The Trump administration is siding with religious leaders who ordered a Catholic school in Indiana to fire a teacher in a same-sex marriage, saying the church’s actions are protected by the First Amendment.
In a 35-page amicus brief filed on Tuesday, the Department of Justice argued that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis — which fired gay high school teacher Joshua Payne-Elliott last year — is, like other religious employers in the U.S., “entitled to employ in key roles only persons whose beliefs and conduct are consistent” with its “religious precepts.”
In addition, the brief states, the “Constitution bars the government from interfering with the autonomy of religious organizations.” Payne-Elliott’s battle with the Archdiocese of Indianapolis started last spring, two years after he married Layton Payne-Elliott, who teaches at a different Catholic high school in Indianapolis.
A Miami-Dade County jail is facing potential legal action after two transgender women said they were mistreated and humiliated at the jail following their arrests at a Black Lives Matter rally.
“Initially I think we can all say it was a very inspiring experience,” Viola, one of the arrested women, said of the rally. “Even through the rain, we were chanting, screaming our lungs out.”
But that empowering experience escalated into something more humiliating and degrading, according to Viola and Gabriela Amaya Cruz, a trans woman who was arrested alongside Viola. The women said officers started using excessive force and alleged Viola was pushed to the ground and tackled by two officers. Dramatic video shows the moment things took at turn at the protest.
More than a dozen people were arrested and all were transported to Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center where the women alleged things got worse.
“They had no idea to where to place me,” Cruz said. “And when they said my legal name, I had to raise my hand, obviously, because it was me. And that’s when it started to get like, ‘That’s not a woman, that’s a man,’ and that’s when things got very transphobic.”
A spokesperson for the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department released a statement to NBC Miami saying, in part, that the department is “committed to ensuring that all inmates in our custody including transgender persons are treated appropriately throughout our intake, classification and housing placement process.”
Rivky strolled through the Zara store in Manhattan’s fashionable SoHo neighborhood, one eye examining the racks of skirts and blouses and the other looking out for anyone she might know. She was looking for something that would fit her broad frame. Rivky made her way to the women’s dressing room line, dresses and skirts piled on her forearms. The female attendant looked confused and then chuckled. Why was this male-presenting person — wearing traditional Hasidic Jewish men’s attire — walking into the fitting room with women’s clothing?
Rivky, 41, is not your typical gender-conforming religious observer. Her white dress shirt, black vest and black slacks — the daily dress code for Hasidic men — serve as culturally acceptable covers for the bra and women’s underwear she frequently wears underneath. She feels her best when dressed in women’s attire, and at home she regularly strips down to just a bra, panties and nylon tights when she knows her wife will not be back for hours.
“It makes me feel like I want to dance for joy,” said Rivky, who asked that her full name not be published because she is not out to friends and family about her gender identity.
“If you take a magnifying glass and look into my heart, you will see 100 percent I am a girl.”
RIVKY
Rivky identifies as transgender but deeply buries these emotions and feelings away from her ultra-Orthodox community in Borough Park, Brooklyn. She fears that if she were to come out of the proverbial closet, she would face social expulsion or, worse, abandonment by her wife and four children. While there is no set Hasidic policy regarding those who come out as transgender, the community’s strict code of living does not condone even the slightest deviation from the Hasidic norm.
Neither biblical nor rabbinical literature points to changing one’s sex, but the Torah does discuss cross-dressing, said Rabbi Ethan Witkovsky of Park Avenue Synagogue, a prominent Conservative congregation in New York.
Deuteronomy 22:5 reads, “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.”
Witkovsky said some rabbinical teachings might support the literal translation of this verse, while others would interpret it otherwise.
From a young age, Rivky was in tune with her womanhood, but always in secret. As a child, she mirrored her sisters and female cousins, and she dressed like a girl when she had the chance. When her mother was away, Rivky, as young as 6 years old, would sneak into dresser drawers and try on her mother’s undergarments. They were large on Rivky’s child-size body but nonetheless “amazing,” she recalled with a smile.
When she grew older, Rivky ventured to women’s stores outside her community and glanced around the racks, wistfully. She was ashamed to admit her presence and found herself telling salespeople that she was shopping for her mother or sister. That prevented her from entering fitting rooms to try on clothes, denying her the satisfaction she craved.
“I should’ve been born a girl,” she said.
