If you’ve been on trans and queer social media over the past week, you have almost certainly seen the abundance of tributes to Dolly Parton, and stories about her simple, straightforward, and vocal acceptance of trans and queer people. Like so many people, I felt great sadness at learning Dolly had died. As one viral post put it, “it never occurred to me Dolly Parton could die.” She is someone who actively made the world a better place, and while I believe her legacy will continue to positively impact people’s lives, the whole damn world has truly lost so much in no longer having her on this physical plane.

That said, in her loss, there has been a beautiful collective grieving and a collective remembrance and education about her values and commitments. And in trans and queer corners of the world, that collective remembrance and celebratory education has focused a lot on her unwavering and public love for our communities.

Dolly Parton was special to queer and trans people in ways that others have honored and explored more eloquently and thoroughly than I can.12 My incomplete summary is that for Dolly, it has seemed a no-brainer that she would love and support queer and trans folks — and she’s done so publicly for decades. The way she replied to questions regarding embracing queer and trans fans and community consistently had the tone of “of course” and “duh” and “why wouldn’t I?” In a thick Appalachian accent. She has also noted that her close friends, family, and employees (intersecting circles I should note) included trans and queer people. Actor Jen Tullock posted a video where, through tears, she said that for Southern queer people of her generation, Dolly was likely the first person “who sounded like our family members” who stood up for queer communities. Jane Fonda put out a statement reacting to her friend’s death and included a direct message for our communities: “To her gay and trans fans, I want you to know that she loved you. You know that without me telling you.”

In 2005, Dolly wrote a song for the film Transamerica3 called “Travelin’ Thru.” The movie follows a woman who is early enough in her transition that her family still has not fully accepted her and she is a week out from bottom surgery. The majority of the film takes place during a road trip with the adolescent son she didn’t know she had. The day the world learned of Dolly Parton’s death, a trans content creator posted a video imploring people to listen to the lyrics of this song, noting that they were evidence Dolly understood our community’s experiences and saw us as kin.

I love this song. And perhaps one reason this song resonates so much with me is because it turns out Dolly had a multi-decade friendship with and employment of a transgender man. Tabloids from the 1990s and Lou Sullivan’s FTM newsletter report that her Hollywood-based driver was man named Jason Pirro who underwent gender transition steps as early as 1982, and who seems to have gone on to become an assistant and friend, cited in her acknowledgements as recently as 2023.4 She was able to write a song for this film’s trans character in part because she had spent decades in the company of a trans person and had been open enough to learn about his experience.

If “Travelin’ Thru” weren’t so Christian-coded, I would have claimed it as one of my transition anthems.5 But that’s part of what makes the song and Dolly Parton seemingly remarkable. Her faith was inextricable to her acceptance of trans and queer people. As was her Appalachian culture. She understood humans as full of diverse ways of being, and all connected by shared humanity and some of the shared trials and tribulations that come with that. And she seemed to genuinely embrace the differences across humanity, as well. She understood us all as children of the God she believed in.

Supporting trans and queer people was not academic, nor radically political, nor happening alongside her expensive latte in a coastal coffee shop. For Dolly Parton, trans and queer people being in her life and in the world and having access to pathways of happiness and meaning were not controversial practices or beliefs. Recognition of our humanity and our right to be ourselves was a natural extension of her values — Christian, Appalachian, American values.

I also get the sense that Dolly’s acceptance and understand of trans folks in particular comes from her own experience of feeling like an outsider early in life, and her need to figure out who she was and what she needed and to stay doggedly true to that. In a 2025 interview with musician Zack Brown, Dolly elaborated on a “Dollyism” she first posted to Twitter in 2015: Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

BROWN: It takes a lot of courage to believe in yourself enough to take on this life of music and all of the challenges and the incredible victories and the defeats that happen. Is there anything that you would say to somebody that’s starting out and wants to follow their passion and their love?

PARTON: Well, everybody’s different. Their talents are different, their desires and dreams are different. Most of us want to make it. Most of us want to get there, and we have to go through a lot. A lot of people think it’s so glamorous. And once you get to be a star, they only see the glamour part, but it’s not all that easy. You got to be willing to make a sacrifice, because it just don’t come without hard work, paying dues and all that. My mom used to say—and I don’t think it’s from the Bible—but anyway, she’d always say, “To thine own self be true.” I have a saying of my own that says, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” I think you’ve got to find out who that person is, and you’ve got to protect that little person. Don’t let somebody lead you astray. And if you are of a spiritual nature, like I am, I lean on that higher wisdom, that higher knowledge, and I draw from that. So if you don’t even believe in god, you need to believe in something greater than yourself, but be thankful for it and draw all the good energies to keep you strong and to keep you anchored.

And Dolly always expressed comfort trusting that trans people are who we say we are. That we’ve done the figuring out part and are now being ourselves on purpose. In a rare specifically political comment, in 2023, Dolly Parton expressed disdain for the anti-trans bathroom bills in Tennesse and elsewhere, saying of trans people and their genders, “That’s who they are. They cannot help that any more than I can help being Dolly Parton.” I have been moved by her casual response to a question (from an audience member, in the 1980s) wondering if she ever wished she was born a man — she was adamant that no, she’s a woman through and through, and if she’d been born a man she’d have been a sissy and a drag queen. I think if someone had asked her that question later, with more cultural context for transness, she might have said she would have been a trans woman. She clearly had a sense of gender identity as something core to a person that could be contained across different bodies.

Trans people in particular have often been made to feel that the only non-trans people who care about us are people with certain kinds of super progressive politics in urban centers. So much of the psychological injury my clients dig into in sessions with me lately is about feeling abandoned and rejected and dismissed by the world at large. When I gently share my experiences with conservative and Christian parents in PFLAG groups in the South or stories of trans folks living meaningful lives in rural areas, there is often dissonance. People who go to church or live in the South or live outside the city aren’t supposed to like us, let alone get us, embrace us.

Politicians and anti-trans activists want us to believe it is controversial and rare to even just be okay with trans folks. It’s part of how they’re persuading people to turn their backs on us — they are using this false narrative to make said narrative more true, to make it less common to embrace transness or just generally be unbothered by it. And they’re using this narrative to punish trans folks, too. To make us feel isolated and to drive us to despair-driven withdrawal and inaction. But people like Dolly Parton exist.

I said above that Dolly Parton’s particular brand of acceptance was seemingly remarkable. “Seemingly” being the key word. Because there are lots of people like Dolly Parton. I know them. My late paternal grandma, a lifelong Kansas Republican voter (until Trump) whose life looked quite different from mine, comes to mind. When I came out as trans in 2010, she (like many in my life) needed some extra explanation, and then she basically just rolled with it. Maybe that’s even underselling it. She re-stitched my Christmas stocking to have Sebastian on it instead of my birth name. It always seemed like a “why wouldn’t I” thing to me. Like Dolly. I think, also, of the small town working class folks I’ve met in Kentucky and Massachusetts and Washington state who are annoyed by MAGA’s focus on trans people and disturbed by the cruelty. I think of the clergy I’ve met across the country (or even internationally, when I think of it), who believe it is central to their faith to understand accept transness. (See my guest spot on the Pop Culture Pastors Hour with Edward Goode and MaryAnn McKibben Dana, for example.)

It is nothing short of disgusting the way bigots and political operatives have tried to frame acceptance of trans people as something antithetical to Christianity, so-called American values, and human decency. Dolly Parton’s legacy reminds us that this framing is utter fallacy. And I hope the collective mourning and remembrance that is centering her love of trans and queer people returns courage to our former and would-be allies, a reminder of how simple and straightforward it is to trust that trans people know ourselves and to celebrate our capacity to live our truths on purpose. May Dolly Parton and her memory be a guide for non-trans people.

And perhaps even more than that wish, I hope that this collective mourning and remembrance reminds trans people that there are countless Dolly Partons out there. Well, that’s not true. Dolly Parton was an icon, unique in so many ways. But her love for and understanding of trans people was unique only in its public attachment to her celebrity. Know that there are people who sound like Dolly, who share her faith and her values, who don’t think it’s a big deal at all to share the world with us. There are people who admire us for claiming agency in our lives and for seeking to understand ourselves deeply. And there are people in every town across this country who are fighting for us — in the ballot box, in conversations with families and neighbors, through donations, in day-to-day decisions, and in relatively private advocacy, alongside the public action we sometimes get to see (and could stand to see more of).

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In today’s piece, I want to pass along the wisdom our participants shared with us about the need for distancing from harmful family. And you know what? It’s going to be a music share, too. Because since the 1980s, we’ve been blessed with a truly incredible anthem for queer people leaving home to find the love they need and deserve: Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat. More on the tunes later. Let’s start getting into the research first.

Distancing From Unchanging, Harmful Family Systems

The need to break out of harmful families of origin is not unique to trans folks. Familial estrangement appears to be on the rise in our society. I understand this to be due to increased cultural permission to name family systems as abusive and increased permission and pathways for exiting those systems. Frankly, I think there is abuse and neglect in a lot of family units and I encourage rejection of the practice of accepting harmful behavior from family members simply because they are family. Cultural obligations to families has done immense damage. I’m not quite a family abolitionist at this point, but I’m highly critical of the handwringing about estrangement. I’ve seen too much damage. Now that said, I think the harm happening in family systems is due to intergenerational trauma and often inextricable from oppressive systems and conditions families are navigating. Participants in our study brought this up a lot, with one (pseudonym Raspberry) noting that “it wasn’t like any one of these [harmful parents] set out to be evil… It is a failure of a much greater scale.”

Critical consciousness around where the harm stems from helped some of our clients contextualize why their parental figures had harmed them, and importantly to externalize the responsibility away from the participant themselves. This also was often part of the motivation for repair efforts: empathy and a desire for intergenerational healing. As Fly (pseudonym) put it, reflecting on what they’ve tried to say to their parents who were once abusive: “I’m not trying to punish you. You can’t go back in time and fix things. I see you and I’ve spent time thinking a lot about you. And you matter to me. You are a part of my story.” Joonwoo and I want to do a separate paper focusing on repair efforts within traumatic families of origins, drawing from this research with trans survivors of such families. Some of our participants worked very hard to try to assert their needs, receive accountability from their parental figures, and develop healthier relationships with them. Sometimes, though rarely, those efforts were transformative for all involved.

More often, participants’ repair efforts were met with defensiveness, denial, and even continued patterns of abuse and other harm. And it was in these cases, where distance became a critical healing strategy.

Participants described distancing via physically leaving shared homes and sometimes geographically relocation — putting literal distance between them and/or cutting off communication, as well as setting boundaries around frequency or modes of communication. Some of our participants noted the cultural significance of family that made complete estrangement difficult and/or unappealing. For these folks in particular, the assertion of boundaries helped build and preserve the distance from their parents’ harm. Communication boundaries included people only texting with parents and never taking their phone calls, or only calling at scheduled times. They also included participant-imposed restrictions on what was discussed, with participants noting that there were subjects and areas of their life that were off limits to these family members.

I want to stress here, though, that most of our participants pursued a more complete distancing, closer to estrangement, and found that to be a necessary foundation for their flourishing. For some, it was their first chance at really pursuing gender affirmation, free from their family’s control and criticism. Others talked about the importance of interrupting their family’s access to them and thus preventing the harm from continuing. And others profoundly noted that distance allowed them to feel better about themselves and gave them “the ability to breathe more often” (quoting participant Thunder).

Allow me to share with you the video for Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy, released in 1984.

I love this song. And the video emphasizes the story of needing to leave a home and hometown that were hostile. At the end, we see the main character — thus far presented as alone or being alienated and victimized — connect with friends and move forward into his new life. And again we are reminded of the importance of trans and queer community as sites of chosen family (and corrective relational experiences, as I discussed yesterday).

To this point, I want to emphasize that our participants weren’t just leaving their homes because they were rejected for being trans. Most of them were rejected for being trans, but that was just one instance of a long pattern of harmful and traumatizing behavior from their parental figures. I have had multiple clients share that it is easier to let people assume that they are estranged from their families because of anti-trans rejection than to explain the more complex and traumatic reasons. In some ways, transness and families’ rejection of that transness created an exit pathway — evidenced by the fact that many of our participants had cisgender siblings who had not been able to assert distance from harmful parents while our trans participants had.

To my memory, not a single participant described an easy or one-dimensional, straightforward experience of distancing from traumatizing family systems. Severing ties and asserting boundaries with family brought participants a complicated mix of grief and relief. And this is consistent with my work in psychotherapy. While distancing from harmful family is an act of self-protection and care that often facilitates healing from those developmental wounds, it comes with loss and doubt and regrets and fear. Connecting with other trans people who have navigated full or partial estrangement can be critical for validating the messiness of those feelings.

I’ll close today’s offering with another bit of music. This is a cover of Smalltown Boy by the electronic group The Knocks featuring one of my favorite queer musicians Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius on vocals. Look into Perfume Genius if you want some hauntingly beautiful, vulnerable music about the queer experience and love. (Their music is not nearly as dancey as this particulartrack.)

A reminder that you can join us for the talk next week, which is open to the public and free! On the evening of Tuesday August 25th (5pm Central / 6pm Eastern), Joonwoo Lee and I will be speaking at a virtual mini-conference titled (Trans)forming Families, hosted by Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte’s graduate program in psychology and the Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre Subjetividade e Desenvolvimento Humano.

Joonwoo and I will be presenting some of the findings contained in our zine Transness is Our Salve and a journal article of the same title (both available for free at our website transnessishealing.net), with an emphasis on clinical implications of our results. Dr. Helma Aretuza will give a talk on the experience of Brazilian mothers of trans people. Note that our presentation will be in English with live Brazilian Portuguese translation and I believe Dr. Aretruza’s presentation will be in Portuguese with live English translation, though that may be given in English as well. Register for the free talk here.

In today’s piece, I want to talk about trans community and the vital role community spaces and relationships play in trans people’s healing from relational trauma in families of origin. Black feminist scholar and activist bell hooks has famously written that “healing is an act of communion” that “rarely, if ever, happens in isolation.”1 Trauma therapy expert (and all around incredible person) Judith Herman actually took it further, insisting that recovery “cannot occur in isolation” (emphasis mine).

In her seminal text Trauma & Recovery, Herman explains:

Recovery can take place only within then context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In her renewed connection with other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological faculities that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience. These faculties include the basic operations of trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy.

Just as these capabilities are formed in relationships with other people, they must be reformed in such relationships.

I want to share a bit of what our participants shared about how relationships and experiences within trans community facilitated the reformation of these relational capacities and thus led to substantial healing.

Healing Through True Acceptance in Trans Community

If it weren’t such a force of beauty and power, the oft-repeated emphasis on trans community connection and belonging would feel like a broken record. So in some ways, what we learned from participants regarding the value of community is not new and what is new isn’t exactly surprising. And it’s still so meaningful to have it laid out so clearly from our participants the way their experiences in trans community helped them heal from the wounds of relational trauma with parental figures.

For our participants, there was a clear sense in their upbringing that certain parts of them (or even all parts of them) were unacceptable and had to be hidden away or repressed. While non-cisnormative gender expressions were a piece of this, they are not the only aspect of self that survivors of childhood abuse learn to (inaccurately) label as wrong or bad. In contrast, we heard story after story of participants’ relationships with queer and trans people in which these banished parts were accepted — even welcomed and celebrated. This acceptance of one’s “proliferations” made trans and queer spaces feel emotionally and relationally safer and allowed participants to be more present and authentic.

This experience helped survivors begin to believe that they could be understood by others and feel truly connected. Many complex trauma survivors struggle with this, which is reasonable given the developmental experiences of being grossly misunderstood and inaccurately mirrored or neglected. Intersectional identities mattered here. For our participants of color, feeling more fully understood and seen was most accessible in trans and queer communities where people shared racial and cultural backgrounds or that were at least partially protected from white supremacy. We also heard from trans people who were parents and trans people with disabilities and neurodivergence that those intersections mattered in terms of feeling connected to other trans people.

Corrective Relational Experiences in Trans Community

The term corrective relational experience comes from the psychotherapy literature. Corrective relational experiences are external and/or internal events (and reflections) within the context of the therapist-client relationship that are unexpected, because they break from patterns in the client’s other relationships and beliefs about self and others. Through these experiences, the client’s understanding of what is possible in relationships and/or within themself is transformed. I have always believed that corrective relational experiences can and do happen outside of therapy relationships, and this emerged quite clearly in this research project.

While the above described experiences of acceptance and understanding were certainly forms of corrective relational experience, our participants shared even more explicit examples of this. For example, participants described being able to navigate conflicts and boundaries in healthier ways in their relationships within trans community.

Our research itself cannot fully answer the question of what it is about trans community that allows for these kind of healthier relationships and corrective experiences. And certainly we do not mean to overly-romanticize trans community and relationships among trans people. The trauma that many trans people experienced in families of origins and that all trans people experience to varying degrees and in varying forms as members of oppressed classes… these can contribute to challenging relational contexts, as well. And yet in our project we consistently found that it was within trans spaces and in relationships with other trans people that the survivors we spoke to learned that being connected to others could be safer and in which they learned how to be healthier participants in those relationships. Joonwoo and I had many discussions over the years we worked on this, digging into ad hoc hypotheses about what made trans community special in this way — more likely to be a home for this kind of relational growth and healing. And actually at least one answer was contained in these participants’ stories.

