Black Trans Women Seek More Space in the Movement They Helped Start
At no point have black trans people shared fully in the gains of the L.G.B.T.Q. or racial justice movements. This may be changing.
Transgender women of color were leaders in L.G.B.T.Q. activism before, during and after the uprising at the Stonewall Inn 51 years ago on Sunday, but they were never put at the center of the movement they helped start: one whose very shorthand, “the gay rights movement,” erases them.
Though active in the Black Lives Matter movement from the beginning, they have not been prioritized there either. At no point have black trans people shared fully in the gains of racial justice or L.G.B.T.Q. activism, despite suffering disproportionately from the racism, homophobia and transphobia these movements exist to combat.
But now, as the two movements are pulled together by extraordinary circumstances — the protests sparked by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery; the killings of two black trans women, Dominique Fells and Riah Milton, shortly after a black trans man, Tony McDade, was killed by the police; a pandemic that has disproportionately affected people of color; an economic crisis that has disproportionately affected trans people; and a Supreme Court decision protecting gay and trans people from employment discrimination, all coming to a head during Pride month — black trans people are mobilizing more visibly than ever before.
This moment, advocates say, is long overdue, and they are determined not to let it slip away.
Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York Times
Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times
For decades, the idea that “we were all minorities was enough for people to just say, ‘OK, that’s what we have in common, so if I win, that means you automatically are winning, too,’” said Peppermint, a black trans activist who co-hosted the Black Queer Town Hall, a three-night series of virtual performances and discussions this month. “I think that the notion of intersectionality is becoming more readily available for people to understand that a win for one group or one identity doesn’t necessarily equal an automatic win for the other.”
While L.G.B.T.Q. people have secured many legal rights and protections, black transgender women are still killed so often that the American Medical Association has declared it an epidemic. Last year, 91 percent of the transgender or gender-nonconforming people who were fatally shot were black women, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
This year, at least 16 trans people have been killed — almost certainly an underestimate, because many cases go unreported and many victims are misgendered.
“So much money and resources and energy has been put into legislative fights or judicial fights, which is important — those wins are important,” the activist Raquel Willis said. “But as a black trans woman, I often have to grapple with the question of, what do any of these protections mean if I am dead, if I am still at risk of literally being killed?”
Violence against transgender people increased after President Trump was inaugurated, advocacy groups found in 2017, and Mr. Trump has singled out trans people in his policies since the beginning of his presidency.
His administration reversed Obama-era protections for transgender students, reimposed a ban on trans people serving in the military and, just this month, erased rules protecting them from discrimination in health care. It also sought to define gender as an immutable trait assigned at birth — an effort that would, essentially, define trans people out of legal existence.
“The attacks on the trans community are at every level, and it’s coming from the highest office in this country, and it has from Day 1,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group GLAAD. “I think that black trans people and trans people of color are mobilizing and using this platform and this moment because you can’t have black lives matter without having black trans lives matter.”
In recent weeks, donations to grass-roots organizations that help black trans people, bail funds and individual fund-raisers have surged.
And two weeks ago, 15,000 people showed up for the Brooklyn Liberation march after the killings of Mr. McDade, Ms. Fells and Ms. Milton.
Ms. Willis was one of the speakers at the protest, as was Melania Brown, the sister of Layleen Polanco, who was active in the ballroom scene in New York as a member of the House of Xtravaganza and who died last year after having a seizure in a cell in Rikers Island, where guards failed to check on her.
This sort of public visibility is very much new. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, trans women who were key figures in the Stonewall uprising, got a monument in New York last year, although neither lived to see it.
But Miss Major, one of their fellow leaders at Stonewall, is still alive, a fact she phrases in defiant terms: “I’m still here,” with an expletive.
Miss Major, 79, was executive director of the Transgender Gender-Variant Intersex Justice Project and now runs a house for trans people in Arkansas.
She has been vocal about the erasure of black trans people in the broader L.G.B.T.Q. movement, and said in an interview this week that while she hoped this moment would be different, she did not expect it to be unless her community fought loudly for itself.
“What I tell the girls is that they’ve got to keep fighting,” she said. “They must keep fighting. Because if they don’t succeed and do the work, we’ll get left behind, and one thing we cannot accept is being left behind this time.”
Correction: June 29, 2020
An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the role of transgender women of color in the Stonewall Inn uprising, suggesting they were the sole leaders. Trans women of color were leaders in L.G.B.T.Q. activism before, during and after the uprising, but they were among many activists who led at Stonewall.
Maggie Astor is a political reporter based in New York. Previously, she was a general assignment reporter and a copy editor for The Times and a reporter for The Record in New Jersey. @MaggieAstor
Rudy Grillo/The LGBT Community Center Archive
How Should Feminism Target Sexual Abuse? A Battle in Patriarchal France
A high-profile sexual abuse case has pitted competing strains of feminism against each other in a country where the #MeToo movement was slow to take hold.