Despite temptations, Rivky kept her desires clandestine, believing they were sinful thoughts that needed to be purged.
“I would pray to God, ‘Take this away from me,'” she recalled.
But the more she pushed her womanhood away, the stronger her feminine wishes would return. Rivky continued to fight them off and kept to tradition when the Hasidic community arranged her marriage at 18. More than two decades and four children later, concealing her true identity left Rivky feeling incomplete. Only in the past 10 years has she realized that the only way to make peace with herself is to embrace those thoughts. Her urge to be the woman she has always wanted to be — after decades of hiding — grew stronger and stronger.
“I wanted to take off my beard,” she said. “I wanted to grow my hair.”
Rivky’s face glowed under tangled facial hairs when she discussed how she wants to take hormones some day. She also dreams of growing her hair long and styling it. She does, however, already shave her legs and chest hair from time to time, she confessed.
In small and subtle ways, Rivky increasingly started to express her gender identity, while keeping her friends and relatives in the dark. Her wife, however, had her suspicions and conveyed her disapproval. The couple have not discussed Rivky’s identity as a transgender lesbian, but Rivky said she knows that if she were to come out, she would lose her wife and children.
While coming out to those within her religious community is still a bridge too far for Rivky, she has taken steps to open up to those outside her Hasidic circle.
On a recent Sunday, Rivky attended a monthly feminist gathering in Brooklyn called Sacred Space, which celebrates and empowers women of all and no religious backgrounds. Women of various ages flashed smiles, exchanged hugs and gathered in a large circle around pastel furniture at the meeting room in the borough’s trendy DUMBO neighborhood. Attendees began introducing themselves, and Rivky, dressed in slacks and a dress shirt with her long curly sidelocks falling from her balding head, spoke up.
“If you take a magnifying glass and look into my heart, you will see 100 percent I am a girl,” Rivky announced in a Yiddish accent. She attended the event to see the co-host, Abby Stein, an openly transgender woman who was once an ultra-Orthodox rabbi. Rivky listened to Stein attentively, admiring her courage and openness, and then ducked out of the meeting early, as confidentiality was a concern.
Rivky yearns to assimilate into a larger society that extends beyond Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox community, and without blowing her cover, she relies on Facebook as an outlet. Hasidic Jews typically do not use social media, but Rivky’s account is disguised, and it is strictly used for expressing her womanhood. Her Facebook cover image is of a rainbow flag with the words “love is love,” and her profile photo is of a polished woman’s hand holding a red rose. Her tag line reads, “A transgender girl who appreciates seeing a smile on her friends lips when they are painted hot red!”
An estimated 1.4 million adults identify as transgender in the United States, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, although it is unknown how many trans Americans, like Rivky, are not open about their gender identities. For those who do come out, living openly is not without its challenges: According to the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, transgender people often face discrimination in housing, employment and health care, among other hurdles.
Stein, 28, is no stranger to the challenges of both the proverbial closet and coming out as transgender in the Hasidic community. A former rabbi, Stein said she struggled with her gender identity since she was at least 5 years old, recalling anger toward her parents at the time for not letting her wear dresses and telling her mother that the genitalia she was born with “doesn’t belong there.”
Stein was born into a large family of 12 children, and she socialized with no one outside her close-knit Hasidic circle in Brooklyn growing up. She divorced her wife, pursued a secular education and then came out as transgender in 2015. Stein was ostracized by her religious community, and her ex-wife severed ties, as well, because Hasidic leaders forbade their remaining in contact. She does, however, get to visit with her son from time to time. Now, five years after having left the community, she still savors the freedom fueled by that difficult decision.
“Even sometimes just waking up in the morning and walking in the streets you can be yourself,” she said. “Being yourself every day is really powerful. I can’t overstate that enough.”
She finds value in the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life rather than be confined to one group that shares the same religious and cultural values.
“I could never form strong friendships before I came out,” she said, adding that now, after having traveled to six continents and becoming friends with diverse groups of people, that aspect of her life is thriving. Over the past few years, Stein has become a global LGBTQ rights activist and has given lectures in more than 20 countries, hoping to inspire courage, resilience and inclusion. Her autobiography, “Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman,” was released in November.
