The Trans Women's Anti-Violence Project

**CONTENT WARNING** Most of the content on this blog concerns violence against trans women. The Trans Women's Anti-Violence Project is a trans feminist project addressing issues of systematic, institutional and interpersonal violence and oppression experienced by trans women (those who were coercively assigned male at birth and identify or are identified as women/female) across multiple identities (e.g., race, class, dis/ability, citizen-status, nationality, sexuality, age, HIV status, and form, status, or age of transition, etc.) in order to bring about healing and justice. Ida Hammer is a social worker, organizer and social justice communicator. She facilitates the Trans Women's Anti-Violence Project, as well as presents workshops and trainings on cis privilege and being a trans ally. She's a proud dyke-identified trans woman.

[andreii-tarkovsky]

Gaycation - “USA”

[gynecomastodon]

Star! :D

[transfeminism]

We need to prioritize Black, American Indian, and Latina trans women in the sex trade in our anti-violence/anti-oppression work. If what we're doing to address violence and discrimination against trans people doesn't directly address the needs of these women, then we are not helping those experiencing the most harm.

[tpfnewsdesk-deactivated20181216]

The Upcoming Film About Black Trans Activist Marsha P. Johnson Looks Absolutely Legendary

Here's our first look at Happy Birthday, Marsha!, a short film about Stonewall activist Marsha P. Johnson, plus exclusive behind-the-scenes photos.

After protests over the erasure of trans women of color from Robert Emmerich’s Stonewall, expectations are high for the short film Happy Birthday, Marsha!, about trans activist Marsha P. Johnson. If the trailer’s any indication, this movie will slay!

Marsha features acclaimed Tangerine star Mya Taylor in the title role.

The trailer shows off a sumptuous, hyper-real 60’s aesthetic.

The film also features trans actresses Eve Lindley, Cherno Biko, and Rios O’Leary-Tagiuri.

There’s even a glimpse of Marsha P. Johnson herself in the trailer!

That’s right — it’s gonna be legendary.

BuzzFeed News caught up with filmmakers Reina Gossett and Sasha Wortzel, who showed us some wonderful exclusive images from the making of the movie.

Gossett told BuzzFeed News: “The pictures were all taken during the shooting of our ‘Hotel Dixie’ scene in which Marsha, Sylvia, Bambi and Andorra are hanging out in a hotel room they share.The scene is a flashback to 1965 when Sylvia is new to their scene and to sex work. Marsha is acting a as a sort of mentor to Sylvia.”

Commenting on the rich look of the film, Gossett notes: “We wanted the movie to reflect Marsha’s beauty. She wasn’t really fancy but she was fanciful, and when we talk about aesthetics it’s about the beauty of how she relates to other people.”

Wortzel adds: “Frequently people expect that if a film is political it’s not going to be beautiful. It was really important for us to make a film that was deeply political and personal in many ways but also gorgeous to look at.”

Happy Birthday Marsha is currently raising funds on Indiegogo, to make sure the film will be as amazing and beautiful as possible.

[gaylor-moon]

WE DID IT

[simperingcreatures-deactivated2]

Official trailer. Happy Birthday, Marsha! is a film about legendary transgender artist and activist, Marsha “Pay it No Mind” Johnson and her life in the hours before the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City.

[nursingroar]

Whereas transphobia (defined as fear or hatred) may be a useful concept in understanding the motivations underlying the actions of individuals, its use as an explanation has obscured the more systematic nature of trans marginalization by isolating the particular problem to acts rather than embedding the problem in broader cultural and political contexts. Thus, the pervasiveness of transphobia to explain trans people’s experiences of marginalization has obstructed the development of analyses that help us to understand the mechanisms that underlie, sustain, and give rise to the challenges experienced by trans people in their daily lives… …Erasure could be passive or active. Passive erasure included a lack of knowledge of trans issues and the assumption that this information was neither important nor relevant. Active erasure could involve a range of responses from visible discomfort to refusal of services to violent responses that aimed to intimidate or harm. Active and passive erasure within these two domains produced systemic barriers to care and served to reinforce the erasure of individual trans people and, by extension, trans communities.