Many of the survivors we spoke to emphasized their commitment to bring the wisdom and strength gained from their healing journeys back to the trans and nonbinary communities that had once sustained their own recovery. This cycle or upward spiral of collective care and healing is evident in so many of the stories trans people tell about our lives and community. The TV show Pose immediately comes to mind. We witness the character Blanca (played by MJ Rodriguez) be kicked out of her house for being trans and being adopted into the House of Abundance, a chosen family (and competitive ballroom crew) led by house mother Elektra Abundance. Across the seasons of Pose, the audience witnesses Blanca grow into a mentor for other young trans and queer people, eventually becoming a house mother herself and forming the House of Evangelista.

There are of course other reasons trans community can be a place of relational healing for trauma survivors. And there are other beautiful things about community that our participants shared. But I’ll leave it here for now. You can always dig into the zine or journal article if you want to read more. And I would love to hear from trans folks why you think trans community seems particularly rich with opportunities for these corrective relational experiences.

A reminder that you can join us for the talk next week, which is open to the public and free! On the evening of Tuesday August 25th (5pm Central / 6pm Eastern), Joonwoo Lee and I will be speaking at a virtual mini-conference titled (Trans)forming Families, hosted by Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte’s graduate program in psychology and the Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre Subjetividade e Desenvolvimento Humano.

Joonwoo and I will be presenting some of the findings contained in our zine Transness is Our Salve and a journal article of the same title (both available for free at our website transnessishealing.net), with an emphasis on clinical implications of our results. Dr. Helma Aretuza will give a talk on the experience of Brazilian mothers of trans people. Note that our presentation will be in English with live Brazilian Portuguese translation and I believe Dr. Aretruza’s presentation will be in Portuguese with live English translation, though that may be given in English as well. Register for the free talk here.

Join us for the talk, which is open to the public and free! On the evening of Tuesday August 25th (5pm Central / 6pm Eastern), we will be speaking at a virtual mini-conference titled (Trans)forming Families, hosted by Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte’s graduate program in psychology and the Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre Subjetividade e Desenvolvimento Humano.

Joonwoo and I will be presenting some of the findings contained in our zine Transness is Our Salve and a journal article of the same title (both available for free at our website transnessishealing.net), and Dr. Helma Aretuza will give a talk on the experience of Brazilian mothers of trans people. Note that our presentation will be in English with live Brazilian Portuguese translation and I believe Dr. Aretruza’s presentation will be in Portuguese with live English translation, though that may be given in English as well. Register for the free talk here.

Breaking Trauma Patterns Through Trans Identity Development and Affirmation

In our research with trans survivors of parental trauma, participants shared with us how powerful it had been to recognize and honor their trans identity. For many, this was a significant break from the pattern of self-invalidation they had adopted after the chronic invalidation of their childhoods. Notably that chronic invalidation was not specific to gender identity or transgression, but was a general (and deeply harmful) feature of an abusive and/or neglectful environment. Many survivors of familial/developmental trauma grow up learning to not trust their assessment of a situation, deny their intuition and self-knowledge, and dissociate from their internal experience — behaviors that allow for some amount of survival of the harmful environment as young people with restricted autonomy, and obviously have significant negative consequences on people’s lives. Recognizing and naming a self-truth as significant as having a gender different than what was assigned was a practice of attunement to and care toward self and an assertion of autonomy. As we wrote in the paper published on this topic:

As participants connected with their authentic gender, they described increased attunement to their emotional and bodily needs—ones that many had struggled to access due to their parents’ lack of ability to attune to participants’ emotions and discouragement from developing a clear sense of self.

In terms of assertion of autonomy, we heard from many folks that transition steps (including the early steps of recognizing and honoring a different gender experience) were a critical piece of their liberation. For some, it was the first time they experienced “going against what [they were] told” — as one participant put it, opening the door for critical reflection on their families’ inaccurate mythologies, harmful norms, and denial of abuse/harm. Regardless of when recognition and actualization/affirmation happened, these often served as vital opportunities to ground in internal truth. Through this, there was a spark of empowerment and an awareness of the capacity to both free oneself of other harmful conditions (e.g., abusive familial relationships) and free oneself of harmful patterns that were vestiges of those early childhood traumas.

Here is the diagram Joonwoo and I developed to represent the overall theory of how transness enables healing from trauma. You’ll see that connecting with one’s TNB identity and actualizing as a trans person are only two parts of a lot of wonderful (and some painful) components of the healing journey that is facilitated by transness and trans community.

I’ll be getting into more of these in the coming days.

Shout out as always to Dr. Joonwoo Lee for his awesome leadership and collaboration on this project and immense gratitude to our incredible participants without whom this work would of course not be possible. A reminder that the full zine and a link to the open access academic journal article are available at our website: transnessishealing.net. A Portuguese Brazilian translation of the zine will be live on the website soon, as well.

There is no singular shared definition of “hope.” When I talk about practicing hope in the face of political oppression, I am specifically drawing from the construct of radical hope that has been written about extensively and eloquently by the Psychology for Radical Healing Collective.1 This hope is rooted in both awareness of how oppression has contributed to current suffering and suffering of the past and how others have historically survived and thrived and are currently surviving and thriving under similar conditions. It is also rooted in action and in collectivistic visions for the futures and sources of power.

Radical hope is a beautiful concept that has been my compass through these times. And I think it can seem lofty and abstract. So I wanted to speak to how we can actually practice radical hope. How we do hope. This is specifically written and offered with trans and queer people in mind, and probably has plenty for folks outside of these communities.

Three (of Seven) Pillars of the Practice of Hope

1. Collective, Embodied Grieving

Meaningful practice of hope does not mean turning away from the suffering and denying the realities. We must face and honor the suffering and this means we must grieve. We must mourn our losses. And we must mourn them together. There’s a quote attributed to Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas: “Speaking, we heal the pain. Speaking and listening, we accompany each other.” I also recently saw an interview with the musician Sara Bareilles who will be releasing a new album and related documentary later this month titled Good Grief. The project is largely an effort to metabolize the losses of two dear friends to cancer in their 40s. In the interview, Bareilles spoke profoundly to the need for grieving to be done in relationship to others, in community:

Grief -- it must be witnessed. You must share it. It doesn’t heal on its own… The alchemy of it doesn’t change unless you share it with other people. And the recognition that is born from taking the time to share and unpack and just see each other in your grief is the thing that actually transforms and transmutes.

Is there someone or group spaces you can talk with occasionally about how hard and awful everything is? Where you can cry and feel held, physically and/or otherwise? Many of us don’t have relationships or opportunities for this, and this is my nudge to work toward that by gently (and consensually) expanding the vulnerability in your friendships and/or seeking out grief and support spaces.

Another way to practice embodied grieving is through grief rituals. These can be spiritual or completely not. They can be rooted in creation (i.e., visual art, music, building something). They can be movement-based. And they can be private or shared, though (returning to my point above) I hope at least some of your grieving can be shared.

A powerful example of a grief practice is the AIDS Memorial Quilt. If you’re not familiar, it is a collection of individual panels (three feet by six) memorializing people lost to AIDS. It was started in the mid-80s when AIDS was primarily affecting and killing gay men and trans women. While our governments were watching idly as a deadly epidemic devastated an entire generation and threw entire communities into physical and existential threat.

One participant, Gert McMullin described the act of making quilt panels as a way to respond to the fact that he was “going through a lot of grief and nobody really knew how to deal with it.” Groups would gather to make panels for their friends and share stories. These spaces became opportunities for collective mourning while also honoring and making apparent the enormous losses people and communities were facing.

The quilts were displayed and became acts of protest and public intimacy as well. They invited an even larger collective mourning experience, while also demanding action and attempting to force government and societal action — to resist others’ efforts to look away.

The quilt is now over 50,000 individual panels commemoration more than 100,000 people lost to AIDS. It has been displayed on the National Mall multiple times and has also now been fully digitized and preserved as an interactive online archive.

2. Embracing Our Heritage & Legacies

A critical lesson in radical hope from the Psychology of Radical Healing Collective is that we can and must draw from ancestral wisdom and care. Trans and queer communities know better than most that family is more expansive than biology. It follows then that ancestry is more expansive than blood ties. We have a huge pool of transcestral wisdom to draw from. I have a shirt from Transmasc Studies that says “exploring your queer lineage is powerful, liberating, and beautiful.” Studying trans and queer history is a lesson in what people like us are capable of creating under oppressive conditions. It’s a lesson in survival strategies and true flourishing. And it’s a lesson in fighting that oppression and creating spaces that are liberated from it. Lane Lloyd is a trans artist I love (who makes art under the moniker coyotesnout) who adapted a Jewish saying to express what our histories can tell us about our futures: We are older than your laws, and we will outlive them.

I think of these histories as more than a heritage — they are an inheritance. Offerings. But also gifts and wisdom that we are now tasked with being the stewards of.

So here’s what you can do: read a history book! Or listen to a podcast or watch a documentary. It’s actually Trans History Month — each August since 2021, in celebration of the anniversary of the 1966 Compton Cafeteria Riots, cities in California (and now the state as a whole) commemorate this month as an opportunity to educate our communities and others and celebrate trans history. There are a lot of options for learning about our history this month and beyond. Here are a handful of recs:

Trans History Books (Non-Fiction) and Historical Memoirs:

• So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color by Caro de Robertis

• Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson by Tourmaline

• Transgender History by Susan Stryker

• We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan 1961-1991 edited by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma

• Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam

• Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton

• Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson

• Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Toshio Meronek

• Deviants and Trailblazers: A History of Trans Activism in Britain by Rebecca Jane Morgan

Trans History Documentaries:

• Framing Agnes

• No Ordinary Man

• Major!

• The Stroll

• Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story

• Paris is Burning

• Southern Comfort

• Happy Birthday, Marsha

• Salacia

Podcasts

• One From The Vaults (OFTV) - a trans history podcast with journalist Morgan Page

• “Talking Trans History with Trans Scholars” episode of TransLash with Imara Jones

Trans Historical Fiction Books

• Lilac People by Milo Todd (winner of the 2026 Lambda Literary Award for Trans Fiction)

• Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

• Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

• The Gods of Tango by Caro De Robertis (book is sold under their former name)

Oh and guess what? There’s a hybrid in-person/online trans history book club that you can join for free! Hosted at/by The Nonbinarian, Reading Trancestors meets monthly and discusses both non-fiction and historical fiction trans history books!

Follow the book club’s instagram for updates on upcoming book club selections and meetings.

3. Imagining The Future Power of the Stories of Our Lives

Embracing our legacies also means recognizing that we are a small part of a large network that spreads across time and space far into the future. In addition to the gift of being connected to our own transcestors, we are also future ancestors to countless trans people of tomorrow.

Just as we are doing now — reaching back in time and drawing strength and wisdom from the trans folks who came before us, generations from now, there will be trans and queer people looking to our lives for inspiration and studying our marks on the world. I love remembering this because it also reminds me that none of us needs to be something special to be a vital transcestor to future generations. Sure, I am impressed by and enjoy lifting up the stories of uber successful or high-achieving trans people of the past, but I am actually more inspired by learning about the everyday people living their lives and/or acting in resistance.

Part two coming soon.

The thing about the wildfire smoke is that in a world that is on fire, it’s largely unpredictable when and where it will be safe to breath. Even experts cannot say with close to precise accuracy how the direction of the wind will mix with terrain and weather patterns to affect air quality at a specific place and time. The uncertainty makes planning impossible and creates an experience of pervasive threat.

The thing about the wildfire smoke is that sometimes the toxic particulate matter you’re breathing in is visible. And sometimes it’s not or only sort of and in ways you aren’t sure about. You wonder “is that haziness from being cloudy or humid or is it because the fine particle matter is too high for my lungs?” You have to crowdsource the safety of the air — cross-checking one app with another, your monitor with your neighbors’ monitors.

The thing about the wildfire smoke is that if your lungs are already developed and functioning pretty well, it’s the accumulation of exposure that really does damage. On the days where the air quality is only moderately bad you can maybe ignore the tickle in your throat and the mild eye irritation and pretend you’re unaffected, even as the particulates are making their way into your cardiovascular system. And each hour more you spend breathing in the air, the more strain you are putting on your body. If the exposure happens while your lungs and airways and capillaries and heart are still developing — or if your system is already struggling to function — the impact is much more profound and obvious and swift.

The thing about the wildfire smoke is that it’s yet another time when you have to sort out your own risk tolerance and navigate others’ that might be different. You must acknowledge that different bodies have different vulnerabilities and different needs and what is “safe enough” for one person to tolerate being outdoors isn’t for another. You have to decide which mitigation strategies are effective and worthwhile. And you have to trust your own safety needs even when they are more intense than another’s. The fatigue from the cognitive load of the calculations and social navigation wears on you.

The thing about the wildfire smoke is that any escape from it feels (and perhaps objectively is) temporary. Sure, you can go somewhere else, but the wind might change direction tomorrow and suddenly the air quality in your new location is unhealthy. Or a new fire could break out. You study the colored maps indicating how safe and unsafe the air is with the daunting recognition that the green shades are only for right now, in this moment.

The thing about the wildfire smoke is that it’s not just about not being able to breathe safely now. It’s also about remembering that we are living in a world that is on fire. It’s about the view outside the window looking like the stuff of apocalyptic movies. And it’s about being forced out of our comfort of denial that this is the world we are living in. It’s about being reminded that things are getting worse. It’s about the cascade of knowledge of suffering (past, present, and future — personal, proximal, and distant) that you associate to on days where the air quality is particularly bad. The fear and helplessness are destabilizing. The losses you must grieve are both specific and vast, and the grief can consume you.

The thing about the wildfire smoke is that it is enraging to accept that humans did this. You are so mad that you and everyone else must live in a world on fire when the Earth’s paradise offerings could have been better protected. The greed and self-centeredness and cruelty of others has caused and is causing direct harm to you, the people you care about, and beyond. The lack of justice in this world is laid bare. It can be hard to hold onto your beliefs in the goodness and beauty of humanity in the face of such destruction and its consequences.

The thing about the wildfire smoke is that it’s literally suffocating. It is killing people. It could kill you.

The thing about the wildfire smoke is that on days and in places where the air is clear, it feels incredible. Never have you appreciated an AQI of 7 more than after days of unhealthy air. The safety to breathe brings a nearly-unmatched euphoria, and there can be manic tinge to your lust for life on those days with blue skies and full lungs. You understand how safety is a kind of freedom. And you revel in that freedom whenever you can.

Something that is coming up as I approach these three things — though particularly the first two — is that modern mainstream, depoliticized, and commodified models of psychotherapy are woefully inadequate for meeting this moment and the communities that are suffering. Even the foundational framework of what it is we are working toward in a psychotherapy is limited and really just wrong when we try to apply these therapy approaches and conceptions of “wellness” to trans people right now.

Is wellness even achievable for trans people right now? How are we defining it? And also who is defining it? (Hint: they’re probably trying to sell you something.) If I am not free of anxiety, inflammation, or despair on this vacation, is there something wrong with me? Are we working with trans clients with the goals of reducing their psychiatric symptoms and helping them return to smooth, unmarred daily functioning? And are they failing and/or are we failing if those goals are never met? What is the measure of success of psychotherapy? What makes psychotherapy worthwhile? And what can trans people expect for ourselves?

My title gives away my position here. I don’t think we can reasonably expect psychological wellness from people facing extreme oppression. And a psychotherapy that imagines its job is to make a trans person happy, “symptom” free, and highly functional in a society that is actively harming and restricting them is a tool of that oppression.

I am not the first to say this. From Frank Gruba-McCallister’s 2025 critical psychology text Radical Healing: No Wellness Without Justice to the foundational work of liberation psychology from philosophers and psychiatrists in the 50s and 60s (shout out Frantz Fanon, Paolo Freire) and the modern iterations of liberatory psychoanalysis (read Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi’s work on psychoanalytic therapy in Palestine, please); from Decolonizing Therapy by Jenifer Mullan, to the work of the Psychology of Radical Healing Collective — they’ve all been saying, without the acknowledgment and dismantling of oppressive systems, wellness is impossible.1

And yet each of these individuals and schools of thought and collectives doesn’t stop there. They don’t just say, “so suffer ye oppressed.” They don’t even just say “so join the fight.” These are also thinkers and practitioners invested in healing, invested in oppressed people fulfilling their birthright to meaningful lives. Now they are also saying “so join the fight,” but it goes beyond that. And I share this commitment to striving for something beyond suffering, something beyond nihilism, something beyond resistance that burns through our bodies and spirits. Meaningful living, living as fully as possible. These are the closest I can come to phrases that capture what it is I believe is possible for trans folks and oppressed people living in the world that we live in.2 And critically what I believe I am working to facilitate and trying to teach others to facilitate.

So I wanted to share the framework for “goals” of therapy that I have begun to clarify for myself and will be getting into during my course.