But while Stein has found beauty and inspiration in her expanded world, the loneliness that comes from the loss of her Hasidic friends and family still creeps in from time to time. Stein said that for years after she was shunned by her religious community, she would call her mother every Friday, even though her mother would avoid answering the phone or answer and immediately hang up when she realized Stein was on the other end of the line. Stein called less frequently, reaching out only on holidays, and eventually she stopped calling altogether.
“Being yourself every day is really powerful. I can’t overstate that enough.”
ABBY STEIN
The fear of alienation and losing her family is what kept Rivky on guard during her SoHo shopping trip. But despite the uneasiness, the experience was a mini-vacation, because her wife was out of town.
“Just walking into this environment makes me feel womanized, girlish,” she said while walking into Club Monaco.
“I like heels. Something pointy,” she said before settling on a pair of pink pumps at a nearby shoe store. Her size was not available, but that did not stop her from squeezing what she could of her foot into the shoe and admiring the dainty look in the mirror.
Rivky abides by social distancing rules during the COVID-19 pandemic, but she said the most difficult part has been the lockdown on self-expression. Her family is home more than usual now, which means bras, panties and other expressions of her gender identity are relegated to their own version of quarantine.
There’s “very little time to express my feminine self,” she said dejectedly. A quick trip to the market is her excuse to escape the social construct and at least call her non-Hasidic friends to discuss her frustration. Rivky said her fear of “remaining a man” is greater than her fear of contracting a dangerous virus.
Rivky remains caught between two worlds, and she yearns to one day reconcile her inner gender identity with the person she presents outwardly. On some days, she feels that her coming out is closer, but for now, she continues to sneak out for short shopping trips and to message people through her secret Facebook account.
“Keeping the FEMININE flame’s burning and it gets stronger and wider,” she recently wrote on Facebook. “I am getting closer to living my feminine dream.”
“All female athletes want is a fair shot at competition,” a young woman can be heard saying over a video of several athletes preparing to run a race. “But what if that shot was taken away by a competitor who claims to be a girl but was born a boy?”
That controversial digital ad — which then shows a teen boy outrunning his female competitors and shrugging at them with indifference afterwards — is one of three released this week by the American Principles Project, a Virginia-based conservative think tank, and its PAC. The group issued a statement Thursday saying the political ads are part of a $4 million effort to “target persuadable Democrats and independent voters in key swing states.”
Half of the campaign budget will be spent in Michigan, a state Trump won in 2016 but now lags in the polls, and the American Principles Project confirmed it will release ads in Wisconsin “in the coming weeks.” The group said it hopes the Michigan ads draw attention to the support of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., “for policies which would allow biological males to compete in women’s sports and push children into dangerous, life-altering sex-change” procedures.
The two other ads feature Kevin Whitt, a man who says he lived as a woman for 17 years before deciding to detransition. Whitt warns viewers that “treatments to change the gender of a minor are very dangerous and irreversible.”
The Biden and Peters campaigns did not immediately respond to a requests for comment.
National LGBTQ advocacy groups, including the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD, were quick to denounce the campaign.
“These ads perpetuate dangerous stereotypes, traffic in misinformation, and put the lives of transgender people at risk,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. “Sites and social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook should decline to run them and send a message loud and clear that those who would use their platforms to peddle hate and lies will not be tolerated or validated.”
The Human Rights Campaign also called for social media companies to take down the digital ads, saying they are blatant lies from an “outdated playbook.”
“APP wants a future where LGBTQ people can be fired, denied housing, refused business services or health care solely because of who they are. But they know full well that they’re on the wrong side of this issue and the wrong side of our future.”
Representatives from Facebook and YouTube did not immediately respond to NBC News’ requests for comment regarding the ads.
This is not the first time APP has funded an ad campaign with the hopes of making transgender rights a political wedge issue. Last year, it funded a similar campaign amid the Kentucky governor’s race, though the group’s preferred candidate, Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, lost to Democrat Andy Beshear.
A trans sex worker was violently stabbed by her client in São Paulo, Brazil, last Wednesday (September 2) and her body carelessly thrown out of a 7th-floor balcony.
Chiara Duarte, 27, was found dead with multiple stab wounds in Rua Rangel Pestana in the downtown Sé neighbourhood in the early morning, police said.
The suspect, they said, met Duarte and invited her to his apartment. But the night curdled into violence after she asked for payment, sparking a heated argument in which he stabbed her several times with a knife, local mediareported. A merchant, Jeferson Pereira, 18, was arrested by authorities charged with manslaughter after being found with two knives.