PARIS — They seemed like natural allies. Both are women in the male-dominated world of French politics. Both partners in the leftist alliance governing Paris. Both feminists.
But the two women have come to define the competing strains of French feminism from different generations and recently found themselves at opposite ends of an old-fashioned political brawl.
Anne Hidalgo, 61, the second-term mayor of Paris regularly mentioned as a future presidential contender, embodies a tradition of French feminism that fights for the rights of women within the legal framework in keeping with the country’s universalist values like equality and liberty.
Alice Coffin, 42, a freshly elected city councilor and longtime feminist activist, is a part of France’s newest wave of feminism, which places the issue of violence against women at the core of the movement and is not afraid to take on a powerful, entrenched male establishment.
Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times
Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times
Their most recent flash point was Christophe Girard, a feared power broker in Paris who was the mayor’s deputy for culture and became a focus of controversy this year for his longstanding support of Gabriel Matzneff, the writer celebrated by a certain French elite despite openly acknowledging that he engaged in sex with teenage girls and prepubescent boys.
But the two women have come to define the competing strains of French feminism from different generations and recently found themselves at opposite ends of an old-fashioned political brawl.
For Ms. Coffin, dislodging Mr. Girard from power lay at the heart of her feminism. For months, Ms. Hidalgo defended Mr. Girard, even after Ms. Coffin and other feminists pressed him to step down as deputy mayor in late July, distancing herself only after The New York Times reported fresh accusations that he had sexually abused a teenage boy years ago. Mr. Girard denied the accusations, and is now under investigation by prosecutors.
The case has reignited a fierce debate over feminism in France, a country where the #MeToo movement was slow to take off, but where women like Ms. Coffin have made other feminists increasingly uneasy by seeking to publicly confront men suspected of abuse.
“We’re targeting powerful men, which goes over badly in France,” Ms. Coffin said. “It’s a new step — it’s different from the feminism that was practiced before.”
The mayor’s tweets — defending her deputy and singling out Ms. Coffin and another councilwoman for criticism — led to such an avalanche of threats against Ms. Coffin that she was placed under police protection for 15 days. Editors’ Picks
Cecile Emeke Isn’t Worried About Hollywood
The work of the Jamaican-British filmmaker Cecile Emeke offers a portal into a world rarely seen on American screens: the everyday experiences and culture of black youths in Europe, rendered with a complexity and depth that is exhilarating to watch.
I first came across Emeke’s work by way of a short video series called “Strolling”: simple yet beautifully shot interviews with young women and men about social and political issues. I haven’t been able to stop watching since. The series offers a lush look book of fresh-to-death fashion and riveting discussions around topics like Afrofuturism, colorism and respectability politics — topics that are rarely touched upon in coverage of black youth culture.
On Feb. 8, Emeke released the short film “Ackee & Saltfish,” which follows two best friends as they wander around East London in search of the titular meal, a Caribbean salt cod dish. The film has been described around the web as Robert Altman-esque and as a sort of British “Broad City”; Emeke is now expanding it into a web series, which will make its debut online on Sunday. I talked with her via email about her growing body of work and the challenges of what it means to be a young filmmaker operating outside the traditional scaffolding of Hollywood.
What was your inspiration for “Ackee & Saltfish”? Did you draw from your own experiences growing up? Was this based on the lives of people you knew?
“Ackee & Saltfish” is definitely based on personal experiences of mine. It’s very conversational in style, and there are a lot of intertwined themes in there, from religion to race to gentrification to popular culture and so forth. That’s definitely a reflection of my reality. With my loved ones, our conversations might start off as a random debate about whether meat is bad for you or not, then somehow meander to outrage at the neocolonialism happening throughout the world, and yet somehow end up with us reassuring one another that Jazmine Sullivan is indeed underrated and wondering if we can slide into her direct messages and be “besties.”
As for the actual story line, there were definitely a couple of specific experiences that really inspired me to write this film. The last straw was when my partner and I stumbled across an all-white, English-staffed Caribbean restaurant serving culturally appropriated versions of traditional dishes that were more expensive than the real things. To add insult to injury, Bob Marley’s face was plastered all over the walls, and the bar was designed to mimic a hut on sandy beach. Of course we ended up leaving.
You also have “Flâner” and ‘Strolling,” documentaries where you walk and talk with people, usually women, about things like identity, sisterhood and pop culture. Where did that come from?
There are a lot of reasons I decided to make “Strolling,” but ultimately I wanted to create a safe space for the global black diaspora to talk about issues important to us. The documentary series is very much centered on blackness, but it’s not limited to society’s idea of what that encompasses. It was also very therapeutic for me to create these short films, in which I could see parts of myself reflected in people whom I had never seen before, and judging by the response to the series so far, [others can see themselves too]. I think it’s helped a lot of people, myself included, feel less alienated and invisible.