Here is what I am striving for in psychotherapy with trans clients living under governments that deny us, hate us, and actively seek to diminish our lives:

1. Re-humanization3

2. Re-animation

3. De-internalization

4. Dis-alienation4

5. Adaptive grief

Re-humanization: Oppressive systems and violence insidiously degrade our dignity, agency, and autonomy. (Sometimes quite explicitly, really.) An effective psychotherapy works to restore these pieces of a client’s humanity and enhance their resilience or staying power. We do this through many relational tasks — one of the primary is attuned bearing witness.

Re-animation: Oppressive systems inspire a deadening entrapment, an apathy for life. An effective psychotherapy works to expand clients’ capacities for joy, awe, and pleasure, and specifically clients’ ability to hold those in tandem with suffering and confrontation of oppressive realities. In other words, there is a restoration of a multi-dimensional vitality that does not rely on denial. An effective psychotherapy also facilitates clients’ capacities to envision futures that are worth being in and/or working for. It supports the development of clients’ sense of purpose and meaning-making. An effective psychotherapy also attends to clients’ need for sustainable day-to-day functioning and self-preservation. Critically, an effective psychotherapy also allows for and develops the multiple dimensions of vitality in clients’ lives and attends to areas of dysfunction and dissatisfaction that exist somewhat separately from oppression, as well.5

De-internalizing: Oppression occurs on many levels, and one is of the mind via internalization of the oppressor. Shame and self-policing are painful and inhibiting impacts of oppressive systems. An effective psychotherapy helps clients recognize the ways they have internalized oppression and helps them work to externalize those, to divest from them. An effective psychotherapy helps clients connect their suffering to the oppressive systems (current and historical) they and their ancestors have lived under, and helps clients connect personal healing to collective liberation.

Dis-alienation: Oppressive systems alienate individuals from themselves and from others. Mainstream psychotherapy often exacerbates this alienation, promoting a fragmentation between client and therapist, between individual work and community, and even within the client when we allow for clients’ disavowal of troubling of discordant pieces of themself. Effective psychotherapy does the opposite. It facilitates integration of self and connection both in the therapy relationship and outside of it.

Adaptive grief: This is also a critical component that sort of moves through all of the above and yet also exists conceptually outside of them. I couldn’t quite figure out where to categorize the processes of adaptive grief, so they get their own category. An effective psychotherapy helps clients confront the reality of their oppression and reckon with the consequences and limitations of it. An effective psychotherapy does not normalize the oppression or seek to placate the angst and dissatisfaction and suffering of the oppressed. Much like a grief therapist does not help a client pretend a death didn’t happen or make them not care about the loss. Effective psychotherapy helps a client metabolize the loss so that it does not obstruct the projects of re-humanization, re-animation, de-internalizing, and dis-alienation.

Want to learn more about this framework and how we put into practice? You can still sign up for my course at Cape Cod Institute. It’s an intimate, classroom-based, collaborative and active learning experience. We’ll have folks taking the course in-person and folks taking the course live-online. It’s a really well facilitated hybrid experience that allows folks to be actively involved in the classroom dynamic no matter where they’re coming from. The course is next week, Thursday July 16 and Friday July 17, from 9am to 1:30pm each day. Therapists (across multiple degrees and licensing boards) and (some) educators can earn eight continuing education credits. Right now I’m told there’s less than 20 people in-person and just over 20 online. This is a really sweet size — slightly bigger than previous years, but there’s definitely room for a handful of more folks while preserving the learning environment. Learn more at transpsychologist.com/weathering-the-storm.

Additionally, I’m giving a talk that is free and open to the public on radical hope and will be both in person and live-online next Tuesday. Registration required.

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The trans athlete cases will have direct impacts on the bans in Idaho and West Virginia, and likely will set precedent on whether banning trans girls and women from girls’ and women’s teams is considered constitutional. It has the potential to set precedent for how sex and gender are defined in anti-discrimination clauses and specifically the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. It also has the potential to set precedent on whether Title IX is interpreted to be inclusive of trans women (or trans people more broadly, potentially, as well).

I suspect around 10am Eastern, we will get a heavy helping of SCOTUS anti-trans muck with a heartbreaking dissent from one or two of the liberal justices. Maybe you are reading this after hearing the news. Hey, maybe I was wrong in my predictions. That would be neat.

And maybe you’re reading this tonight or tomorrow morning as you feel anxious about reading what six conservatives (half of whom are Trump appointees) have to say about trans people, our bodies, and our relationships to womanhood and athletics. Maybe you’re a trans athlete and are hoping for the adults to finally step into the room and put a stop to this nonsense. Maybe you’re already feeling devastated and hopeless about your pathway to participate or compete in something you are passionate and skilled in. Maybe you’re the parent of a trans girl and you just want her to have the meaningful social and developmental experiences that childhood athletics offer.

Regardless of what the justices on this horrid court have to say tomorrow, here’s what I know to be true, and some music (plus a little poetry and visual art) to drive that home.

Trans people have never needed someone else’s authority to know and be who we are — least of all, the government’s authority.

For this truth, first listen to “You Don’t Know Me” by Devendra Banhart, Blake Mills, and Beverly Glenn Copeland. This song was originally written and performed by Caetano Veloso during his forced exile in London the 1970s after being imprisoned by Brazil’s military dictatorship. The cover version by Banhart, Mills, and Copeland is the second track on the 2024 album Transa, the giant compilation celebrating transness. True to Veloso’s original, it includes lyrics in both English and Brazilian Portuguese that center the alienation that comes from false walls and divides. In this context (and perhaps in the original), it feels less mournful and more bold, assertive, empowered. It is your loss that I am exiled, that you cannot let yourself understand me. It concludes with a poem written by Elizabeth Copeland and read by her husband, Glenn, celebrating the “fire of pure potential” that trans people represent and always have access to.

Then, listen to Ezra Furman’s “Book of Our Names.” You may want to just listen to the whole album, All of Us Flames (titled from a line in this song). The album — and this song in particular — feel like a fuck you to efforts to deny us our truths.

Trans people are older than these efforts to criminalize and exclude us and we will outlive them.

To meditate on this truth, I turn to Nina Keith, Julie Byrne, and Taryn Blake-Miller’s contribution to TRANSA: “Come Back Different.” I wrote previously about how this song is an entrancing anthem of trans resistance and survival. There are multiple points in the song when layered voices repeat “you will outlive them”

Relevant here is the piece of art in which I first heard the saying “we are older than your laws and we will out live them” by coyotesnout:

One more song to further channel our power, especially if you feel like dancing. This one is by SuperKnova and is aptly titled Power!

And while it’s not music, this reminds me of a poem by Leo Herrera

We survive because of our trancestors and future generations of trans people will survive because of us.

Actually I will return to Leo Herrera’s poetry here. There are two poems I want to share:

Emphasis mine. Both of those come from his published collections Sentences and Post (available for purchase here).

I just saw a clip of Ben Greene discussing how Pride lets him revel in the fact that so much of our lives would be seen as miracles to our ancestors, even as we continue to fall so far short of their dreams for us. I have written and talked elsewhere about feeling grounded in my place in trans lineage: living in gratitude for my transcestors and all they fought for (including when “fighting” meant just trying to live their lives) and living in awareness that I will be someone else’s transcestor one day, and I want to inspire them to live fully — just as I draw the inspiration to do so from those before me.

In this spirit, I offer us one of my favorites from trans elder Beverly Glenn Copeland: “Stand Anthem.” And it is off of his album poetically titled The Ones Ahead.

As I prepare for the 8-hour course I’m teaching in July on working clinically with trans people experiencing sociopolitical distress, while I am very much experiencing sociopolitical distress, I’ve been returning to a lot of Audre Lorde’s work, and just yesterday I was really sitting with her poem “Litany for Survival.” Specifically I have been reflecting on the liberating power and responsibility in recognizing that despite the fact “we were never meant to survive,” here we are surviving. She returns to this concept in essays and speeches, as well. Here she lays it out in an excerpt from “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”:

For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call america, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson - that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings. And neither were most of you here today, Black or not. And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.

One other song to inspire action while anchored in the legacies of our ancestors is “Pa’Lante” by Hurray for the Riff Raff. I wrote about this song in particular back in December, because it was the last (of five) songs on the playlist my partner and I played during our baby’s birth. In that write up, I note that at a live performance Alynda Segarra introduced the song by saying “This is a song about if we want to move forward we need to know where we came from, and we need to do it all together.”

Pa’lante is a Spanish slang expression used to encourage pushing forward. It evokes progress, resilience, and resistance, with a particular history in civil rights efforts in Puerto Rico. And at the conclusion of the song, Segarra (a queer and nonbinary musician with Puerto Rican heritage) belts the following:

We take care of each other and we get to be creative in that care.

When hospitals stopped offering gender-affirming care for youth in recent years, smaller and scrappier independent practices initiated and expanded care. Trans folks held community workshops on DIY hormones and traveling abroad for surgeries. When schools sports and various leagues started excluding trans people — and generally trans women and girls — from teams, communities started launching other leagues and opportunities to participate. [Side bar: more of all of this is needed, please.] It will never be satisfactory and acceptable that we are pushed to the margins where we have to work harder to access safety, connection, work, and care. And also screw their institutions. What kind of care can we dream up outside the constraints of their norms and priorities?

For this, we can bring back Ezra Furman, this time with her song “World of Love and Care,” in which she implores us to “dream better” and “dream bigger.” Amen.

And I wanted to also share here a song that helps me reflect on the care systems that trans people have long built for themselves/ourselves. I think of the families in ballroom and street trans culture (like what is depicted beautifully in Pose.) I think of the trans and queer people who brought us food when my partner’s pregnancy became higher risk and we were overwhelmed. And when our cat died. For this, I will share “Down Where the Valleys are Low” by Asher White, Eli Winter, and Caroline Rose. This song was originally written and recorded by Judee Sill and was transformed by these artist for TRANSA. I wrote in March of 2025 that “the way this trio sing most of the lyrics in harmony fills me with a spirit of community and connection.”

In the TRANSA version, the promise of refuge and deliverance feel less like they’re coming from a romance or connection with an individual and much more like they’re coming from community love and solidarity - perhaps divine community love and solidarity. I envision these angelic trans and queer figures bathing me in light and welcoming me toward salvation and liberation. (This sounds intense and hyperbolic if you’re not listening to it, so listen to it right now and I think you’ll hear what I’m describing.)

We can have fun while we rage.

Hold the iconic words of Ekko Astral in mind here: “We’re growing tits and throwing fits at the end of the world.” That line is from Ekko Astral’s “Transdemic, Baby!” I feel more and more emboldened in my determination that these fascist anti-trans freaks don’t get to ruin my party. Life is still amazing and ridiculous in so many ways, and so is transitioning and being trans.

A Gift For Y’all

I made this whole post into a Qobuz playlist, too. Although tragically, “Transdemic, Baby” isn’t on that platform. In its place, I’ve included a similarly ragey/snarky track by Evan Greer and Ryan Cassata titled “Protect Trans Kids (WTFIWWY)” — the acronym stands for “what the fuck is wrong with you.” Indeed. Click the image to listen and enjoy!

Addendum: It’s Okay to Cry

I’m adding this section after publication. It’s 10:20am and the first SCOTUS ruling just dropped. I don’t know the details but along ideological lines (6-3), they declared that schools can uniformly ban trans women and girls from female sports. I was expecting this. I was guarded with the reminders in this post, which I believe deeply to be true. And yet I still felt the gut punch. My eyes welled with tears. I’m so sad that we are living in this world where we have to work so hard. If you’re with me, it’s okay to be affected and to grieve.

We, of course, have SOPHIE’s masterpiece “It’s Okay to Cry” for this truth.

Not only is this a beautiful song that offers explicit permission to allow the hurting, buried parts of ourselves out, SOPHIE centers the relational aspects of grieving. She offers us herself as a fantasy object seeking to receive and hold our deep, dark parts; she is a loved one who wants to know us fully and connect with us in our pain.

I made a Trans Grief playlist for a workshop a couple years ago. It’s a nice compliment for the We Don’t Need SCOTUS playlist, honestly. Click here to listen.

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By the way, if you’re a clinician facing a week of clients and this potentially new onslaught of bad trans news, you might want to read what I wrote after last year’s Skrmetti decision:

Other relevant Substack writing from my archive:

First, the context, which is bad:

Restriction of funds has been a major arm of the federal government’s campaign against trans people. As I discussed in my analysis of the terrifying proposed new rules and regulations for federal funding (read that here), the Trump administration is seeking to codify its anti-trans ideologies into every step of how it functions. The administration has already denied and revoked essentially all federal research grants related to trans people, and the new proposed rules would require government agencies to deny funds of any sort (e.g., for services far beyond scientific research work) to projects (and potentially organizations in general) that even recognize the validity of transness as a concept. One reason we pay income tax in this country is to support a huge (though still not large enough) and wide-reaching collection of social services that depend on federal funds. Without governmental money, many critical orgs’ current budgets would collapse.

In addition to the threat of denying and revoking federal funds, the Trump administration has adequately spooked the philanthropic ecosystem, leading to a significant decline in foundation funding of trans-focused and trans-inclusive orgs and projects. Anyone working in trans and LGBTQ nonprofits can tell you that almost across the board, as need has increased, incoming grants and donations have decreased. This started before Trump’s second term, as a rise in anti-trans sentiment and anti-trans state governments picked up speed. According to reports from the organization Funders for LGBTQ Issues, foundations in the U.S. spent 24% less supporting trans communities in 2023 compared to 2022. There was a 41% decrease in funding for Black LGBTQ communities in that same period. There was an additional 9% decrease the following year (2024) for trans communities and an additional 8% decrease in funding for Black LGBTQ communities. This is the most recent data we have. It’s possible we saw surges following the escalation of attacks and withdrawal of federal support in 2025 and 2026, but certainly that would not be enough to make up this widened gap. And it’s of course possible (I might even say likely) that foundation funding declined even more, given the desire of some foundations to stay out of the line of fire of the Trump administration.

We have a legitimate crisis in how we currently fund services for trans folks and how we will be able to in the future, all while attacks on our communities are pushing more and more folks to the margins where needs are higher and personal and community resources may be lower. In my post about how Pride fits into this world of American anti-trans authoritarianism, I talk about the need for directing resources (much of them in the form of money) to on-the-ground orgs that can provide care federally-funded programs no longer can or will.

So here’s the good news. We have some very public efforts to do just that — to direct funds to the trans community via established community-run and community-embedded organizations. And they’re coming from some of the biggest names in pop music.

This month,1 Ariana Grande announced The Brighter Days Ahead Foundation, whose mission is “to support, protect and provide resources for our vulnerable friends in need.” And Grande and her team recognize that the trans community is a group of “vulnerable friends in need.” The foundation has four funds through which it will offer grants to small, grassroots groups:

• The Protect & Defend Fund: for groups that “advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, civil rights, and reproductive justice;” grantees include an org supporting immigrants facing detention and deportation, an org that funds travel to access gender-affirming care, G.L.I.T.S., and more.

• The Heal & Dream Fund: “expands access to mental health care and community support;” this fund includes National Queer & Trans Therapists of Color Network and Trans Lifeline as two of its four current grantees.

• The Seen & Celebrated Fund: lifts up LGBTQ voices and stories, and includes a diverse array of queer and trans orgs among its grantees.

• The Emergency Support Fund: a “responsive fund” that provides “rapid support and relief” during times of collective and urgent need; the grantees listed for this fund include relief efforts for Palestinian children. Bad ass.

Grande’s foundation launch is not the first time she has used her celebrity and wealth to show up for trans folks. In 2022, she launched a fundraiser for a thoughtfully selected group of 18 mostly small local orgs working with trans youth in states with hostile politics. She raised more than 1.5 million dollars and personally donated an additional $1.5 million. And she’s not alone.

In 2025, Chappell Roan launched the Midwest Princess Project, a funding channel for organizations supporting trans communities, LGBTQ communities more broadly, and immigrants. Last year they raised nearly $600,000 through portions of concert ticket sales, special merch, and direct donations, and redistributed that to both international and U.S.-based orgs, including the TransLatin@ Coalition, The Ali Forney Center, Trans Wellness Center, and Yaaj México.

Sabrina Carpenter also made her VMA performance last year a pro-trans rally of sorts, with a stage full of trans back up dancers (and potentially some non-trans drag queens and queer folks), who at times held up signs like “In trans we trust” and “dolls dolls dolls.” Now that performance also includes some confusing messaging with campy stripper cops…? But the point still stands that she is loudly supporting trans women specifically and trans folks more broadly and has publicly backed that up with money. She made the Transgender Law Center one of the recipients of funds raised on her 2025 Short ‘n’ Sweet tour.2

As Hunter Francis mentioned in the comments (thanks!), Charli XCX is also using her tour to support Transgender Law Center. Her Music, Fashion, Film tour includes specially priced charity tickets in the first rive rows of each of her shows. 50% of the proceeds of those tickets will benefit the organization. Last year, Charli was one of the signatories of an open letter condemning the U.K. Supreme Court ruling defining a woman as biological sex at birth. Charli has also long publicly celebrated the trans woman creators upon whose legacy her career has been built. In her acceptance speech at the 2025 Brit Awards (for British Dance Act), she noted that “none of us would be here without” the late trans icon SOPHIE. SOPHIE, who had been a close colalborator and inspiration to Charli, is also the subject of her song “So I.”