Duarte, who both lived at and volunteered with Casa Florescer II, a shelter for trans people, was remembered by her loved ones as simply someone who wanted to be “happy”.
“It was prejudice, it was a hate crime, transphobia,” her brother, Luan, toldGlobo News.
Mother of slain trans woman mourns of the loss of her ‘beautiful’ daughter.
Fala Mãe Londrina, a grassroots network for the mothers of LGBT+ people in Londrina, explained in a Facebook statement published September 4 that Duarte’s mother, who was unnamed, phoned up the shelter after learning of her daughter’s death.
“I want to make a wish for my daughter,” she told the shelter staffers, “my daughter is leaving with lipstick.
“She’s wearing a pink onesie and skirt. She looks beautiful. Needs lipstick, though.”
During Duarte’s funeral at São Luis Cemetery, the statement said, the victim’s mother reflected: “She looks beautiful, right?
“Look girl how beautiful she looks. Isn’t my daughter beautiful?”
Officers from Brazil’s state police agency Polícia Militar arrested Pereira after a witness said they saw him enter the apartment complex at the time of the killing.
In a nation now seemingly inured to homophobia, anti-LGBT+ violence has increased in Brazil in recent years, LGBT+ watchdogs warn. Last year, Brazil was found to be the deadliest country for trans people, with some tallies suggesting that a trans person dies almost every day in a nation of 200 million.
In the midst of a worsening pandemic and with record numbers of Americans unemployed, the president and his administration have focused their attention on something else entirely — giving federally funded shelters a license to discriminate against transgender people.
Under the Obama administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) implemented and strengthened a policy known as the Equal Access Rule to guarantee that HUD-funded shelters are open to all Americans, specifically putting protections in place to ensure trans individuals can seek accommodations that correspond to their gender identity.
Now, at a time when access to safe housing is absolutely vital, HUD is advancing a rule change that would enshrine anti-trans discrimination in federal regulations. This senseless policy needlessly puts lives at risk, and it’s critical that the American people speak out about why this rule change is dangerous and contrary to our values.
On July 24, HUD published its proposed rule change and initiated a public comment period that will run through Sept. 22. In an announcement made on July 1, HUD claims, “the proposed rule modifications also better accommodate religious beliefs of shelter providers.” HUD cites no evidence that the existing rule is placing an undue burden on faith-based shelter providers. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request in 2017, HUD was unable to locate any requests for waivers or accommodations or complaints made while the Obama-era Equal Access Rule protections were in place.
HUD has indicated that it will not recognize the recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County which affirmed that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects the LGBTQ community from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, and is pressing forward with this discriminatory rule.
HUD has also perpetuated the dangerous myth that protecting transgender people’s access to accommodations that reflect their gender identity puts others at risk without citing a shred of evidence. In the text of the proposed rule itself, HUD admits that it is not aware of any data suggesting that transgender individuals pose an inherent risk to biological women. Nondiscrimination protections have been in place for years in more than 20 states and 300 localities with no increase in public safety issues.
These are simply bad faith arguments by HUD Secretary Ben Carson, someone who has openly denigrated transgender women as “big, hairy men” in front of his own agency staff. The rule is more of the same, allowing shelter staff to judge the physical characteristics of those seeking services to decide who is sufficiently male or sufficiently female. His long history of vitriol toward the LGBTQ community and determination to press forward with this deeply anti-trans policy is a total departure from the mission of HUD, “to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all.”
The right to safe housing should never be obstructed by the political or social beliefs of others. But even worse, this anti-transgender proposal directly targets a group that has historically and disproportionately suffered from the hardships of homelessness. According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, nearly one-third of transgender people experience homelessness at some point in their lives and 70 percent reported mistreatment in shelter due to their gender identity.
Removing these protections puts individuals living in states without protections at risk of being left on the streets. The consequences are often dire when a transgender individual is turned away from an emergency shelter.
While I have introduced legislation in the House to block this rule, the most immediate step we can all take is to speak out against this dangerous and discriminatory policy. It is critical that the public submit comments — which you can do here — urging the Trump-Pence White House and HUD to abandon this reckless proposed regulation.
In August, I led 144 of my colleagues in the House and Senate in a public comment letter to Secretary Carson demanding that this rule be rescinded.