Bauer, G. R., Hammond, R., Travers, R., Kaay, M., Hohenadel, K. M., & Boyce, M. (2009). “I don’t think this is theoretical; this is our lives”: How erasure impacts health care for transgender people. Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, 20(5), 348-361. (via nursingroar)

[projectqueer]

Transgender Latina Women to Launch Worker-Owned Beauty Business

The first-of-its-kind business aims to provide stable work for its owners.

[gynecomastodon]

A Woman’s Place Library

This is a super long post, but strap in, ‘cause it’s a pretty important one, too.

From A Woman’s Place about page:

“A Woman’s Place (AWP) is the only 24-hour supportive residential services in San Francisco offering emergency shelter and long-term treatment programs to women and transgender women with special needs due to mental disabilities, sexual or domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and HIV+/AIDS-related issues.

A Woman’s Place also accepts victims of sexual assault and domestic violence as well as transgender women and elderly individuals with special medical needs. Some of the specialized programs include a shelter program, an 18 month transitional housing program, the CARE program for primarily African American women and transgender women with HIV, and a substance abuse program.

Services also include health care, mental health counseling, case management services, and money management. The facility serves all women, catering to the chronically homeless who are most at risk and serving individuals other agencies turn away. Emergency housing is provided to single women without children, the LGBT and HIV/AIDS communities, those who experience mental illness, domestic violence, and substance abuse. AWP serves adult women of all ages and ethnicities who feel they have nowhere else to go. At A Woman’s Place, individuals receive the structure and support needed to attain permanent housing, a stable income, and if possible, gainful employment.”

**************

Doesn’t that sound like a place you wanna support?! Help them build a library for their trans clients. They’re seeking donations of books, zines, & other media relevant to trans experiences and trans women of color in particular.

From their donation request:

“We are currently asking for book, zine, or media donations that have to do with transitioning, being a trans person, books/zines on the intersectionality of being a transgender woman of color. Also, books on becoming, gender identity development, being genderqueer, or gender non-conforming would also be greatly appreciated. Any movies or documentaries that you have would also be greatly appreciated.

Some of the books we are looking to add to our library: -Redefining Realness by Janet Mock -Ceyenne Doroshow’s Cooking in Heels (2012) -Ryka Aoki’s Seasonal Velocities (2012) -Toni Newman’s I Rise (2011) -The Lady Chablis’s Hiding My Candy (1997)

You can drop-off or mail donations to Atten: Blake Summer A Woman’s Place 1049 1049 Howard St. San Francisco, CA 94103

We offer tax credit for any donations made.”

There is an email and phone number to contact with any more questions. I would be happy to pass that on upon request.

I know I was just saying “books” yesterday. Books are my thing! I love 'em and I love sharing them. Are movies your thing? I don’t know ANYTHING about movies, so you’d be a big help! This a super easy thing we can all do (or not, we don’t have to make a mountain of books and DVDS, even a small handful is something where nothing once stood.) Pass this along, take 10 minutes out of your day to put that pristine copy of My Gender Workbook your aunt gave you in a box, and make the world just a little, little bit better.

[transfeminism]

Introducing the Trans Women's Healing Justice Project

The Trans Women’s Anti-Violence Project is now the Trans Women’s Healing Justice Project. This name change marks a renewed focus on creating positive change for trans women. This project was created to address the disproportionately high rates of violence and oppression experienced by trans women in order to bring about healing and justice for those living at the intersections of anti-trans and anti-women violence. So, rather than focusing on what the project opposes, the new name emphasizes the desired goals of the project: healing and justice.

Violence, whether institutional or interpersonal, results in both trauma and injustice. Without individual and collective healing, there can’t be true justice. And without justice, there can’t be true healing of individuals and communities. It’s the position of the Healing Justice Project that any intervention opposing the intersections of anti-women and anti-trans violence will be best when it seeks to provide both healing and justice.