Meanwhile, Dua Lipa has us reading trans literature! I don’t know much about the project, but apparently Dua Lipa has a culture newsletter and website called Service 995 — and y’all, it’s great! There’s a monthly “book club” complete with an interview and features on the author of that book’s read. Dua Lipa has featured trans authors at least twice: Alana S. Portero (author of Bad Habit) and Kae Tempest (author of Having Spent Life Seeking). Service 995 has also repeatedly covered trans-related news/stories, including a piece on Iman Le Caire and her activism for trans asylum seekers.

Beyond trans-focused orgs and efforts (though the battle for trans rights includes reproductive freedom and justice), I gotta shout out the efforts of one of my favorite pop stars these days: Olivia Rodrigo has used her sold out tours to raise awareness and funds for reproductive health efforts. And she just announced the Daisy Chain Fields Festival, which is a badass intergenerational, cross-genre line-up of women musicians. All of the artists are performing for free and 100% of the festival proceeds will go toward “organizations working across reproductive rights, maternal health, economic empowerment, domestic violence prevention, and gender equity.”

I linked to Ariana Grande and Chappell Roan’s foundations above. You can check out the websites to donate or to learn about the orgs they’re supporting.

This is how we do it, people.

Although as I write that I realize I must include some nuance: I lean democratic socialist and would ideally like my and my neighbors’ and these celebrities’ taxes to fund government run and/or subsidized services. In the absence of a government I can trust with that task, I am inclined toward something more like a huge collective mutual aid effort. I don’t love the idea of trans people’s wellbeing being tied to the whims of the wealthy and philanthropic. BUT, we gotta work with what we’ve got! And if we’re going to have huge wealth inequality in this country, I want more folks with extreme excess to be showing up in these ways. And I want as many people as possible to do it loudly like this. To normalize and celebrate supporting trans folks, to shame the centrists and so-called liberals ready to turn their backs on our communities.

So to edit my above statement, this is one prong of how we’re going to take care of our communities as we navigate the impacts of oppression (and more directly resist that oppression where we can)! I really appreciate these musicians and all out stars using their money and platforms to show up for us. Thanks, ladies!3 Maybe we can all listen to some bops to celebrate and remember that there are people outside of our communities who do care and are willing to work and put some skin in the game to address the harms of our current political environment and culture.

Forecasting a bit: I’m working on a handful important pieces for this here substack that should be coming out in the next couple weeks. One piece is a celebration of trans and queer musicians and icons SOPHIE and Big Freedia (did you know they had been working on a collaboration at the time of SOPHIE’s tragic death, and three songs were just released?!); one piece is about how IVF and my mother’s cancer have shaped my capacity to weather the current sociopolitical era; and one piece is about my own conflicted feelings about what I called “the trans doom clickbait economy” as I get more and more scared about risks for trans people (and especially trans activists) in the United States. I’m also working on a piece about the impacts of AI on my clients’ (and all of our) mental health, but don’t think I will get that done before I head to Cape Cod Institute to teach my course; so that may be coming out later in the summer.

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Imagining my future as a father was the experience that at 21 forced me to reckon with my gender beyond the androgynous expression and rejection of stereotypes I’d already cultivated. In the moments where my mind was allowed to roam free of the assumptions placed upon me and the limitations of my then-current physical form, I envisioned an adulthood that was squarely male. I found peace witnessing fatherhood and reassuring myself I’d arrive there one day. And then of course that peace was almost immediately complicated by that path requiring intervention and disruption. But this is all to say that wanting to be a father featured prominently in my identity development and recognition of manhood and thus transness. Becoming a father has felt as natural as “becoming” an embodied man. Fatherhood doesn’t need to feel natural for someone to be a good father, to be clear; parenthood is complex. But for me it feels like relief, arriving at the place I was heading toward.

So this is my first Father’s Day as a dad. These parent holidays are messy. They’re unnecessarily gendered af. They’ve got a lot of consumerism baked into them. And they’re emotionally difficult for probably most of society — so many of us are grieving lost parents and grandparents, healing (or not) from the ways our parents have harmed us, estranged from family, and/or some combination of the above. One of my friends says she’s convinced Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are social experiments to see how to inflict mass retraumatization on as many people at once as possible.

And I’m still going to celebrate. I have gratitude for my father and how he and my mother raised me, and the quality of our ongoing relationship. I appreciate that there’s a special day to recognize that. And frankly I am thrilled to celebrate my arrival into this role. As a parent, as a dad.1

I’m celebrating with you, dear Substack readers (and you are dear to me!),2 by writing a brief list on why I think trans people are specially equipped to be good parents. Forgive my cheeky title — I’m not actually interested in comparing the likely quality of parenting between trans people and non-trans people. But I do want to lift up some of what I think I (and the many trans parents I know) bring to this gig of a lifetime.

This won’t be a long post. Just something fun for us. (I’m striving for my man David Lynch’s non-elaborating approach, but my intro already belies my inherent drive for verbose elaboration.)

14 Reasons Transsexuals Make Good Parents

1. We spent years engaged in challenging internal reflection, leading to a deeper-than-average self-awareness and increased ease in self-reflexivity.

2. We understand the harm of projections, boxes, assumptions, and rigid norms, and are less likely to consciously or unconsciously apply these to our children.

3. We have had to develop resilience and deep commitment to ourselves, our communities, and our values.

4. We know the both/and of life deep in our core — we have learned to hold grief and gain, fear and strength, joy and sorrow.

5. We have learned how to advocate for ourselves and our loved ones.

6. We understand the critical importance of giving our children space for self-discovery and we are likely to trust them in their own explorations and revelations.

7. We know that family is bigger than biology, and we come from legacies of community-builders.

8. We have fought and will continue to fight for bodily autonomy, personal sovereignty, and self-determination.

9. We have developed heightened empathy for others through experiences in multiple gender roles and through experiences of oppression, marginalization, and being misunderstood.

10. We embody an openness to change and transformation. We know in our bodies and minds that “the only lasting truth is change.”3

11. We know to not pathologize or marginalize difference, and instead model embracing and normalizing diverse ways of being and experiencing.

12. We have likely worked (and/or fought) hard for parenthood, and the intentionality and desire behind that encourages thoughtfulness and deep connection in our approaches to and decision-making regarding parenting

13. We know how to make the seemingly “impossible” possible. We can create amazing things even in contexts of scarcity and hostility.

14. We believe and prove that one’s fate is never sealed.

Obviously you don’t have to be trans to experience/possess some or all of these things and there are shitty trans people and trans people who struggle to parent in healthy or supportive ways. We’re not a monolith, no single characteristic defines us or determines who we will be as a parent. Et cetera, et cetera. I also was intentional in my use of the word transsexual because it is increasingly a word that I identify with and because I wanted to speak specifically to the experiences of people under the trans umbrella who 1) are being the most demonized in our right-wing political climate and 2) have changed our bodies’ sex characteristics. That’s my disclaimer or caveat paragraph.

And also, I stand by this list.

I will not elaborate further :)

Happy Father’s Day to Me.

P.S.

Help me add to this list! Tell me what you would include. I wanted to say something about style and fashion but that would be disingenuous because I am currently, shall we say, quite out of touch on that front.

Part of Simple Practice’s Care Aide’s functions is a window that remains open and visible only to the therapist while we are on a telehealth call with clients. It’s called the Session Sidekick. Via the Sidekick, therapists can have prepared notes in the form of a checklist — things we want to remember to discuss with clients; previous session notes (which in their marketing are of course also written by AI); a “replay” transcription of the last 30-60 seconds “which can help you confirm or recall what you or your client just said;”2 and a live AI-generated summary of session so far along with what the LLM generates for what you should next. I want to SCREAM. Let me emphasize that last feature: a live AI-generated summary of session so far along with what the LLM generates for what you should next.

While your client is looking at and speaking with you and thinks you are attending to them, you can have a bot using generative AI tell you what’s going on in the session and what to do next. I truly feel a bit psychologically unstable writing this out — this is a feature that Simple Practice is confident enough that therapists want that they’re excitedly marketing it.

My first association upon seeing this news release and the accompanying screenshots was “It’s giving Ratatouille.”

I posted about this on social media and learned that other electronic health record and telehealth platforms are rolling out similar features. It seems Simple Practice and other therapist tech companies are banking on the belief that therapists would rather forego their own attunement to the client and clinical thinking skills and outsource all that to generative AI chatbot that provides summaries, insights, and directions on what to do. Who needs to learn to cook when you can just have a rat sit under your toque and operate you as a puppet? Who needs to learn to do psychotherapy when you can run everything a client says through an LLM in real time and do whatever it generates?

Am I being a little extreme here? I don’t think so, honestly. I think this is a bastardization of what psychotherapy actually is and will promote an incredibly harmful form of clinical engagement.

I suspect I will return to this when I have more time, but here is my initial collection of reflections on why this is so harmful. And I don’t think you have to be anti-AI to be against this extreme intrusion of AI into the clinical relationship and the practice psychotherapy.

Performed Attunement & A Lack of Meaning

Psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion’s concept of deep listening (“without memory or desire”) drives my approach to psychotherapy and I understand it to be the bedrock of what is helpful about psychotherapeutic work. Psychotherapists use a form of attuning to the client in mind, body, and co-created relational field that allows us to hear what they are saying, recognizing how they are saying it, engage in our own reverie, analyze how we are being pulled by memories, associations, and agendas (our own and others, perhaps) — then try to quiet that, and then synthesize all of that to make holistic and embodied sense of what our client is communicating and experiencing. And then we also must decide what to do with our understanding. It’s challenging, active, incredible work.

In contrast, let’s remind ourselves what LLM-based AI agents are. At one point above I started to write that Session Sidekick “tells you what it thinks you should do” but I stopped myself because critically these AI tools do not think. They are non-thinking. Calling them artificial intelligence is a little bit of false advertising I think. It’s a performance of artificial intelligence. LLM stands for large language-based model. [Note that links in this paragraph are to definitions and explanations provided by Tech Crunch’s AI glossary and IBM’s AI course.] Chatbots and assistants like Session Sidekick are the user interface with an LLM. LLMs are huge neural networks — complex algorithmic structures, comprised of billions of parameters, developed by training the models on massive text collections and other data. When an LLM-based AI agent generates a summary, insight, or response to us, they are doing so through algorithms built on what the model has “learned” about patterns of relationships between letters/characters and words. It doesn’t understand what it is saying. It is generating text (or images, video) based on multi-layered algorithms about how words are likely to go together. It’s incredible that we can get the kind of coherence we can from this approach; and we need to remember that it’s not actually analyzing the content of what we are feeding it at a meaning level.

As Tech Crunch succinctly states, “When you prompt an LLM, the model generates the most likely pattern that fits the prompt.” I can’t think of something more divergent from the kind of attunement and meaning-making at the core of psychotherapy.

Deception and the Therapeutic Relationship

In 2020, when we were forced to adopt telehealth approaches to psychotherapy in order to continue to provide services amidst the onset of a pandemic, I believed telehealth was harm reduction. I did not believe it would be a meaningful way of providing care. I was shocked at how effectively I was able to translate the work of the therapy room into a telehealth experience — particularly once video was incorporated. To what I imagine would be extreme disbelief to 2019 me, I now operate a completely remote, telehealth psychotherapy practice. I’ve modified some pieces of my practice to try to replicate in-person interactions as much as possible: For example, I have a tiny camera in the center of my screen so that I am looking into the camera when I am also looking at my clients or into their eyes. It is not strictly speaking “eye contact” because it is mediated through these representations of us, but it is very close.

Still, I must acknowledge that even without AI-intrusions, telehealth creates or allows for disruptions to our connection. Sometimes literally, when internet bandwidth gets clogged. More often it’s in the form of notifications. My clients’ eyes darting and them being momentarily pulled away by the subject of an email notification or the content of a Slack message that just popped up. I try to encourage people to replicate the experience of arriving into a therapy office, a protected space and time for them to be with their mind and be with me. And the pulls of technology addictions, work, etc., sometimes still intrude. But I can protect my end of that. I have all notifications disabled, nothing else up on the screen. I am in a session with my client. I am there with them.

I am so disturbed by the image of a screen where superimposed upon the live video of your client and the room they’re in is a separate window with text being generated. What a disruption of presence. What an intrusion.

And then of course there’s the issue of integrity, honesty, transparency. If we wouldn’t do this in an in-person session where the use of the “tool” was visible to the client, our comfort with doing it in telehealth indicates a level of deception. A therapist might argue that they can neutralize that threat by informing clients that they will be using the Sidekick tool and explaining it to them, but 1) I don’t think that’s how the vast majority therapists will approach this — societally we seem to have opted for the largely clandestine use of generative AI where we pass off generative AI output as unassisted work of our own, and 2) the Sidekick remains out of view to the client — visible perhaps only in subtle movements of the therapist’s eyes around the screen; they will not know in real time when the therapist is or is not consulting it.

There’s something here about the introduction of an unacknowledged other that the client doesn’t have access to, as well. I can’t quite get my head around this thought and would need to read and think more to share expanded and helfpul reflections on this piece. But I suspect this is another way in which the frankly sacred relationship between therapist and client is harmed and obstructed.

Reliance on Fallible Technology In Incredibly Vulnerable Contexts

My spouse is a primary care physician and shared that the go-to resource and tool for general practitioners, UpToDate, has introduced an LLM-based AI agent called Expert AI, and before you can use it you have to agree to a disclaimer that states that generated summaries can make mistakes and any information gained from the tool should be checked for accuracy. I haven’t been able to look at the text of this warning myself, but it strikes me as a way of waiving liability. “Use our tool for your medical decision-making, but if it directs you to do something wrong, that’s your fault for trusting it and not double-checking against other resources or your own knowledge/skills.” UpToDate does have a white paper about how they tested for accuracy and built stringent accuracy demands into the model, but I have read enough about AI to know that it still has huge limitations and a real Emperor Has No Clothes / capitalistic-drive-to-generate-investment types of problems. If I may borrow the title of a valuable 2026 commentary on CNET, the AI boom needs a a truth audit. AI companies and the companies incorporating AI tools want us to believe they can do more than they actually can.

I am not arguing that humans are infallible or even less fallible than complex algorithmic models. Medical doctors and psychotherapists get things wrong and do harm. I do believe that practitioners, supervisors, licensing boards, and consumers are more able to assess whether a human care provider is likely to make a mistake than we are able to predict the trustworthiness of an LLM AI agent and its output.

And yet, thanks to a frenzied scramble for tech company leadership and private equity to make a lot of money, we are inviting in imperfect and unpredictable tools into high stakes scenarios. I don’t want LLMs involved in flying my plane, engaging with a suicidal or manic friend, or making a treatment decision for loved one. (I don’t know a thing about AI and piloting — I’m just offering it as a high stakes setting where I want to be able to trust the person and technology that hold my life in their hands.)

We have this pull to view things coming from a computer as inherently better something coming from a human. I suspect someone has written effectively about this phenomenon. Something about our knowledge of the fallibility of human beings and our time immemorial drive to overcome that. And certainly something about the way digital technology in general and AI in particular have been marketed to us. But yeah, I felt friction when writing that I didn’t want a loved one’s treatment decisions being informed by AI. And yet the fantasy of a low-risk, high-gain expert computer that has all the answers is fantasy. Maybe forever will be. Certainly it is a fantasy right now. Even as we are asking it to do the work of a therapist with vulnerable clients.

Don’t Other Therapists Like Doing Psychotherapy?

The other piece about this that I just can’t fathom the appeal of is that by outsourcing core pieces of what we’re doing, not only are we getting an incomplete and subpar substitute and harming the relationship in the process, we’re also hollowing out the practice of psychotherapy. I can’t think of something more demoralizing than spending multiple hours a day taking in a computer’s generated fake-thinking and acting on its suggestions. So boring. So empty. Not only is the soul and spirit of the practice reduced or altogether absent, so to are the thrilling parts of the cognitive and emotional activity of doing psychotherapy. The reverie, the attunement, the analysis, the meaning-making. Replaced with interpreting essentially a manual and immediately transposing it into non-authentic action. UGGHHH. Performing connection instead of actually connecting. Performing understanding someone without the exercise of working to understand them. Again, not only is this harmful to the client and the therapy, it sounds like a recipe for burnout. A therapist might start to wonder “what is it I’m even doing here?”

