. For countless others, survival itself has become a daily act of resistance.

Ash Lazarus Orr, a transgender activist in West Virginia, is one of many activists organizing to resist the attacks on trans life under the second Trump administration. He is the lead plaintiff in Orr v. Trump, a lawsuit challenging the State Department’s revised passport policy, which prevents trans people from obtaining identity documents that accurately reflect their gender.

“As a trans Jewish man, I see resistance and community-building as sacred work,” Orr told Truthout. “Both being trans and Judaism teach me that survival isn’t passive — it’s an active, ongoing commitment.”

Trans people are not only being targeted by far right extremists — we have also become the scapegoats of an increasingly mainstreamed rising fascist movement. And in the face of these attacks, many in the media, elected officials who previously claimed to stand with us, and even friends and family often seem to be turning away, hoping that abandoning us might appease Trump and his administration. But it will never be enough, and capitulating will not save them.

We are the canary in the coal mine. And we are dying.

Since Trump’s election, our identities have been legally and systematically erased — some of us, like Orr, have even had our passports withheld by the government. Our existence and struggles have been wiped from school curricula. Our access to health care has been relentlessly attacked. Trans children’s ability to be respected, seen, safe and included in schools is under threat. Despite a Supreme Court ruling affirming our rights, employment discrimination continues to run rampant, and the government is not protecting us. Public health data and LGBTQ research have been erased, funding for LGBTQ programs has been slashed and HIV prevention efforts are now at risk. Incarcerated trans people in federal prisons are being forcibly detransitioned.

Yes, it’s bad — the Trump administration’s policies are putting our lives at risk. And it’s not just isolated harm: It’s part of a widespread culture of anti-trans violence playing out across the country. I’ve watched these attacks begin in red states. I’ve watched those states be abandoned by mainstream LGBTQ organizations because they were “lost causes,” and I’ve watched our lives increasingly be treated like bargaining chips again and again as we lost ground.

First came the national outrage over bans on trans athletes in schools. Then the bans on gender-affirming care for youth and all of the other attacks on trans kids. Each month, fewer Democratic representatives fight for us and liberal media outlets have offered dramatically less coverage of Trump’s anti-trans executive orders than Fox News, allowing the right wing to fill that void and dominates the hegemonic discourse about our lives.

Bryanna A. Jenkins, policy director at Lavender Rights Project told Truthout it’s time for elected officials to take action and issued a challenge to them.

“Elected officials: Stop capitulating to the whims of this administration and the whims of your donor base and take real risks in the name of the people who elected you to represent them,” she said.

Hospitals — even in so-called “safe haven” blue states — are quietly discontinuing care for trans patients, including adults. And so-called allies are beginning to echo the rhetoric of those who want to see us eradicated.

This isn’t the first time LGBTQ people have lived under a government hostile to our existence. Trans people have always been here. We will always be here. Our community has survived the Lavender Scare, the police raids, the anti-obscenity and anti-sodomy laws, three-article codes, and all the other violent attacks.

And while things got better for some of us — most dramatically for the white, cisgender, wealthy people in our community — many of us saw this coming. For decades, we’ve begged the most privileged members of the LGBTQ umbrella to continue to fight alongside us. But there was a pivotal moment when major LGBTQ organizations and funders chose to abandon the most marginalized in our communities — trans women of color, sex workers, Black trans people — in favor of respectability, in favor of “fitting in.”

“Elected officials: Stop capitulating to the whims of this administration and the whims of your donor base and take real risks in the name of the people who elected you to represent them.”

Queer theorists like Yasmin Nair, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Tourmaline, Ryan Conrad, Urvashi Vaid, Dean Spade, Michael Warner, Jasbir Puar, Angela Davis, Susan Stryker, Roderick A. Ferguson, Cathy J. Cohen and Eric A. Stanley warned that the lesbian and gay movement’s embrace of pinkwashing and assimilationist politics was always doomed. They argued that prioritizing white supremacy and rainbow capitalism over trans liberation fed the very systems that would eventually turn on us. And now, those systems are indeed turning on us all.

“Trans justice isn’t trans CEOs, trans soldiers and trans cops. Trans liberation is a new world that hasn’t existed,” Z Williams, director of client support and operations at the Denver-based nonprofit Bread and Roses Legal Center told Truthout. “So many groups want to play respectability politics. These are the same organizations that have abandoned trans people for decades.”

During the first Trump administration, Black trans people disrupted Pride parades in Columbus, Toronto, D.C. and Minneapolis to call out systemic violence within LGBTQ communities. But instead of listening, most parade organizers kept the police at Pride and some participants even cheered for criminalization of the people leading those protests. And mainstream LGBTQ groups clung to corporate sponsorships — even when those companies were entrenched in the military-industrial complex, complicit in the deaths of queer and trans people around the world.