[marginalutilite]

I was railroaded. This was something that usually someone would just get a desk appearance, probably a fine and get out but Governor Christie wanted to make me an example…I had to serve 30 days in jail, I didn’t get a warning, I didn’t get what like most people would get—if you’re of a certain level of stature in life, you’re allowed to fix your stuff. They put me in protective custody with [another] trans identifying person, which was safer to an extent. But being in protective custody, which is really cruel in itself, is 23 hours being locked in a cell and having to defecate in front of someone, having to bear your most private pain, your tears, with a stranger you don’t know. But at the same time it was gratifying that there was somebody there with me in that cell. Had there not been anybody, I would have come out far more damaged. …And having it printed in the newspaper… I had to hang my head in shame, I had to hear it from my family. But beyond that it really robbed me of my very dignity. When they bring charges against you like this, it really has the potential to ruin your life and at that time it really looked that bleak for me. I didn’t think I had a comeback, I thought, this is it. I was…the coordinator of GLBT organization and a coordinator of a transgender group and somehow or another all of that was diminished by being outed in this newspaper article. It robbed me of my very presence, who I was, who I wanted to be, who I was striving to be, regardless of my personal life and sex work. That was a small part of who I am, and they had just tarnished everything. “So, luckily, I had this fabulous woman who was my lawyer, Melissa Sontag Broudo, from the Urban Justice Center [‘s Sex Workers Project], who actually visited me during my duration of my 30 days in jail….[She] would come visit me at Newark Correctional Facility…And one day I happened to go down to the meeting room….and I had this one raggedy envelope with me. With every piece of paper that I could find I would write down recipes…This was my way of kind of curbing the starvation, cause jail food is terrible. But also, I interacted with all kinds of violent criminals, murderers…on a level that not many people [could get to] to through my food. When I got out, Audacia Ray was one of the very first people that I met through Melissa Sontag Broudo at Melissa’s office. And we sat down and I literally opened that same envelope that I had in jail that I had written all of these recipes down on the table, and she laughed at the process of it all.

Just in time for today’s world premiere of Red Umbrella Project’s documentary, “The Red Umbrella Diaries,” Lily Fury interviews documentary subject, stage darling, author and former street worker Ceyenne Doroshow at Tits and Sass today. Above, she talks about what it was like to be outed as a sex worker and her time in jail for a prostitution charge, and about how she initially connected with RedUP. (via marginalutilite)

[mediamattersforamerica]

Thank you, Janet Mock. This is what we need to be seeing. Right now, aside from Mock’s segments, violence against trans women of color doesn’t exist on cable news. And that’s simply unacceptable.

[sistahmamaqueen]

24 Actions You NEED to Take to Help Trans Women of Color Survive

This isn't just exhausting. This is intergenerational trauma, oppression, and maybe even genocide. This violence is specifically targeted against black and brown women, gender non-conforming folks,...

So I wrote a thing. Please read & share! 

[sistahmamaqueen]

so many notes! 

Secretly hoping it gets more but I LOVE LOVE LOVE how much love this article has gotten so far so I’m pretty happy :) 

[transpataphysics]

I made this poster for Montreal’s Trans Pride events. It features 80 local trans/&or/non-binary - activists / organizers / social workers / artists / musicians /  writers / awesome folks! The festival is happening this week, so if you are in town, check out these events.  (*allies are welcome at events)

Fierte Trans // Trans Pride Events:

August 5th, Noon - 6 : Trans Pride - Poster/Banner Making @ Asterisk

August 8th, 9pm : Cabaret ASTTeQ @ Cafe Cleo’s

August 9th, 2pm : TRANS MARCH - Metro Place-Des-Art, Bleury Exit

August 9th, 2pm : TRANS PICNIC @ Parc La Fontaine

August 12th, 6:30pm : PRIDE PANEL @ Hotel Gouveneur

[odofemi]

I’m in here taking a selfie with Mirha-Soleil Ross, if you look close! Middle of the second image. This poster is basically everyone I know, all in one place.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Obama heckler has a name, Jennicet Gutiérrez, and she’s a trans woman

By Wendy Carrillo

While making remarks honoring LGBT Pride Month at the White House on Wednesday, President Obama was interrupted by a guest from the back of the room.