Therapists, Fire Your AI Assistant; Clients, Fire Your AI-Assistant-Using Therapist

Please don’t use this. I’m going to start the long and difficult process of migrating off Simple Practice because I simply cannot provide financial resources to a company that wants this to be the future of therapy. Yes you can opt out of the integration of AI on this platform (and probably on most). For now at least. It actually costs extra, which is this sort of salt in the wound to me that they believe enough of my field would pay to have this harmful intrusion. But I digress. I would like to see our field meaningfully launch a revolt against this. I am sadly quite skeptical of a largescale rejection of AI in psychotherapy given that the American Psychological Association has seemed to be tripping over itself to support the incorporation of AI into psychological science and practice. (Again I think we have the almighty dollar to thank for that.) Even at a recent conference of anti-racist fairly radically-oriented psychologists, there was a promoted talk from a person arguing that psychologists and people of color need to be integrated into the development of models and learn how to incorporate these into our work — complete with the all too common “or be left behind” threat.

But maybe this will be our line. Maybe Session Sidekick will show the field that the decisions being made about AI (and specifically LLM-based generators) are not being done thoughtfully, and certainly not with an understanding of what psychotherapy is, offers, or requires.

If you see a therapist, ask them about how they use AI in their practice. If they use an AI assistant during sessions, you are not getting real psychotherapy and you should find someone else to work with. At the very least, you can set the expectation that the therapist not use it in sessions with you. I would personally argue that if they rely on AI at all in their practice, I wouldn’t work with them. And I don’t think we have to be absolutist here to come out against this particular escalation of AI intrusion.

Pride month brings up a lot for queer and trans folks. There are abundant think pieces and memes about pride and pride-related discourse. (Many of them quite good.) (I suppose I also wrote one.) Whatever your complicated feelings are about pride as a concept, holiday, private feeling, collective experience, and marketing strategy, I am sure those feelings are even more complicated with each year that attacks against our communities escalate.

If y’all know me or my writing, you’re probably well-versed in my commitment to honoring the both/and. We can practice hope and feel hopeless. We can grieve and resist, mourn and celebrate, feel pleasure and rage. So maybe Pride month and related festivities and campaigns feel both inspiring and heartbreaking this year. And if that’s the case and you want an anthem for these complex feelings, allow me to introduce you to or remind you of Joy Oladokun and their song aptly titled “Pride.”

Shout out to Ben Greene over at Good Queer News who sent me an email with the subject line “An album for your consideration,” introducing me to Oladokun’s music. (Side bar: This is my nudge to subscribe to Ben’s substack)

Good Queer News

Just because good news doesn't make headlines doesn't mean there aren't reasons to celebrate every day! Sharing stories and strategies for building hope and joy wherever we can.

By Ben Greene

It’s not surprising to me that Greene found Oladokun and their music resonant. Ben’s bio includes that he “lives to be the person I needed when I was younger.” Oladokun, a Black queer person who was raised in Arizona by Nigerian immigrant parents in an evangelical community, speaks often about imagining being seen by a kid growing up like she did. Being a person who shows that is possible to be happy and proud and Black and queer and make music. (She credits Tracy Chapman with being this person for her.) [By the way, Oladokun lists her preferred pronouns publicly as she/they.)

In an instagram post in December 2022, Oladokun discussed performing at the Biden White House Respect for Marriage Act signing ceremony. They said that the act itself and also Oladokun being a part of the celebration “serves as a reminder that the loving and accepting world I longed for as a queer kid is not a myth. It’s a reality that we have to build brick by brick every single day.” Of course, 2022 is already a bygone era and some of what we built has been knocked down. But I love this message. The loving and accepting world we’ve dreamed of isn’t a myth, it just needs to be built, and in some cases rebuilt — better.

Joy Oladokun has a song titled Pride. It’s a deceptively simple piano ballad that reminds me of Adele, with Oladokun’s unique voice and poignant lyrics that are both heartbreaking and defiant.

The lyric video is comprised of collages of historical and contemporary queer and trans figures. (My own collection of figures would have looked a little different: I, like many folks, am skeptical of Ru Paul as a community icon... but I digress.) You know I love drawing from history and our queer and trans ancestors to ground ourselves in our communities’ beauty and strength and persistence in the face of efforts at repression and oppression. Have your tissues ready, and enjoy.

Here are the lyrics:

It’s easy to forget that you are strong
You’ve been pushing against the tide
You try to do it on your own
Those who try to cut you down
Are scared of their own truth
It’s easier to forget that there are people just like you

A heart can break
A thousand times
No hands can take
What’s ours
They can’t change the beauty that’s inside
Pride

It’s easy to forget there’s nothing wrong
And the voices that make you doubt
They all have issues of their own
And those who try to cut you down
Are scared of their own truth
It’s easy to forget that they are people just like you

A heart can break
A thousand times
No hands can take
What’s ours
They can’t change the beauty that’s inside

Love for my haters
Stuck in their anger
We won’t apologize
Sooner or later
They won’t be afraid of
What they’re trying to fight
Pride
Pride
Oh, pride
Pride

No hands can take what’s ours, this month and always.

If you want more from Joy Oladokun, check out their website: joyoladokun.com

You can purchase or stream the 2023 album Proof of Life (which “Pride” is on) below through bandcamp or anywhere else you stream music.

They have other critically acclaimed albums as well (available on Qobuz and other streaming platforms) and have a new single titled “Zombie”:

Subscribe now

I just finished and published a long essay that both dissected those proposed rules and how they target trans people and reflected on what Pride feels like and can be in our current context of aggressive anti-trans fascism (I’m both specifically speaking about the U.S. and also acknowledge that this is true in many places across the globe, as well).

I don’t want my analysis of the OMB proposed rules only buried in there, so I’m excerpting that section of the post and creating a standalone post right now. That’s what you’re reading. I like it better as a piece of a larger reflection on celebration and pride, but I also think this information needs to get out there and be widely understood. It makes sense to me to share it separately as well.

Proposed Regulations on Federal Funding and Their Impact

On May 29, 2026, the Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget released a 400-page proposed rule change for how the federal government awards grants (across dozens of agencies, from the National Institutes of Health to the Department of Energy to the Department of Education to NASA). One of its most significant changes is that it explicitly inserts political goals and ideologies into the decision-making around awarding federal funds. Political appointees will be required to review all grants prior to approval to ensure they “are consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest.”

As we know, the federal government has a priority in targeting trans communities. Anti-trans efforts have become linked to how the Trump administration defines “national interest.” So it is unsurprising that these proposed rules include a lot of specific focus on trans-related issues. The introduction highlights this by noting that one of the main purposes of the rule changes is “ending government sponsorship of gender ideology and other radical doctrines the previous administration sought to impose across the country through Federal funding programs.” The phrase “gender ideology” appears 27 times in the document. (By comparison, “science” is in the body of the document seven¹ times.)

The proposed rules are another attempt for the Trump administration to codify trans-negative (trans-denying) perspectives into federal policy. They repeatedly insist that programs and research that acknowledge that gender identity is a thing, contradict a binary understanding of sex, treat trans people as their self-assessed genders, or otherwise support trans people’s existence and well-being are harmful to [cis] women and against “basic” American values. For example:

Rather than continuing to waste Federal funds in support of divisive gender ideologies, which harm women, have a corrosive effect on public trust in Federal grantmaking agencies, infringe on religious liberties, and fall outside of specifically enumerated purposes of authorizing legislation, the Federal Government should instead refocus its efforts more squarely on using Federal awards for core purposes authorized by law. Discretionary awards must also be channeled through an agency’s careful design of programs and funding opportunities for consistency with both law and, where applicable, administration policy priorities. Ending government-sponsored promotion of divisive gender ideology is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, and trust in government.²

The proposed rules also prevent awards that “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” the following:³

• “racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination”

• “denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic”

• “illegal immigration” or

• “any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.”

Once again we have cruelly-worded denial of the validity of trans folks’ genders and our autonomy to shape our bodies and we have the linkage of transness and trans acceptance to the term “anti-American.”

Elsewhere, the proposed revisions include prohibitions on use of federal awards “to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” the following:⁴

• “Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility policies, principles or practices that violate… federal anti-discrimination laws”

• “Gender ideology”

• “The so-called ‘transition’ of a child under 19 years of age from one sex to another…”

To be clear, the above lists are prohibitions on what the funding can be used for. I think Erin in the Morning’s reporting on this was incorrect when they said that it is clear that grants can be denied or terminated if the recipient (individual or institution) engages in any of these listed activities. That said, the language is likely intentionally vague. And a federal agency could argue that if money was used to develop a STEM program at an elementary school and that elementary school also separately had trans-affirming books in its library or even a trans teacher that by off-setting the cost of the STEM program and thus leaving room in the budget for teacher salaries, book acquisitions, etc., the federal funding facilitated the trans teacher’s employment and the trans-affirming book’s inclusion. This is obviously a stretch, but the Trump administration doesn’t really care how litigation goes. It has thrived in its most fascist actions by getting institutions to comply in advance and by just doing what it wants anyway.

Additionally, there are a couple of pieces in the proposed rules that do seem to suggest the administration wants federal agencies to deny funds to institutions that are trans-affirming at all, separate from how they use grant money:

First, there is a proposed regulation that directs federal agencies to review “risks that may affect the advancement toward or the achievement of a project’s goals and objectives,” and includes in that list of risks “history of questionable practices.”⁵ And yeah those so-called questionable practices include the applicant’s “Engaging in activities or initiatives that are inconsistent with Federal civil rights laws” and “religious liberty laws,” as well as being affiliated with organizations “engaged in activities that violate Federal law, undermine public safety or national security, or advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government.” Given their insistence elsewhere and throughout this document that pro-trans activities and viewpoints are inconsistent with American values and are harmful to children and discriminatory to women… (Remember that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating Smith College for a Title IX violation because it allows trans women admission.) I think we can assume that the Trump administration would be thrilled to deny funding entirely to a university or a federally qualified healthcare center because they’ve been inclusive of or advocating for trans people.

Second, they have proposed a section called the Prohibition of Discriminatory Event Services, which says that “Public entities that are a recipient or subrecipient of Federal financial assistance must not discriminate on the basis of the viewpoint, content, or subject matter of speech—including on the basis of political, ideological, or religious affiliation or perspective—in providing services for events, meetings, or other expressive activities.”⁶ And they clarify that this rule would apply “regardless of whether an event is directly funded by the Federal award if it occurs on property or facilities under the control of the public entity.” This bit is specific to public entities, meaning an institution that is part of federal, state, or local government. Which I believe includes public universities. And it means that if a federal agency thinks any event on campus, for example, is discriminatory, they can deny a grant application or even terminate funding and clawback funds already paid out. (The ability to terminate and “recover misused funds” at will are also parts of the proposed new rules and are generally devastating for science and services in general.) It’s very plausible to imagine a federal agency determining that denying a hateful anti-trans event would count as discrimination and certainly a trans-only space or event would be considered discriminatory (as would an exclusive affinity group for a minoritized racial group, for example).

To be clear, the impacts of these proposed regulations extend far beyond harm to trans people. Abortion access, racial diversity and belonging initiatives, scientific research broadly, academia broadly, and social services broadly will be harmed if not frankly decimated. Dr. Elisabeth Marnik at Your Local Epidemiologist did a good breakdown of how these proposed rules would damage science and the importance of public comment in condemning and resisting them:

Your Local Epidemiologist

New OMB rule could break science in the United States

The drug that saved your mother. The treatment your doctor recommended. The clinical trial that bought someone you love more time. None of it was inevitable. It required a system built to operate outside politics and sustained over decades, because science doesn’t operate on the timeline of a politician…

Read more

3 months ago · 467 likes · 39 comments · Elisabeth Marnik, PhD

Elizabeth Ginexi, a former NIH Program Official, also did a broad summary of the major changes in the proposed rules.

(I reviewed both of these substacks but most of what I’ve written was based on my own reading and analysis of the regulations. You can access that document here: https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance)

Summary of Impacts to Our Communities

My take on these proposed rules and their relevance for trans people is that they would accomplish or move forward some major goals of this administration:

1. Further marginalize trans people by tying much needed and beneficial funding to institutions’ and organizations’ denial of the validity of transness and to institutions’ and organizations’ avoidance of work and services that benefit trans people or even meaningfully include us. Essentially they are trying to force institutions to throw trans people under the bus. And to a less explicit stance to also throw any groups that aren’t white Christians under the bus as well. Under these rules, access to healthcare and other services or even somewhat-equitable inclusion would probably have to be through channels that don’t rely on or want to receive federal funding. Additionally, I could imagine that political review of grant recipients could involve rejection of forms that ask for gender separate from sex assigned at birth or use preferred name and pronouns, as well as other inclusive policies. This could mean that even non-trans-specific services like primary care and enrolling in courses could introduce experiences of non-affirmation and bias, which do add up to have harmful consequences on our wellbeing and risk promoting trans people’s protective withdrawal from society.

2. “Break science,” and continue their war on expertise. Trans medicine and other trans-focused fields are repeatedly told we don’t have enough research to support our claims. This is only somewhat true, but it is definitely true that we need ongoing investment in research to improve understanding and care. The administration has already canceled all research grants that focused on trans people, so this isn’t new but would create a formalized commitment to this defunding of trans science. It would further hobble the careers of trans and trans-focused academics. It would likely drive a lot of investment in poorly conducted research with focuses that align politically with the administration, as well as investment in the dissemination of the misinformation that such research produces and facilitates. Trans people are also just people, too, and so the impacts on things like cancer treatments and pollution research and longterm impacts of what have you, etc., etc., will also negatively impact us just as members of society and human beings.

3. Break government and social services. Adding review of every potential grant award by a political appointee is not only awful in the insertion of political and ideological agendas, but also seems so bureaucratically inefficient that I have to wonder if that’s the point. Regardless of its intention, these rules would gum up funding processes. Also the ease with which these rules would allow agencies to cancel and even demand repayment of grants will make it much riskier for organizations to rely on them. And the extent to which organizations around the country do rely on federal support is huge. This is a large part of why we theoretically pay taxes! Thanks to the longstanding marginalization of trans folks in our society, trans people are more likely to face the kind of financial and resource instability that leads to depending on federally-funded or partially-subsidized services. Food banks, shelters, public health clinics, public transportation.

4. Further reinforce the messaging that being trans and supporting trans people is anti-American. They’ve taken every opportunity (again “gender ideology” shows up a lot in this document) to link transness with a rejection of “basic American values,” and argue that supporting trans people amounts to both delusion and discrimination. This isn’t new for the administration at all, of course. It would just be yet another way that blatantly anti-trans language and perspectives are being codified into the way our government functions. This is about normalizing this linkage. As far as I can determine, we don’t have an example of this kind of explicit governmental hostility toward a group of people outside of examples that led to extreme stripping of rights and genocide. This does not mean that we are experiencing or for sure headed toward a mass targeting of trans people in that way. It does mean that they are attempting build up the kind of groundwork that has made that possible for other groups elsewhere.

5. Build up explicitly anti-trans efforts. This seems to set up to force universities and other public spaces to allow for explicitly anti-trans events and projects. Anti-trans research would be funded while rigorous research that assumes the validity of trans identity and seeks to improve life quality for trans people would continue to be defunded.

6. Advance assaults on intersecting identities, experiences, and needs. Trans people are not of course only trans and will be affected by these rules’ targeting of DEI and disability access realms, immigration, and abortion access, and the promotion of so-called “religious freedom” that seems likely to be used to prop up Christian nationalist efforts.

And these proposed rules have the potential to do harm even if they aren’t instituted. We should do everything we can to stand up against this. Public comment is probably worthwhile (I’m becoming skeptical of our efficacy at the federal level, but I do believe public documentation of widespread condemnation is useful even if in the future, and the administration has a history of reversing course on plans that end up being really unpopular). And also, right now universities, food banks, shelters, hospitals… they’re having emergency meetings trying to figure out how to respond. I know there are conversations right now about how to “balance” their “commitments” to trans people, DEI initiatives, and immigrants with their dependence on federal funding. And over the past two and a half years, we have seen consistent preemptive compliance and over-compliance with horrid Trump administration demands. So there’s reason to expect that these don’t even have to be official rules for organizations to shift their programming, facilities, hiring practices, research foci, etc., and have negative impacts on our communities.

This is fascism. This is authoritarian control over scientific development, educational programming, and social services, to ensure it meets their very narrow (anti-trans) definition of American values.

This is very bad.

And also, it’s Pride month? It’s Pride month. It’s Pride month! I don’t know what punctuation to use. I don’t know how to feel about it.

You can click here to continue reading my thoughts on “Pride in the Time of Fascism”

The above was excerpted from this larger essay:

It was a stark contrast to how it feels to be a trans American generally right now. To how it is to be a trans American right now. Witnessing our group, the joy and ease and strength — there’s dissonance at remembering the oppression and danger all around us.

While we were planning that ride, there were countless panicked meetings taking place at universities, organizations, and municipalities across the country about how to prepare for new proposed regulations on funding from the federal government.

I want to spend some time with y’all clarifying what is understood about these proposed rules and how they could affect mental healthcare and trans people. They are sweeping and extreme. They are alarming and will be harmful. And we need to be really clear with each other that we are living under a fascist federal government. An anti-trans, anti-immigrant, anti-bodily-autonomy, white supremacist fascist government.

And then I want to talk about what pride — by which I mean capital-P Pride, the parades, the events, the hashtags, the marketing campaigns — means in this context. Especially for allies.