We need to fight this policy like trans lives depend on it — because they do.
Jennifer Wexton is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Virginia’s 10th District. Follow her on Twitter: @RepWexton.
A group of transgender activists are working to open a shelter for homeless trans and gender non-conforming people in New Orleans.
Milan Nicole Sherry, co-director of House of Tulip, told the Washington Blade on July 27 during an interview at her Uptown New Orleans home that she expects the shelter will open in the city next spring or summer.
“We wanted to create a forever home for our community, a space where there were no barriers, a space where they could actually come and get the resources that they need, get the love and nurturing that they need,” said Sherry as her husband, Za’hair Martinez, listened.
Sherry and Mariah Moore, a trans activist who also lives in New Orleans, first came up with the idea that became House of Tulip — Tulip is an acronym that stands for Trans United Leading Intersectional Progress — earlier this year after the coronavirus pandemic largely shut down the city’s hospitality and tourism industries.
“Many of the folks within our community, specifically transgender and non-conforming people who work in the service industry in New Orleans found themselves at risk of losing their jobs,” said Sherry.
House of Tulip Treasurer Dylan Waguespack is also the president of Louisiana Trans Advocates’ board of directors.
Waguespack and three other activists in March created the TGNC Peoples COVID Crisis Fund of Louisiana to help trans and gender non-conforming people in Louisiana pay for food, medication and housing during the pandemic. The fund has raised more than $20,000, but Sherry told the Blade it soon became clear the lack of housing in New Orleans was a long-term problem.
House of Tulip on its website notes a third of trans people in Louisiana “report experiencing homelessness at some point in their lives.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development notes the average rent for an apartment in the New Orleans metropolitan area during the first quarter of this year was $1,110 a month. The U.S. Census notes New Orleans has a 24.6 percent poverty rate.
Sherry noted poverty rates are even higher among the city’s Black trans residents. She also told the Blade they are more vulnerable to discrimination and violence because of their gender identity.
Louisiana’s hate crimes law includes sexual orientation, but not gender identity. Two Black trans women — Draya McCarty and Shakie Peters — were found dead earlier this summer in Baton Rouge and Amite City respectively.
“There’s no reason why, even in 2020, that we are seeing the amount of homelessness that we’re seeing in community,” Sherry told the Blade. “There’s no reason why in 2020 we should still be seeing the amount of violence that we’re seeing in this community, but we’re here and this is where we’re at.”
Sherry said GED and job training programs and access to mental health care are among the additional services to which House of Tulip clients will have access.
“This is not just providing folks with just housing,” she said, noting Tulip in the shelter’s name stands for Trans United Leading Intersectional Progress.
The GoFundMe campaign that House of Tulip has launched has thus far raised $412,995. More than 7,000 people have donated to the effort.
“Community has always taken care of community; we have done it since 50 years ago when Stonewall first started,” said Sherry. “Community has always taken care of community; even through times of pandemic, even through a time of Trump … we’ve always shown up for one another, so I’m not surprised that this community has really shown up once again and yet again.”
‘I have nothing to lose, but everything to gain’
Sherry, 29, grew up on New Orleans’ West Bank with nine siblings.
She told the Blade she grew up in a “dominantly male household.”
“I grew up with dealing with a lot of misogyny, toxic masculinity and things of that nature,” said Sherry.
Sherry in 2009 graduated from high school. Sherry the following year became a founding member of BreakOut!,a group that, among other things, works to end police harassment of LGBTQ youth.
“There was literally a time here in New Orleans where you could not walk down the street as a Black trans woman without literally being snatched off of the streets and then thrown into jail and charged with solicitation of prostitution, crimes against nature,” she said. “It was so easy to target and literally harass our community.”
Sherry further noted “as a trans woman, even in my moments where I could have gotten damn near the dog shit beaten out of me, I will not call the police because I had known just from experience … that calling the police did not work out in our best interests.”
“So police, you know, were just never our friends,” she added.
Sherry celebrated her 29th Birthday on July 23.
She told the Blade she was unable to celebrate previous Birthdays because she either could not afford it or was in jail. Sherry also noted a Black trans woman’s average life expectancy is 35 years.
“I have never envisioned myself where I am today,” she said. “To be honest I didn’t expect myself to be alive.”