The President was thanking those in attendance when Jannicet Gutiérrez, an undocumented trans woman and invited guest, began interrupting the president stating loudly,

President Obama, stop the torture and abuse of trans women in detention centers. I am a trans woman, I am tired of the abuse

While the president and other politicians are used to being heckled by immigrant rights groups, in a very out of character response, the president lost his cool, shook his finger and replied back, “Okay, you know what? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, you’re in my house.”  

The crowd, who were alleged LGBT advocates and allies, ignored Gutierrez’ remarks, cheered the president and began to chant, “Obama! Obama! Obama!”

Gutierrez was then escorted out as she continued a bilingual chant of her own, “Not one more deportation! Ni una mas deportacion!”

In a press release, Gutierrez, who is a founding member of FAMILIA TQLM (Trans Queer Liberation Movement) which was established to advocate for LGBTQ immigrant rights said: “The White House gets to make the decision whether it keeps us safe. There is no pride in how LGBTQ and transgender immigrants are treated in this country. If the President wants to celebrate with us, he should release the LGBTQ immigrants locked up in detention centers immediately.”

When asked about what she thought of the LGBT allies in the room who sided with the president, Gutierrez told reported.ly, “The majority of them were disappointed that I interrupted the president. It’s unfortunate that they don’t want to listen to what’s happening to LGBTQ people in detention centers.”

Her remarks come a day after 35 members of Congress signed a letter that was sent to Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson requesting the released of LGBTQ individuals from detention centers and placing them under alternative supervision pending their immigration cases. The letter cites the Bureau of Justice Statistics which found that while transgendered women make 1% of detainees, they account for 20% of sexual abuse assaults while under custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

With 18 months left in a two-term presidency, Obama’s promise of comprehensive immigration reform seems dismal. The president’s deportation record has reached well over 2 million since he took office earning him the title of “deporter in chief” by national Latino civil rights groups.

Perhaps the biggest fear for trans women, whether undocumented or not, is to be placed in jail or a detention facility for men simply because of their biological, physical gender and not their gender identity. Reports demonstrate that out of every 500 ICE detainees, one is transgendered, and one out of five confirmed sexual assault cases while in ICE detention, is from a transgendered victim.

This, after all, was the point that Jennicet Gutierrez was trying to make as she was escorted and boo’d out of the room that was honoring LGBT Pride Month.

[micdotcom]

Obama shut down a heckler yesterday — but her point deserves our attention 

Jennicet Gutiérrez, an undocumented transgender woman from Mexico, interrupted Obama’s remarks with a declaration of her own: “Release all LGBTQ in detention centers,” Gutiérrez said “Stop the torture and abuse of trans women in detention centers.” The media was quick to cheer Obama, but Gutiérrez actually made some important points.

[brookecerda]

You Can’t Cheer for @LaverneCox and Boo Jennicet | Advocate.com

A transgender woman and undocumented immigrant called out the President in a room full of LGBT advocates. Guess who the crowd sided with?

BY ISA NOYOLA

The transgender community has had an incredible year in the media and in the national spotlight. Caitlyn, Laverne,Janet Mock: the general public have cheered for these women, and LGBTQ movement leaders have enthusiastically embraced them, shared their magazine covers on Facebook, and shouted them out in interviews and on stages. This has been the year of celebrating transgender people.

That is, until a trans Latina undocumented immigrant woman took center stage at a White House Pride reception on Wednesday to challenge and engage the President as he began a speech congratulating our nation’s biggest LGBTQ leaders.

Jennicet Gutiérrez is the first transgender person to publicly call out the president around immigration and the torture and rape transgender immigrants often experience inside detention centers. Gutiérrez was in a room full of national LGBT leaders who gathered to celebrate the many accomplishments of the movement. You would imagine this would be a place to feel seen, safe, and validated. That was not the case.