Proposed Regulations on Federal Funding and Their Impact

On May 29, 2026, the Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget released a 400-page proposed rule change for how the federal government awards grants (across dozens of agencies, from the National Institutes of Health to the Department of Energy to the Department of Education to NASA). One of its most significant changes is that it explicitly inserts political goals and ideologies into the decision-making around awarding federal funds. Political appointees will be required to review all grants prior to approval to ensure they “are consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest.”

As we know, the federal government has a priority in targeting trans communities. Anti-trans efforts have become linked to how the Trump administration defines “national interest.” So it is unsurprising that these proposed rules include a lot of specific focus on trans-related issues. The introduction highlights this by noting that one of the main purposes of the rule changes is “ending government sponsorship of gender ideology and other radical doctrines the previous administration sought to impose across the country through Federal funding programs.” The phrase “gender ideology” appears 27 times in the document. (By comparison, “science” is in the body of the document seven1 times.)

The proposed rules are another attempt for the Trump administration to codify trans-negative (trans-denying) perspectives into federal policy. They repeatedly insist that programs and research that acknowledge that gender identity is a thing, contradict a binary understanding of sex, treat trans people as their self-assessed genders, or otherwise support trans people’s existence and well-being are harmful to [cis] women and against “basic” American values. For example:

Rather than continuing to waste Federal funds in support of divisive gender ideologies, which harm women, have a corrosive effect on public trust in Federal grantmaking agencies, infringe on religious liberties, and fall outside of specifically enumerated purposes of authorizing legislation, the Federal Government should instead refocus its efforts more squarely on using Federal awards for core purposes authorized by law. Discretionary awards must also be channeled through an agency’s careful design of programs and funding opportunities for consistency with both law and, where applicable, administration policy priorities. Ending government-sponsored promotion of divisive gender ideology is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, and trust in government.2

The proposed rules also prevent awards that “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” the following:3

• “racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination"

• “denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic”

• “illegal immigration” or

• “any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.”

Once again we have cruelly-worded denial of the validity of trans folks’ genders and our autonomy to shape our bodies and we have the linkage of transness and trans acceptance to the term “anti-American.”

Elsewhere, the proposed revisions include prohibitions on use of federal awards “to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” the following:4

• “Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility policies, principles or practices that violate… federal anti-discrimination laws”

• “Gender ideology”

• “The so-called ‘transition’ of a child under 19 years of age from one sex to another…”

To be clear, the above lists are prohibitions on what the funding can be used for. I think Erin in the Morning’s reporting on this was incorrect when they said that it is clear that grants can be denied or terminated if the recipient (individual or institution) engages in any of these listed activities. That said, the language is likely intentionally vague. And a federal agency could argue that if money was used to develop a STEM program at an elementary school and that elementary school also separately had trans-affirming books in its library or even a trans teacher that by off-setting the cost of the STEM program and thus leaving room in the budget for teacher salaries, book acquisitions, etc., the federal funding facilitated the trans teacher’s employment and the trans-affirming book’s inclusion. This is obviously a stretch, but the Trump administration doesn’t really care how litigation goes. It has thrived in its most fascist actions by getting institutions to comply in advance and by just doing what it wants anyway.

Additionally, there are a couple of pieces in the proposed rules that do seem to suggest the administration wants federal agencies to deny funds to institutions that are trans-affirming at all, separate from how they use grant money:

First, there is a proposed regulation that directs federal agencies to review “risks that may affect the advancement toward or the achievement of a project’s goals and objectives,” and includes in that list of risks “history of questionable practices.”5 And yeah those so-called questionable practices include the applicant’s “Engaging in activities or initiatives that are inconsistent with Federal civil rights laws” and “religious liberty laws,” as well as being affiliated with organizations “engaged in activities that violate Federal law, undermine public safety or national security, or advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government.” Given their insistence elsewhere and throughout this document that pro-trans activities and viewpoints are inconsistent with American values and are harmful to children and discriminatory to women… (Remember that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating Smith College for a Title IX violation because it allows trans women admission.) I think we can assume that the Trump administration would be thrilled to deny funding entirely to a university or a federally qualified healthcare center because they’ve been inclusive of or advocating for trans people.

Second, they have proposed a section called the Prohibition of Discriminatory Event Services, which says that “Public entities that are a recipient or subrecipient of Federal financial assistance must not discriminate on the basis of the viewpoint, content, or subject matter of speech—including on the basis of political, ideological, or religious affiliation or perspective—in providing services for events, meetings, or other expressive activities.”6 And they clarify that this rule would apply “regardless of whether an event is directly funded by the Federal award if it occurs on property or facilities under the control of the public entity.” This bit is specific to public entities, meaning an institution that is part of federal, state, or local government. Which I believe includes public universities. And it means that if a federal agency thinks any event on campus, for example, is discriminatory, they can deny a grant application or even terminate funding and clawback funds already paid out. (The ability to terminate and “recover misused funds” at will are also parts of the proposed new rules and are generally devastating for science and services in general.) It’s very plausible to imagine a federal agency determining that denying a hateful anti-trans event would count as discrimination and certainly a trans-only space or event would be considered discriminatory (as would an exclusive affinity group for a minoritized racial group, for example).

To be clear, the impacts of these proposed regulations extend far beyond harm to trans people. Abortion access, racial diversity and belonging initiatives, scientific research broadly, academia broadly, and social services broadly will be harmed if not frankly decimated. Dr. Elisabeth Marnik at Your Local Epidemiologist did a good breakdown of how these proposed rules would damage science and the importance of public comment in condemning and resisting them:

Your Local Epidemiologist

New OMB rule could break science in the United States

The drug that saved your mother. The treatment your doctor recommended. The clinical trial that bought someone you love more time. None of it was inevitable. It required a system built to operate outside politics and sustained over decades, because science doesn’t operate on the timeline of a politician…

Read more

3 months ago · 467 likes · 39 comments · Elisabeth Marnik, PhD

Elizabeth Ginexi, a former NIH Program Official, also did a broad summary of the major changes in the proposed rules.

(I reviewed both of these substacks but most of what I’ve written was based on my own reading and analysis of the regulations. You can access that document here: https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance)

Summary of Impacts to Our Communities

My take on these proposed rules and their relevance for trans people is that they would accomplish or move forward some major goals of this administration:

1. Further marginalize trans people by tying much needed and beneficial funding to institutions’ and organizations’ denial of the validity of transness and to institutions’ and organizations’ avoidance of work and services that benefit trans people or even meaningfully include us. Essentially they are trying to force institutions to throw trans people under the bus. And to a less explicit stance to also throw any groups that aren’t white Christians under the bus as well. Under these rules, access to healthcare and other services or even somewhat-equitable inclusion would probably have to be through channels that don’t rely on or want to receive federal funding. Additionally, I could imagine that political review of grant recipients could involve rejection of forms that ask for gender separate from sex assigned at birth or use preferred name and pronouns, as well as other inclusive policies. This could mean that even non-trans-specific services like primary care and enrolling in courses could introduce experiences of non-affirmation and bias, which do add up to have harmful consequences on our wellbeing and risk promoting trans people’s protective withdrawal from society.

2. “Break science,” and continue their war on expertise. Trans medicine and other trans-focused fields are repeatedly told we don’t have enough research to support our claims. This is only somewhat true, but it is definitely true that we need ongoing investment in research to improve understanding and care. The administration has already canceled all research grants that focused on trans people, so this isn’t new but would create a formalized commitment to this defunding of trans science. It would further hobble the careers of trans and trans-focused academics. It would likely drive a lot of investment in poorly conducted research with focuses that align politically with the administration, as well as investment in the dissemination of the misinformation that such research produces and facilitates. Trans people are also just people, too, and so the impacts on things like cancer treatments and pollution research and longterm impacts of what have you, etc., etc., will also negatively impact us just as members of society and human beings.

3. Break government and social services. Adding review of every potential grant award by a political appointee is not only awful in the insertion of political and ideological agendas, but also seems so bureaucratically inefficient that I have to wonder if that’s the point. Regardless of its intention, these rules would gum up funding processes. Also the ease with which these rules would allow agencies to cancel and even demand repayment of grants will make it much riskier for organizations to rely on them. And the extent to which organizations around the country do rely on federal support is huge. This is a large part of why we theoretically pay taxes! Thanks to the longstanding marginalization of trans folks in our society, trans people are more likely to face the kind of financial and resource instability that leads to depending on federally-funded or partially-subsidized services. Food banks, shelters, public health clinics, public transportation.

4. Further reinforce the messaging that being trans and supporting trans people is anti-American. They’ve taken every opportunity (again “gender ideology” shows up a lot in this document) to link transness with a rejection of “basic American values,” and argue that supporting trans people amounts to both delusion and discrimination. This isn’t new for the administration at all, of course. It would just be yet another way that blatantly anti-trans language and perspectives are being codified into the way our government functions. This is about normalizing this linkage. As far as I can determine, we don’t have an example of this kind of explicit governmental hostility toward a group of people outside of examples that led to extreme stripping of rights and genocide. This does not mean that we are experiencing or for sure headed toward a mass targeting of trans people in that way. It does mean that they are attempting build up the kind of groundwork that has made that possible for other groups elsewhere.

5. Build up explicitly anti-trans efforts. This seems to set up to force universities and other public spaces to allow for explicitly anti-trans events and projects. Anti-trans research would be funded while rigorous research that assumes the validity of trans identity and seeks to improve life quality for trans people would continue to be defunded.

6. Advance assaults on intersecting identities, experiences, and needs. Trans people are not of course only trans and will be affected by these rules’ targeting of DEI and disability access realms, immigration, and abortion access, and the promotion of so-called “religious freedom” that seems likely to be used to prop up Christian nationalist efforts.

And these proposed rules have the potential to do harm even if they aren’t instituted. We should do everything we can to stand up against this. Public comment is probably worthwhile (I’m becoming skeptical of our efficacy at the federal level, but I do believe public documentation of widespread condemnation is useful even if in the future, and the administration has a history of reversing course on plans that end up being really unpopular). And also, right now universities, food banks, shelters, hospitals… they’re having emergency meetings trying to figure out how to respond. I know there are conversations right now about how to “balance” their “commitments” to trans people, DEI initiatives, and immigrants with their dependence on federal funding. And over the past two and a half years, we have seen consistent preemptive compliance and over-compliance with horrid Trump administration demands. So there’s reason to expect that these don’t even have to be official rules for organizations to shift their programming, facilities, hiring practices, research foci, etc., and have negative impacts on our communities.

This is fascism. This is authoritarian control over scientific development, educational programming, and social services, to ensure it meets their very narrow (anti-trans) definition of American values.

This is very bad.

And also, it’s Pride month? It’s Pride month. It’s Pride month! I don’t know what punctuation to use. I don’t know how to feel about it.

Pride in the Time of Fascism

It’s impossible to do a hierarchy of the harm or terror of different Trump administration actions and policies; that said, this is up there in terms of unsettling things. (Not just for trans people, but also especially for trans people.) And yet, coverage of it has really fallen short I think. There was one rather brief article in my generally trusted news source — The Guardian last week, and the only mention of the focus on trans folks was a sentence that the changes “would codify many of the executive orders issued early in Trump’s second term, barring support for diversity, equity and inclusion activities and respect for LGBTQ+ gender identification.” COME ON. Much of the focus in the media has been on how it will affect science and academia, which is important to highlight, but there has really been a lack of attention to how intensely anti-trans it is, as well as how it will impact all the non-scientific services that use federal funding. Unsurprisingly (and thankfully) Erin Reed covered the impacts for trans people — though as I noted got a bit of the details wrong, as did Aleksandra Vaca’s trans news commentary substack Transitics — whom I do not read nor endorse because I believe her framing often directly feeds the doom-inspiring trans misinformation ecosystem. Though to Vaca’s immense credit, she (like Erin Reed and the other folks at Erin in the Morning) covers and analyzes news impacting trans folks that most journalists are ignoring entirely.

Anyway this is all to say that many people have not yet fully been informed of the seriousness of all of this. And how harmful it is to trans people. And I don’t entirely fault people for their ignorance when it takes extra effort to stay up on trans news these days.

But if you didn’t already know, now you do. And of course our country’s anti-Trans authoritarianism has been marching along quite visibly even before this particular escalation. So we have known that there’s a fascist government effort targeting trans people and our rights and straight up humanity.

Meanwhile, it’s June and there are dance parties, and floats, and merchandise. It feels weird if not flat out wrong to be celebrating when we could be fighting. “Love is love” falls flat when we seem to not be getting the message through about just how much trans people are actively being harmed and could be harmed further by our governments. We need people building new models of care and social services and research that are protected from the federal government and don’t use government grants. We need a lot of money going to those efforts. We need to be thinking expansively about how to resist and combat the extremism and fascism in our governments. We need energy and resources going toward these endeavors, and in a legitimately scarce environment it’s hard to feel comfortable with investment in rainbow displays, knowing that that’s investment that could be elsewhere. It is particularly complicated for me personally to witness allies engaging in Pride as usual without (as far as I have witnessed) meaningfully taking on anti-fascist work.

There’s also the risk of feeling more comfortable and safe than we are. This is tricky. Because I believe in the necessity of finding safety and comfort. I mentioned earlier that my body was breaking out in rashes due to stress — without care, that could legitimately escalate to disabling health conditions. Without experiences of safety and comfort and care, psychological distress can easily become debilitating. And also a critique of one facet of my work (focused on the trans misinformation ecosystem I called the trans doom clickbait economy) has been that it is too readily used to promote denialism. I think there’s some merit to this critique. And I know similar arguments have challenged the efforts of folks amplifying hope-inspiring good news about queer and trans folks. What happens if we are imbalanced in the direction of seeing the good and hopeful and ignore or minimize the harms and threats until they’ve escalated even more dramatically? I think back to my pride bike ride. How easeful it felt to be loud and proud in my transness. How safe I felt. Is there a cost to that? Am I lulled into inaction or not-enough-action? Are we deprioritizing the kind of resistance and change-making that needs to happen because it requires confronting the nastiness of this world? We need balance and #Pride doesn’t often seem to promote such balance.

I titled this piece “No Pride In Fascism” inspired by the No Pride In Genocide movement against the pink-washing of Israel’s violence against Palestinians. The arguments made by those movements are that modern pride movements have inadequately challenged Israel’s (and the U.S.’s) war machine and specifically that we have welcomed the involvement of corporations who have directly and indirectly facilitated the attacks on Palestinian life.7

This is my call for us to look critically at how Pride events, campaigns, etc., contribute to a similar effect with regard to our own government’s violence and fascism, and the corporations that make that possible. And I am also making an effort here to name my complicated discomfort with our use of community resources and attention toward Pride events during a time of crisis.

And also:

I can easily argue that we actually need more pride. We maybe even need more Pride. More #pride. Maybe.

I mentioned Your Local Epidemiologist above for her great summary of the dire consequences on science that the OMB’s proposed rules on federal funding would have. YLE also has even more local public health substacks including Your Local Epidemiologist New York, written by Dr. Marisa Donnelly. She wrote a lovely little post titled Pride Is Good For Our Health, noting that “celebration can be healing. It can strengthen community, relationships, and mental health.”

We know that experiences of pride in our identities and experiences, community belongingness, and meaningful social support are critical factors in not being broken by anti-trans violence (include systemic violence a la politics). I think trans people and our loved ones would have a lot more capacity to continue to show up for the fight, to show up as ourselves, if we had mass events that celebrated and embraced us more often, frankly. This kind of visible support is critical as trans people are being demoralized by witnessing organizations and companies cower to the Trump administration and deny us care, services, and/or respect.

These visible mass displays of support also serve to counter the threat of cultural shift we are starting to see (and which is a major part of the Trump Administration / Project 2025 plan). And to stand up to the powers that be and say “this isn’t going to be so easy for you.” It is widely understood that trans people and immigrants are being targeted right now because politicians believe we are effective scapegoats, and a small enough minority who will not be stood up for. Pride, especially trans-centered Pride, may be effective in challenging those perspectives.

I also am generally swayed by the arguments that Pride events are sites of resistance and opportunities to build further resistance. The National LGBTQ Task Force wrote the following about Pride in 2024, and it rings particularly true this year:

We celebrate to push back against hate. We create spaces that tell the world we all deserve to live freely without fear of violence. We are a public example that self-love and community acceptance are powerful bridges toward liberation.

Many folks (including me) have written about how being trans is inherently anti-fascist because it is ultimately a stand of personal and bodily autonomy against attempts at external control and uniformity/conformity. Being publicly joyous in our freedom both resists fascist control efforts and models the gifts of liberating oneself. Research has found that local public opinion of LGBTQ+ people sometimes increases after Pride events.