And now some of us are surprised. Surprised when those same sponsors abandon us the moment it’s no longer profitable to extract from our communities. Surprised when the same police — some of whom have been trained by the Israel’s military forces that are responsible for killing Palestinians — turn their weapons (including not only guns but also the prison- and immigration-industrial complexes, as well) on us.

And now, with a president who rolls out the red carpet for right-wing media hosts who openly call for the “eradication” of trans existence from “public life,” — what do we do? There’s no more time to pretend that any of us will be unaffected, but there’s still time to learn how to build community and fight back in solidarity with the most targeted among us.

Let’s all take a moment to get real with ourselves: If you are financially secure, no, your money won’t protect you. If you are white, your whiteness won’t protect you. If you are cis or straight, that won’t protect you either. We are all in this together — and under fascism, the only way to survive is to listen, to learn and to recognize this truth: The law, the government, the police are not your friends.

“No more performative gestures,” Jenkins told Truthout, articulating the demands of this moment. “We need our allies to dig in and take bigger risks, and that includes white rich influencer trans women with platforms. Stop doing the bare minimum. Donating to multimillion-dollar orgs that have publicly laid off their trans staff with no further research is not doing the work. Trans staffers that have to navigate the chaos of the world we are in with no stable employment or health care.”

Next, let’s learn from our history. Orr told Truthout: “We’re living in a time when our existence is under attack from so many angles, but I draw strength from the legacy of those who came before us — people who refused to be erased, who found ways to care for one another when the world didn’t.”

Let’s talk about the Lavender Panthers, the Compton Cafeteria Riot, the die-ins, the sit-ins, the kiss-ins and the “zap” actions. We have much to learn from social movements that understood what so many mainstream LGBTQ organizations have forgotten: You cannot negotiate with a system that was designed to disappear you — both literally and figuratively. Let’s study the tactics of the Black Panther Party, the Pan-African liberation movements (such as those in Algeria, Ghana and Angola), the American Indian Movement (AIM) and Palestinian liberation movements.

“I am resting and strategizing, because as a community we are gonna be in for a decadeslong fight to create a new reality where liberation and liberty is not fickle.”

And let’s learn from communities abroad who, at this very moment, continue to organize under authoritarian and illiberal regimes hostile to their existence. We are so lucky to live in a time where we can literally talk — and build power — with trans and queer people in Hungary, Russia, Poland, Turkey and all around the world, and ask them how they survive and resist.

Lastly, let’s get even more involved in our local communities. “Right now, building community is a form of protest, an active way to push back against our oppressors and fascism,” Orr said. “Showing up for each other, creating safer spaces, organizing across movements — that’s how we fight back. It’s how we remind ourselves and each other that we’re not alone, and that a different world is still possible.”

Now more than ever we need to support mutual aid networks, get involved in food justice groups, housing justice efforts and bail funds. Show up — financially and in person. “Find the smaller and lesser-known trans orgs on the ground that are truly meeting the moment. Black trans led orgs in the South and the Midwest. Trans orgs in the rural areas no one thinks about,” Jenkins told Truthout.

Be loud — but also learn when to be quiet. Be safe — and keep others safe with you. Solidarity is not a feeling; it’s a practice. It’s time for more of us to master OPSEC (operational security): protect sensitive data, use encrypted software when appropriate, and be on the lookout for surveillance in order to limit harm, not just to yourself, but also to those around you.

Transgender activist Allison Chapman knows this personally as a legislative researcher and software engineer. “As the U.S. government and those on the far right continue to increase their attacks and targeting of trans people, it’s more important than ever that we protect ourselves and the information we have from those who want to do us harm,” Chapman told Truthout.

But even as we work to make sure people have what they need day-to-day, we can’t stop dreaming toward futures where we are all free.

Z Williams from Denver had some wise words on this: “I think it is easy for us to fall into our own form of compliance with the Trump regime right now,” Williams told Truthout. “We have been spending a lot of time talking to trans people about their dreams and what is really worth fighting for. We have been sending love and care to trans people in the form of mutual aid, health care, clothing and personal care. We are also creating a container where trans people can be outraged and express that freely.”

Above all, let’s keep each other alive.

“I am resting and strategizing, because as a community we are gonna be in for a decadeslong fight to create a new reality where liberation and liberty is not fickle,” Jenkins said.

We need you. We need each other. We can and will survive.

“It is time for us to be here, loud, angry and doing the work our communities need,” Williams said.