Sherry said she lived on Tulane Avenue eight years ago with other trans women and sex workers. Sherry told the Blade she and other tenants paid their rent by the week.
“Literally when I say I have nothing to lose and everything to gain, I have nothing to lose, but everything to gain,” she said.
Sherry, who lives with HIV, told the Blade she has also struggled with addiction and mental health issues.
“If I wanted to be a bitch, I can justify about all of the trauma and just, but when you know better you do better,” she said. “I’m not going to cause the same harm that’s been caused over and over and over again.”
Martinez, a native of St. Augustine, Fla., who describes himself as a “trans masculine man,” praised his wife and Moore for their work on House of Tulip. Martinez also applauded trans women who supported him in his life.
“They are the ones who paved the way for me to be Za’hair,” he said. “It’s only right for me to follow the leadership of my wife and Mariah and to have their back.”
JK Rowling refuted allegations that she is transphobic while returning a Ripple of Hope award to the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights organisation.
Rowling announced she is giving back the honour after Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late senator and president of the human rights nonprofit, shared her “profound disappointment” in the author’s remarks on trans rights.
Kerry Kennedy released a statement on August 3, eight months after Rowling received the award for her work on behalf of children. She joined previous honourees including Barack Obama, Desmond Tutu and Hillary Clinton.
“I have spoken with JK Rowling to express my profound disappointment that she has chosen to use her remarkable gifts to create a narrative that diminishes the identity of trans and non-binary people, undermining the validity and integrity of the entire transgender community,” she wrote, citing Rowling’s tweets and essay on trans lives, as well her liking a tweet “that opposed a bill to ban conversion therapy”.
Kennedy rejected what she understands Rowling’s position to be: that sex as assigned at birth “is the primary and determinative factor of one’s gender, regardless of one’s gender identity”.
“The science is clear and conclusive: Sex is not binary,” she continued.
“Trans rights are human rights. JK Rowling’s attacks upon the transgender community are inconsistent with the fundamental beliefs and values of RFK Human Rights and represent a repudiation of my father’s vision.”ADVERTISING
JK Rowling can’t keep Robert Kennedy award in good conscience.
In response, Rowling wrote Thursday (August 27): “The statement incorrectly implied that I was transphobic, and that I am responsible for harm to trans people.
“As a longstanding donor to LGBT charities and a supporter of trans people’s right to live free of persecution, I absolutely refute the accusation that I hate trans people or wish them ill, or that standing up for the rights of women is wrong, discriminatory, or incites harm or violence to the trans community.”
She continued by repeating her claim that she “feels nothing but sympathy towards those with gender dysphoria”, and her baseless allegation that “an ethical and medical scandal is brewing” regarding gender-affirming therapies.
Rowling ended her statement by disagreeing with the Kennedy organisation’s stance on trans rights: that they do not clash with women’s rights.
“The thousands of women who’ve got in touch with me disagree, and, like me, believe this clash of rights can only be resolved if more nuance is permitted in the debate.”
She concluded: “I am deeply saddened that RFKHR has felt compelled to adopt this stance, but no award or honour, no matter my admiration for the person for whom it was named, means so much to me that I would forfeit the right to follow the dictates of my own conscience.”
Hundreds of Black trans people lost to violence have been honoured in a powerful street mural painted by local artists in Chicago.
The words ‘Black Trans Lives Matter’ stretch across the street in Catalpa Avenue, Andersonville. It was created by 22 artists or art groups, with the help of neighbours who donated $4,000 to pay the artists for their time and materials.
Last weekend the whole community came together to add names and portraits to the artwork, giving faces to those who have died.
“It is vital that when folks see that Black Trans Lives Matter [mural] they understand the context of why it matters,” said David Oakes of the Andersonville Chamber of Commerce, speaking to Block Club Chicago.
Each participating artist decorated an individual letter in the mural. One artist, Bailey Funk, painted the words “say their names” in the letter B, prompting the chamber to consider giving more prominence to the names of the dead.
Now the names encircle the mural, each one colour-coded to give context to the deaths.
The names in pink are people whom police killed in the last five years, while the names in yellow identify unarmed people of colour killed by police since 1975. More names are being added this week, according to the chamber.
Among those honoured in portraits are Merci Mack, a Black trans woman killed by a gunshot to the head, Tony McDade, a Black trans man shot by police, and Marsha P Johnson, a Black queer rights activist instrumental in the Stonewall uprising of 1969.