The write-up from The Task Force also (briefly) highlights the revolutionary roots of these Pride celebrations. A common slogan in queer spaces I’m in these days is “The first pride was a riot!” I appreciated a statement from the Communist Party USA titled Against Fascism & Hate: Pride 2026, which similarly anchored Pride Month in histories of revolution and revolt. They wrote that this month, with its strong radical history, is an opportunity to renew commitments to LGBTQ+ liberation and to show the fascists that their transphobic agendas aren’t going to be victorious: “Now, more than ever, is the time for members of the LGBTQ+ community to stand together with their allies to declare their dignity in the face of threats and attacks… The fascists of this country try to dim the light that LGBTQ+ folks bring to the world in the hopes that they will never shine, but the bravery and solidarity of LGBTQ+ workers will continue to glow despite these constant threats.”

Another theme in pieces about Pride as a site/project of resistance is coalition building. The Communist Party statement calls out (as many others have for years) the “centrality of anti-trans violence to the program of MAGA fascism” and how trans liberation is connected to anti-racist and anti-capitalism movements, as well as anti-fascism resistance broadly.

I am inspired by what I’ve read and seen of a mass demonstration in Argentina titled the Antifascist and Antiracist LGBTIQNB+ Pride March. As the journalism outlet Agencia Presentes put it, “once again, trans feminism managed to unite and articulate its demands under a single slogan: ‘No one is expendable here.’” Per their reporting and others’, the march was a show of celebration and resistance from a coalition of “the most vulnerable sectors of society…: LGBTQ+ groups, retirees, people with disabilities, migrants, and informal workers.”

In a piece for Ojalá, journalist Agustina Ramos quotes a 10-year-old Martín who was wearing a trans flag as a cape: “I wanted to come and have a good time and also to stand up for our rights. No one should get to tell us what we can and can't do. I'm happy with who I am.”

I don’t have a conclusion or real thesis here. I want to stress how terrifying and harmful the OMB’s proposed rules are and would be. I want to be very clear that the Trump Administration is moving further into authoritarian control over life in America and that a central piece of their efforts are the insistence that people live in strict accordance to the sex they were assigned at birth. I think to protect trans people and all of us, we need to be taking that very seriously and working hard and supporting other people working hard to resist and create alternative structures of care and social services. And I think that Pride can be a really valuable part of that, but only with intentionality. I also think that trans people need to take care of ourselves to stay well as we navigate these assaults. And if one part of taking care of ourselves is to douse ourselves in glitter and dance on a parade float, honestly do it. Just make sure it’s not a Palantir float, I suppose.

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What Makes Music Queer or Trans

But Sebastian, how can music be trans or queer? Isn’t that reductive or overly centering the artist’s experience of gender or sexuality? Ah, I’m glad you asked :) Because it is true that some artists from other marginalized communities have resisted having their music labelled or defined by their own identities and backgrounds. I’m thinking specifically here of my friends’ now defunct band Potty Mouth,2 and former guitarist Phoebe Harris saying “we’re an all-girl band, but that’s not a genre.” There’s also been much written about the term “Black music,” and whether it is a useful and/or appropriate label (see for example this piece by Cord Jefferson in The Root). It’s also highly possible that some queer or trans musicians would object to me or anyone describing their music as queer or trans.

But to be clear I’m not describing HYD’s music as queer and trans just because Hayden Dunham is queer and (maybe?) trans3 — though that’s part of it. There is also just something trans about their music. I don’t want to get too far into this, because I don’t intend for this to be too long of a long read for y’all. But if you check out this conversation between Dunham and trans multimedia artist and writer Tourmaline, I think you’ll get what I’m saying. For example, when describing their brand new album Hold Onto Me Infinity, Dunham says the album is “the thing that has been supportive of me connecting with and celebrating what it is to have a body.” In the interview, Dunham and Tourmaline get into exploration of the immaterial and material, themes of transformation, and what it means and takes to make one’s imagined futures real… these are queer and trans people talking about queer and trans art. Full stop. (I should also note that Dunham also creates other forms of art, including sculpture and multimedia performance pieces.) And Dunham described their 2021 self-titled EP to Them Magazine as “an ecosystem that really supports embodiment, acceptance, and action.” Trans. (Imagine me saying that as Lesley Stahl)4

In an interview with Justin Moran for the substack Who’s That, Dunham spoke about their creative process in a way that reminded me very much of my own experience of awakening into awareness of my gender and transness:

Did you set out to make a specific album, or did you start at a certain place and let the music unfold naturally?

It informed me more than I informed it. It was more like a listening practice than a talking practice. I didn’t start with an idea and try to execute that idea. It was more listening for what came through, but what came through was so completely unexpected. It was not in my mind’s eye what I was making until it was already made. I feel like it almost made itself. I didn’t have perspective on it until it was all done, really. This happens with work with me sometimes, especially with lyrics, where lyrics will come and I’ll think, I have no idea where that came from or where that’s going, and then a year later it will be crystal clear what it’s talking about. But I think there’s a larger dialog happening that I’m engaged in that I’m not always cognitively aware of. It’s not from my brain, it’s from a different part of me.

Later in that interview, Dunham shared that Hold Onto Me Infinity speaks to questions of life and death through their exploration of the idea that “we’re not limited to this one form or this one story or this one way of being,” which in this case explicitly is speaking to post-death, but also: trans.

Queerness and transness are present throughout the album’s lyrics, as well. Thematically the songs largely take on existential quandaries and grief following the losses of Dunham’s collaborator and romantic partner (and trans music icon) SOPHIE, as well as her brother, though HYD expands into other themes as well. Sometimes it feels as if HYD is singing to her lost loved ones and sometimes as if she is singing to their/our communities more broadly. Take one of the boppiest tracks on the album, “Make Me Believe”: to me, the lyrics seem very much like a trans person speaking about transness to trans people.

I know that trans people’s persistence (in the past, in the present, and in the future I envision) is a huge part of my own ability to endure and believe in love.

So yes, I’m going to say HYD recently released an album of queer and trans electropop and I want to share that with you and in so doing, I am going to sing the virtues of bedroom dancing. Because I want y’all to turn this on and dance around in the privacy of your home.

This post is part of my recurring series of music shares and reflections, generally focused on trans artists and messages or experiences related to survival during difficult times. Like all my substack content, these posts will be coming at intermittent intervals for the foreseeable future given my fairly recent entry into parenthood.

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Bedroom Dancing as an Antidote to “Political Depression”

I titled this piece in reference to the Le Tigre song “Eau D’Bedroom Dancing.” Le Tigre is an iconic riot grrrrl band formed in the late 90s, and this song (and the band overall) has long been one of my favorites. It’s a love song to either/both music and/or dancing alone in your room.

When Le Tigre did a reunion tour in 2023, they closed a lot of their shows with the song, and I found a clip of frontwoman Kathleen Hanna introducing the song. The sound quality on that recording is obviously not great, so if you’re not familiar with “Eau D’Bedroom Dancing,” listen to it on bandcamp first:

And here’s the video. It opens with Hanna saying “it can be fun to sing about PTSD,” in reference to the song they had just finished playing, “Keep On Living.” She then goes on to acknowledge how shitty the world is and how easy it can be in the face of awfulness to say “why bother?” She dedicates “Eau d’Bedroom to Dancing” to “those moments that you have something that you really like to do that make you remember why we fight.”

In the video, Hanna describes making music as an “antidote” to being “politically depressed” witnessing (or experiencing) all the harms humanity is committing against each other and this world.

Amen.

Here’s a short off-the-top-of-my-head list of what I think bedroom dancing offers us: letting loose, movement, feeling ourselves, connecting to music without constraint, endorphins, playfulness, sexiness (if we want), fantasy (close your eyes and see where you go), creativity, fun.

Bedroom dancing offers us an experience of being alive and free, and as Kathleen Hanna reminded us — moments like that both directly combat the deadening despair and ground us in what makes staying alive worthwhile.

Hold Onto Me Infinity by HYD

And y’all, all I want to do when I play HYD’s new album is dance around my home. Which it turns out is true for Dunham as well. “When I listen to this record, I can't help but move and dance,” they said in an interview with Anthony Carew of International Pop Underground. Amanda Hatfield at Brooklyn Vegan wrote that the album is “full of bangers”: “It starts with two of the move irresistible slices of art-pop I’ve heard all year and never lets up.”

The reviews used the words “effervescent” and “ebullient.”5 Dunham themself said of listening to the record, “It’s almost like, on a cellular level, all my cells are vibrating.” I feel all of this when I put it on.

And part of what makes the album so perfect for bedroom dancing, in my opinion, is the weighty material. HYD is digging into incredibly significant (and likely traumatic) losses, exploring metaphysical questions about what happens after death (to the deceased and to those left in the realm of the living). They’re reflecting on their own complicated experience of having a body (or their body in particular, perhaps) and acknowledging the weight of the world. They’re grieving. And they’re doing this through infectious highly danceable electro-pop.

A really good bedroom dance soundtrack is going to facilitate wild and unrestrained emotional expression, too. Stuff that allows you to have a good cry while you sing and bounce along.6 Rage out while you jump on the bed and slide down the hall. Make whatever ugly facial expression you want. And I mean “ugly” in a complimentary way.

So crank up HYD’s new album and bop around in whatever privacy you have in whatever ways are accessible to you. Bandcamp player is below and you can stream it through the bandcamp site or app and/or purchase digital or vinyl forms.

(It’s also available on qobuz and wherever you purchase or stream music.)

Also to be clear, HYD isn’t new. Hold Onto Me Infinity is their sophomore album. They have an excellent full-length called Clearing in addition to the aforementioned self-titled EP Hyd. ~And~ they used to create music under the project moniker QT with SOPHIA and A.C. Cook.

And I want to lift up one more piece of music from them, because it’s how I found myself really digging into their music recently: their cover of Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms” which I am soooo into.

By the way, if you want to support them, check them out live or scoop some merch on their website. They also have a substack they haven’t updated since last year but where you can be a paid subscriber for $7.77 a month, which seems like a nice way to patronize someone who is facilitating all of this trans and queer bedroom dancing.

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Further Reading

“The immaterial is my favorite material”: Hyd and Tourmaline in Conversation for 032c

WHO’S THAT? Hyd: Interview with Justin Moran

Hyd Is Proof Pop Music Can Be a Form of Care by Juan Valasquez for Them

Hayden Dunham and Caroline Polachek on the Transformative Power of Pop in Interview Magazine

And as a fun bonus, here’s some bedroom dancing inspo, including some classic film openings and an Olivia Rodrigo music video that yes was filmed at the Palace of Versailles

I signed up for his newsletter and last week learned that he has launched a new project called You Are Loved Here, in which you can write love letters to trans people, and they are reviewed and compiled into a love letter library that is freely available via both a website and a weekly email dispatch.

It just launched but there’s already a robust collection of letters and they’re quite lovely. Some from cis folks and some from trans folks. Yes it’s earnest and a bit hokey and maybe easy to roll our eyes at at times. I know I sometimes feel pretty strongly that I don’t need another cis person to tell me I’m brave or incredible just because I’m trans. AND ALSO I am. You are. And also, more than their individual content, this is a reminder to me that those are real people who wrote these letters — who care enough about our communities and (I truly believe) each of us that they took the time to write it out. And honestly some of the letters are quite moving. Here’s a selection:

I hope each of my readers, whether you’re part of the community or not, will go over right now and write a letter. I also hope that trans readers will sign up to receive a weekly love letter. I have! We deserve love letters.

As an aside, correspondence is actually a pretty frequently employed medium in the world of trans writing: from Cecilia Gentili’s memoir Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist (2022) to anthologies of advice an solidarity and love passed through the generations of trans people like To My Trans Sisters (2017) and Letters for My Brothers (4th edition, 2014) and Letters for My Sisters (2014) to mother Carolyn Hays’ Letter to My Transgender Daughter (2022) to Ivan Coyote’s 2021 collection of responses to readers’ letters to him, titled Care Of, and of course Kai Cheng Thom’s incredible Falling Back in Love With Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls (2023).

I suspect our desire to write to each other1 stems from the complex combination of both feeling inherently linked to trans people across time and space and also a chronic feeling of isolation and alienation — a desire to be actually connected to people who see us, get us, and can guide us, or to offer that to others.

And now I’ve gotten fully off track from the point of this quick little post, which was to say: trans people deserve love letters. Let’s write a bunch and be open to receiving them. youarelovedhere.org

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Thanks to my recent deep dive into Trans Music Archive (which I wrote about in a previous post), I discovered a musician named Monte Marin (they/he/elle/él according to their instagram profile), who releases music under the moniker STEFA* — “a genderless, genreless vocalist, composer, educator and multi-media performance artist born and raised in Queens, NY to Colombian immigrants.” Here is how STEFA* and their recent release Born With an Extra Rib is described on Trans Music Archive’s web store:

Using an amalgamation of punk, experimental pop and classical minimalism with queer maximalist aesthetics and video collages, STEFA* builds worlds that offer a somatic decolonial respite for the misfits, the displaced and future generations of Brown and Indigenous radical artists of the diaspora.

Their 2024 debut LP ‘BORN WITH AN EXTRA RIB’ “is an operatic biomythography for the diasporic and dysphoric, longing to find a body & a place to call home. A cinematic-performance ritual inviting the audience to be remade beyond colonial gender and genre, Born With an Extra Rib takes us on an intimate spiral of epic scale where we are able to mourn who we were and clear the way for who we are to become.”

The closing song on that album (a bonus track of sorts) is U HAVE TO ACT (Queer & Trans Futures) which they re-released as a single this year.

The song contains so much, and I want to specifically (and briefly) discuss the vocal component, which is elevated to prominence in the mix. STEFA* repeats “you have to act” with a beautiful urgency that makes the song initially appear to be a call to resistance. And then they complicate the message of the song by expanding the line to be “you have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world and you have to do it all the time.” In so doing they quote Angela Davis’ extemporaneous remarks during a Q&A after a powerful talk at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2014.

Then the singing ends and we are treated to a set of recordings of their friends and community sharing reflections on what about the future brings them joy.

This song is a call to resistance. And the resistance they are demanding from us includes radical future dreaming. And they invite us to include in that dreaming imaginations of what will bring us joy in the future. The work of adrienne maree brown is incredibly relevant here — brown’s commitment to imagining solutions and futures outside of existing structures and related valuing of speculative fiction, as well as her uplifting of pleasure as center to our lives and the work of and drive to activism.

In workshops for therapists on how to help our clients live meaningfully and find stability amid sociopolitical oppression and consequent distress, I have talked about strengthening capacities to look forward to the future. Ways that we can complicate our clients and/or our own relationships to the future that are heavy with dread and doom. This is not about saying “it is unlikely that bad things will be present in the future.” Any wellbeing that requires denial of harsh realities and probable bad outcomes is a set up for suffering. It is about expanding our vision of the future to include things that involve pleasure and justice. And it is also about trying to build and hold onto belief in the possibilities of structures and ways of being that will exist in the future but are so beyond what we currently live in that they require immense imagination.

So here is the practice. It can be done as a journaling prompt or a meditative reflection. You could also adapt it to fit any kind of artistic or creative medium. Words are my preferred form of expression but they are not the only avenue for communicating our feelings and inner landscapes, and you can certainly find ways to engage in this practice without the use of verbal/written language:

That’s it. That’s the practice! It may be hard. Maybe it won’t be as hard as you think. Maybe it will be more challenging than you anticipate. It’s worth trying at, and it’s worth doing with some frequency.

Further Reading

Writing Ourselves Into the Future: A Conversation with adrienne maree brown in Orion Magazine

Why Hope Is Inseparable From Living by Willow Defebaugh in “The Overview” by Atmos Magazine

The Power of Climate Fiction and The Ethos of Imagine 2200 by Tory Stevens for Grist

adrienne maree brown on Writing Our Future — transcript from For the Wild (or listen to the podcast episode)

If you enjoyed this, I write regularly about approaches to reducing and living with sociopolitical distress. You can also check out some of my recent music posts:

But leaving is a reasonable decision for most trans folks making it. And frankly, I think all trans people living in America would be well served by regularly seriously reflecting on the costs and gains and functions of staying in their states and/or this country.

So no, it is not hypervigilant or an overreaction for a trans person to want to leave the U.S.

No one should ever tell a trans person they should stay in a country where their government has called them delusional and stripped them of protections — to the extent that the administration’s offices of civil rights are actually being used against trans-inclusive policies — and increased barriers to transitioning (with threats of full restriction to related healthcare). No one should ever tell the parent of a trans person they should stay in a state where their governor and attorney general want them to be able to be investigated for child abuse if they affirm their child’s non-natally-assigned gender. No one should ever tell a trans teen they should stay in a country where they can’t participate meaningfully and safely in extracurriculars. No one should ever shame a trans person for leaving a state where they can’t safely use public bathrooms. No one should ever expect a trans person to live in a place where sociopolitical discourse has become so hostile that they are increasingly unsafe in some public and interpersonal contexts or where they have to be subjected regularly to dehumanizing language and systemic harassment.

I feel disgusted to have to write any of this out.

Trans people’s desires to be free of such an environment — the environment of most places in this country — makes sense. Particularly if racism, transmisogyny, classism and marginalization, xenophobia, and/or ableism make them more likely to be materially impacted by all of this.