As soon as Gutiérrez proceeded to speak truth and ask the President as to why he is not releasing our trans detainees who face violence, the crowd began to jeer, boo, and hiss. As she continued, the crowd then began to drown her and chant, “OBAMA! OBAMA!”

A transgender woman of color and undocumented leader in the immigrant rights and LGBT movement was booed and silenced by not only the state, but by the very same movement that purports to uplift and celebrate the transgender community.

As her voice, filled with passion and conviction, broke through the White House room, she was met by negativity, intolerance, and stares of disapproval from her peers. Her voice was carried by the thousands of transgender women considered disposable by the nation, facing deportation, detention, and brutal transphobic violence.

Her voice and visibility in that moment was shunned and shamed as inappropriate by a roomful of leaders who then applauded as the President lamented violence against transgender women of color, violence that his actions have contributed to by not taking action against the detention centers. Her voice is one of few transgender women of color immigrants who are bringing national visibility to this issue of the detention centers. Her voice carried the weight of the communities who are screaming inside detention centers demanding to be freed. Her voice was heard and ridiculed by many who claim to fight for transgender communities and also are involved in LGBT immigrant rights issues.

There is a line in the sand being drawn. Transgender communities have been thrust into the media spotlight, and been asked about our bodies, lovers, histories, and how we see ourselves. The moment we start to engage and raise questions around the state’s transphobic violence, our LGBT community leaders turn their backs and proceed to silence us. Transgender leaders are receiving the message that we are only mere tokens, bodies for entertainment, and accessories to make the spaces of organizing diverse and give the illusion of unity.

As we continue to celebrate and honor trailbrazing transgender women of color in the media and national spotlight, let us also celebrate the transgender women who are imagining a visibility that reaches beyond the borders and the jails and the detention centers that restrict us. Let us show up for these women, and support them as they infuse movements for health access, immigration, and racial and economic justice with their lives and bodies.

[hits-of-sunshine]

y'all better quiet down!

[transfeminism]

In this video of Sylvia Rivera we find the legacy that is alive in Jennicet Gutiérrez protesting at the White House. Two trans women of color, Latinas, separated by decades but connected by a passion for their sisters who are held in cages where they are experiencing physical, psychological, and sexual violence. Both women receiving hisses and boos from privileged LGBQ folks who are more concerned with respectability and enjoying their access to power than they are about the lives of women experiencing severe, daily violence and oppression.

[projectqueer]

[Obama] came out, started speaking and started to get into his speech on how wonderful everything is, and I couldn’t help but think about the conditions that my LGBTQ Latino/Latina, especially trans women of color, are facing in detention. So, to me, that was the moment I had to speak up. I had to raise awareness to the President and to everyone else watching that I’m not just going to celebrate, when my trans sisters are facing a lot of violence in the detention centers. [Trans women are facing] sexual and physical abuse, and I just had to send a message.

Jennicet Gutiérrez

(article)

[thinkmexican]

Trans Woman Protests Deportations at White House PRIDE Month Reception

What’s more disgusting: Obama saying, “you’re in my house” or “shame on you” to Jennicet Gutiérrez, a trans woman protesting deportations?

Obama has deported more than any other president in US history, but he thinks it’s rude for someone to interrupt him. Pinche Obama! And if there’s any shame to be had, it’s to those who hissed and booed at a trans woman standing up for her sisters. Add to that the chanting of “Obama! Obama!” and this reception at the White House was a surreal reminder of the latent racism within this elitist segment of the LGBT community.  

[transfeminism]

The reaction to Ms. Gutiérrez is what homonationalism looks like. The normalizing of LGBQ identity into the existing White supremacist patriarchal Orientalist imperialist project that is the United States.

The issues that existed and gave rise to the Stonewall riot have not gone away. Jennicet Gutiérrez is evidently the only one at the event who is actually walking the path of those who fought in the riot that is now commemorated as “Pride”.