“Transgender women of colour were leaders in LGBT+ activism and throughout time, but they have been erased,” Laura Austin, associate director of the Andersonville chamber, said in a statement.
“We wanted to give them space. We wanted to make them a priority. It is long overdue.”
The Black Lives Matter movement gave rise to several memorials to the trans community, including a huge art installation on Hollywood Boulevard. Last week it was announced that the huge letters reading ‘All Black Lives Matter’ will remain there permanently.
Steven King, a popular content creator on the social media platform TikTok, said he stumbled across the video-sharing app by accident early last year.
“I saw an advertisement for what I thought was an app that could put your selfies into motion” he said. “I downloaded it, and two days later I was posting my first video.”
King, 47, started by sharing videos about his day, his relationship with his husband and what clothes he wanted to wear. They must have resonated because his following started to grow — all the way to 3 million as of this week.
“The amount of people that are seeing my face, that are engaging with these videos I’m creating,” he said, “really put me in awe.”
King, now a verified creator on the platform, said he knew he was onto something when the comment sections on his page started to fill up with questions about coming out, LGBTQ relationships and confidence in one’s own identity.
“When I joined TikTok, there was definitely the sense that it was a young-adult app,” he said, and “I knew right away that these were teenagers asking, and I had a responsibility.”
So in February 2019, King, who lives in Arizona, began doing livestreams where he would answer questions from his followers — many of them LGBTQ youth and young adults — and creating videos to share his advice and aspects of his life story, from his 24-year relationship to his sobriety.
“The traumas that we suffer from as we grow have a huge impact on who we are as adults,” King said. “To be able to empathize and put myself back in the position that these teenagers are in, knowing where I came from and how I made it through, I just had to give back that information.”
With the help of the algorithm on its “For You” page, which feeds users curated content based on their previous interactions and “likes,” TikTok has helped LGBTQ content creators and audiences find one another on the platform. But some fear the queer community they helped foster on the social network may be in danger amid the face-off between TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, and the Trump administration.
Collins Onosike, a verified TikTok content creator, has amassed 4.4 million followers since joining the platform several years ago.
“My ‘For You’ page is full of queer people — I love it,” he said. “I’ve met a lot of friends on here; it’s really a happy place”
Onosike, who has built both his career and social group around TikTok, is among those who has been on edge amid the back and forth between the president and ByteDance.
“The thought of just losing it, just losing all of it is quite scary — for myself and other influencers,” he said.
Onosike, 20, joined TikTok in its early days when the app was still called Musical.ly. At first, he focused on dance and lip-sync videos, but he then pivoted to comedy skits where he often incorporates drag into his performances.
“I get a lot of comments saying, ‘Seeing the way you express yourself has given me the courage to be myself as well.’ It’s so cool to see the amount of power a video can give to someone else.”
‘Freaking out’
For Sarah Schauer, the prospect of TikTok shutting down was like “having deja vu.”
“I was like, ‘Are you f—— kidding me? I’ve done this before,” said Schauer, who started her social media career on the now-defunct video-sharing platform Vine and lost 848,000 followers in one day when it shut down in 2017.
“I understand why everyone else was freaking out, but it was like ‘I had practiced for this,'” she said. “This time I would lose 1.2 million [followers].”
Schauer, who lives in Los Angeles, started posting on TikTok last year after hearing success stories of other creator accounts growing rapidly on the platform. She said she has found a supportive fan base on the app, where she shares point-of-view-style comedy videos.
“I didn’t do queer content when I was on Vine, because I came out later, but I’ve started to integrate it into my content now,” said Schauer, who is bisexual and estimates that her followers are about half queer and half straight.
Schauer, who said the platform’s large queer community is commonly referred to as “gay TikTok,” said the app’s algorithm is about discoverability — and goes far beyond LGBTQ-related content.
“I’ve seen so much Native American and native Hawaiian content. The disabled community can create videos about their situations,” she explained. “I’ve never seen their videos as much as I have now.”
‘We’ll find a way to do it again’
For Chris Olsen and Ian Paget, a gay couple who split their time between New York and Los Angeles, TikTok started as a place to watch videos and stay entertained amid the pandemic. But then in April, the duo started posting their own videos to the platform.