If a trans person has a way to be in a place where the government better protects them and/or they aren’t the target of an aggressive and too-popular culture war movement, no one should (or — with any real standing — can) fault them for considering it. Now, many of us have reasons to stay that have thus far not made emigrating or becoming internally displaced worth it. And for plenty of others, and more each week, the scales are tipped toward leaving. And that is a reasonable decision.

And probably for a lot of folks, the desire or need to leave co-exists with an inability to access a meaningful exit strategy.

As I said above, I think all trans people living in America would be well served by regularly seriously reflecting on the costs and gains and functions of staying in their states and/or this country. At some point I intend to write about how therapists can facilitate these kinds of reflections and decision-making processes with trans clients. This will be in the course I’m teaching at Cape Cod Institute this summer. A lot of it is about recognizing and quieting our own needs and feelings around this — meaning, how we the therapists in the room feel about being a trans American (or an American generally), how close the threats of fascism feel and what they bring up intergenerationally, our beliefs about activism, our connection to and attitudes toward hostile areas, and/or our needs for validation of our own choices in this realm, etc. (This is hard, by the way. I am not perfect at it nor do I expect anyone to be, though we should strive toward that.)

So this is what I believe. It reasonable given what we are facing and what we could face as trans people in America to consider relocating and to actually leave. These beliefs coexist with my belief that there is a misinformation ecosystem that is resulting in some specific and terrifying amplification of intense stories about trans people and what the U.S. government is doing to us, and that such amplification and misinformation are harmful. And these beliefs also coexist with my belief that trans people can exist beautifully and powerfully in hostile conditions if we choose to and/or we must. And the latter is largely what I’ve dedicated my work to as of late.

(Click here to explore and purchase zines and stickers from this artist.)

This is the post about the misinformation ecosystem I’ve referenced:

A lot of my writing on this substack focuses on how to live meaningfully when there’s a lot that is scary and devastating and life-threatening about being trans. I don’t offer much in the way of exploring the challenges or how awful things can be / are. I don’t find it particularly useful of me, my skill set, my limited writing time, and my readers’ limited reading time to focus on what 1) so many of you already know all too well and 2) others are able to dedicate time and energy to covering and exploring. If you’ve ever sat in one of my talks, you know that this is not a dismissal of the horrors and despairs, nor even a turning away. One of my main tasks as a therapist is turning toward those and helping clients tolerate turning toward their own anguish and angst that come with truly acknowledging these dark pieces of being trans and being human and being part of our world. My writing, then, gets to be a place where I/we can remind each other of the additional components of being trans and being human and being part of our world.

And yet, when I read what I’m about to share with you, and it immediately brought me to tears of real pain, I decided I needed to share it. I think it’s a piece that gets lost in the general understanding of what is hard about being trans.

In the article, Guardian writer Zoe Williams describes a dynamic between Jimpa and Frances, in which Frances works hard to keep the peace. Mason-Hyde, who plays Frances and is trans themself and in their early 20s, stated that this is true to life in terms of the role trans young people have to play:

In an immensely magnified way, to be a young trans person, you are constantly asked to belittle your needs and wants for the sake of being palatable and agreeable, being one of the easy trans people to get along with. Not to ask too much of others, whether that’s about language or being political or being unconventional. Other people’s reactions to you – their feelings and the way they express them – can be quite hateful or violent, but it’s somehow the responsibility of young trans people to soothe everyone. Which makes no sense at all.

The way I felt this in my guts. The way my cells resonated with painful recognition at this task so many of us trans folks learn — are groomed — to do at an early age.

To apply to clinical internships (like a residency) in counseling and clinical psychology, PhD candidates have to write four essays on our autobiography, theoretical orientation, approach to diversity, and research. The autobiography essay is meant to be a personal statement that captures some aspects of who you are and your reflections on how you got there and how this shapes what you are striving for in your professional development.

In the first draft of my autobiography essay, now written a decade ago and more than six years into my transition, I explored how as a gender non-conforming young person and then an out trans person, I had had to become highly attuned to others’ experiences and needs in interpersonal interactions, and this attunement helped me be a good psychotherapist.

Ouch.

One of my mentors, with great compassion and care, helped me revise this to be less vulnerable. But I remember the first draft. And it’s true.

While I had immense freedom in being able to express myself largely with authenticity in terms of gender as a child, I learned how to project the most palatable other dimensions of myself, and I learned how to detect and soothe others’ reactions to me. It is also worth noting here that part of how I did this was that I learned how to use (and thus uphold) systems of white supremacy, class hierarchy, ableism, sexism (and thus transmisogyny, too), and gender normativity — I strived to show people that I was just an easily assimilatable guy they could like and feel non-threatened by even with most of their biases intact. This has taken years of unlearning and is still in process and I know I have caused harm through that set of behaviors in particular.

I also see what Mason-Hyde described when I sit with or observe people who get stunted in their developing understanding of their gender identity and expression needs. It’s very hard to legitimately imagine whether breasts will help you feel more connected to your body or whether the changes testosterone brings are what you are privately yearning for when you are also holding the knowledge that your parents or other important people in your communities will feel hurt by these things and/or reject you for them. As deeply painful and deleterious as it is, it is also sometimes still easier to suppress our desires and needs around gender to preserve connectedness to others who can’t do their own unlearning and make space for an expanded understanding of us.

Returning to that essay draft I wrote: Two traits or skills I developed to soothe others’ reactions to me were the kind of attunement — that might in other contexts be described pathologically as interpersonal hypervigilance — and unconsciously-strategic agreeableness (aka people-pleasing) we often see in complex trauma survivors.

Indeed, growing up trans in our society is a form of complex trauma. This was the crux of my dissertation which I worked on from probably 2015 to 2018 (full PDF here btw and the condensed academic article is available for free here). Much like children in homes with volatile and violent caregivers whom the children must depend on for their survival and development, trans people grow up trapped in a world that is hostile and unpredictable and have to navigate potentially violent relationships and institutions to get our needs met.

So yeah, one of the foundations of my skills as a psychotherapist is a symptom of the complex traumatic stress I developed as a trans person in a cisnormative and anti-trans society. I use that (further refined and clinically-applied) attunement everyday to do work that I find meaningful. It’s of course not uncommon for survivors to build strength and beauty from the survival skills and wounds they picked up through trauma. We can celebrate the beauty of how we are etched and shaped by trauma and feel rightly empowered by how we’ve built ourselves through that and in the aftermath.

It is also deeply sad. And we are entitled to our grief and rage about this. And I felt sad for myself and particularly my young self when I read Mason-Hyde’s words. And I felt even more deeply sad for the young people right now, who are learning how to be safe and loved in this world, who do not yet have the autonomy or resources to access the kind of spaces where they don’t need to belittle their needs or lift up their most normative parts and hide the others in order to feel held and valued and protected. What a horrific burden our world has placed on marginalized people to be responsible to soothe others’ reactions to them, when those reactions are based on bias and hatred and their own shit.

I’m still unlearning the pieces of this that I don’t like, that get in the way of being myself and having meaningful relationships. I’m learning to feel safer with others’ criticism and anger and disagreement — or perhaps it is better described as learning how to discern when others’ criticism and anger and disagreement are safe and when they are not. I’m still learning and practicing de-centering the pieces of my identity and presentation that an otherwise hostile world is biased toward (as in unjustly values). I’m working on letting other people (outside of my clients where I do think I’m pretty good at this) have uncomfortable feelings — working to not believe and behave like my role in a relationship or group is always to be closely attuned to others’ emotions and needs and keep everybody okay.

If any of this resonates with you, I hope you’re finding the spaces where it’s safe to unlearn these things and practice other ways of being in relationship and community. Because as Mason-Hyde says at the conclusion of their quote, it makes no sense for this to be asked of us; it’s not okay. And the opportunities to have different kinds of relationships and interactions do exist and will be there for you in your healing and growth in the future even if you can’t access them now.

If this doesn’t resonate with you and/or if you’re not trans, I invite you to do some critical reflection with openness to the ways in which trans people or other marginalized folks around you may have been working consciously and unconsciously to regulate themselves and you. Times when you got to have big feelings while they worked to stifle theirs to preserve the relationship or stay psychologically or physically safe in the interaction. Maybe this hasn’t been a defining or even frequent dynamic for you. And maybe it has. Maybe we’re so damn good at it you’ve never noticed. And maybe it’s really hurt us without us even always recognizing the damage.

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I came up in a generation of trans women that learned to manage expectations. I learned, before I transitioned, the small daily practice of reading a room for hostility before entering it — the version of that practice available to a white, middle-class person who would eventually be able to pass, which is the gentlest version of it on offer. I learned, after I transitioned, that being recognizable as trans in public was — if I was not sufficiently careful about my voice or my walk or happened to cross paths with someone with a porn addiction and a guilt problem — a tax I could pay every time I left the house, and I learned the small daily craft of paying it without losing the entire day. The art of being in public as a trans woman, for most of us, has historically been the art of being in public less — of training the eye to not see you, of wearing the cut and color that doesn’t catch attention, of taking the seat at the back of the cafe.

What Hunter Schafer did on Monday night, and what Alex Consani did on Monday night, and what Aariana Rose Philip did on Monday night, was the inverse of that art. They moved toward the cameras. They wore the cuts that were designed to be looked at. They were art — they had volunteered, with the Met’s collaboration, to be art — and they collected the looking that art collects. There were no apologies in any of the three dresses. There was no managing. There was nothing said with any of the three bodies that meant please do not see what I am. There was a great deal said with all three bodies that meant look.

I really recommend reading Ari’s full piece.

Ari's Threads

Three Trans Women at the Met Gala. What It Means That We Get to Be Beautiful in Public.

A year and a half after trans people inexplicably became the central focus of the 2024 Presidential campaign - a campaign won by the candidate promising to end so-called transgender “mutilation” - three trans women made appearances on the red carpet at the Met Gala, heralds of a flailing moral panic and a kinder, more creative future…

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4 months ago · 36 likes · 20 comments · Ari Drennen

Drennen later writes “the cape [worn by Alex Consani] says, to the next girl who is about to enter a worse room: there is a way of standing in public in which your existence does not require an apology,” emphasizing the significance of embodied countering of inaccurate and harmful narratives about our communities.

And this is part of what trans-made music does for me. We still live in a society full of the message that trans people take away from what is right and good and beautiful in the world. Trans music demonstrates that the opposite is true. We create. We expand. We better the world.

Trans music as creation is also spiritually sustaining because through it I experience our legacies of crafting possibility out of nothing — out of environments not yet free of hostility, sometimes rife with it.

For this and so many other reasons, trans music is vital to our “survival, blossoming, [and] endurance”1 . And this is why I’ve been so moved witnessing the development of Trans Music Archive, a non-profit dedicated to preserving the work of trans musicians and to safeguarding our communities’ continued ability to create and share music “under technofascism.”

This post is part of my recurring series of music shares and reflections, generally focused on trans artists and messages or experiences related to survival during difficult times. Like all my substack content, these posts will be coming at intermittent intervals for the foreseeable future given my fairly recent entry into parenthood.

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Trans Music Archive was co-founded by producer and sound engineer Ariel Loh and software developer Rowan McDonald, and serves its mission primarily by functioning as a record label releasing small batch vinyl pressings at no-cost to the artist, while also dedicating funds and efforts to education, community building, and musician fellowships/residencies. As Beverly Glenn-Copeland and Elizabeth Copeland wrote in their Art Forum piece on the best music of 2025, “Loh and McDonald are ensuring that we will all be able to revisit in the years to come the immense beauty our trans family has given the world.”

Notably, Ariel Loh made history with her 2025 Grammy win for producing Iman Jordan’s pro-Palestine anthem Deliver, and was the subject of the somewhat viral moment from the ceremony in which she held up her phone case reading PROTECT TRANS KIDS during the livefeed video:

Loh and McDonald introduced Trans Music Archive in this short video last year, and I have loved the (unsurprising) connection to TRANSA that they mentioned.

Speaking of TRANSA, I learned about a record being released by Trans Music Archive through the TRANSA newsletter. (Don’t sleep on this newsletter! It’s one of very few that I let into my email inbox and read regularly. Sign up at transa.world — scroll to the bottom.) In the most recent letter, folks from Red Hot Org (who released TRANSA) interviewed Lia Ouyang Rusli, who releases music under the moniker OHYUNG, primarily about her new album IOWA, which OHYUNG describes elsewhere as “my love letter to Iowa City and the Midwest, my experimental, trans Bruce Springsteen Nebraska.”

As a Midwesterner by birth and rearing (long displaced2 at this point) who is both deeply appreciative of Springsteen and driven toward trans music, I needed no other invitation to listen to this album.

And y’all. It is beautiful. It does not sound like Springsteen’s Nebraska, to be clear. It does sound like the Midwest. OHYUNG said she wanted to make an album that sounds like what the cover to Springsteen’s Nebraska looks like: “an ode to the vast beauty of the Midwest, fields of corn, rolling hills, harsh winters, tornado sirens, and the trans people that survive despite the threat of right-wing christofascism.”3 In the reviews I read, the music of IOWA was frequently described with words like haunted, ghost-like, and sacred. It is an ambient album, created from beautiful (and yes — at times haunting) distortions of field recordings walking around Iowa City, synthesizers, analog tape players and tube compressors (I honestly don’t know what the latter is), as well as distorted samples of church choirs — apparently found in various corners of YouTube.

Here is what OHYUNG said in her interview with Red Hot Org about the role of the Midwest’s pastoral landscapes and how they show up in the album.

There was one drive in particular, going between Iowa City and Wisconsin where the topography changed a lot. That’s in the album. And [the traditional Iowa] appears a lot weather-wise, like tornadoes – there is that element to the record, but it's also just a time capsule. So it’s unromantic in a way. It’s just on my street, recordings on my phone, walking around town, or walking around the cemetery in the snow.

Listen to the album through bandcamp below:

OHYUNG also released a visual component for each of the songs. These films are to “music videos” what OHYUNG’s ambient tracks are to “songs,” if that makes sense. They move almost achingly slowly, lacking obvious structure, and are rich with intention and meaning which feels perpetually just out of reach. You can watch the whole album on Youtube and here is the visual for the lead single, all dolls go to heaven:

A number of music journalists have written beautifully about why this album is so good. I really recommend reading these two pieces to get more into it:

• Sasha Geffen’s review for Pitchfork

• Matt Mitchell’s interview and write-up in Paste Magazine

If you do not know OHYUNG from her earlier albums (including the critically acclaimed 2025 release You Are Always On My Mind), you may be familiar with Lia Ouyang Rusli’s work scoring films like Sorry, Baby and Problemista. Rusli is an Asian-American trans woman who grew up in “Pennslytucky,” the central and Appalachian part of Pennsylvania, and has long called Brooklyn home. She created IOWA during (and I believe following) the eleven months she spent in Iowa City while her partner attended the Iowa Writers Workshop. During that time she became connected to (immersed in?) the experimental art scene in Iowa City and came to know the beautiful artists — many trans — for whom Iowa is home.

I wrote above that IOWA sounds like the midwest. It also sounds like being trans in the midwest. As she stated, it was an ode “to the trans people that survive despite the threat of right-wing christofascism.” And that is there, contained in and expressed through the music. It is in the chilling soundscapes that feel expansive in both beautiful and terrifyingly lonely ways. It is in the synth that reverbs and feels as though it is floating above all of the shit and also in the heavier synth that hangs in the air like a mournful prayer. In the distorted loops of religious choral music, at once sacred and subversive. And it is in the slow temporality that feels both weighed down with grief and stretching into the future infinitely.

I titled this substack piece Trans Music for Spiritual and Material Survival, in part to emphasize that our communities need more than spiritual grounding and inspiration, though we do need these. Trans people also need safety, need access to care, need money. And these needs are both higher and harder to access when trans people are living in environments rife with hostility and harm. Rusli knows this well as a trans woman of color who grew up in more rural and conservative parts Pennsylvania, and she was intentional about not being a coastal trans artist who extracted art from a place and community. She was committed to not being a musician who swept in to be #inspired by the suffering and resilience of a midwestern state and then withdrew to a place of comparative security and ease. Part of this commitment is apparent in the fact that she is donating all of the proceeds from IOWA album sales to the Iowa Trans Mutual Aid Fund.

If you buy the album through Trans Music Archive or bandcamp, your money (after covering production expenses) will go directly to trans community efforts to support fellow trans folks in Iowa. My vinyl is arriving in the mail today!

Click Here to Purchase the Vinyl

Click Here to Purchase Digital Album

You can also donate directly to the Iowa Trans Mutual Aid Fund. The fund was founded in 2021 and provides small grants to Iowans seeking gender-affirming care / processes, including the following:

• Transition-specific clothing (binders/tucking garments), makeup, and wigs

• Hormones

• Therapy co-pays

• Top surgeries, bottom surgeries, and facial feminization surgerie

• Related doctor’s visits

• Name change fees

• Laser hair removal

• Travel expenses related to accessing gender affirming care out of state.

At last reporting they have redistributed $300,000 throughout the state.

Learn More & Donate To ITMAF

Before I close, I want to recommend checking out all of the releases from Trans Music Archive and exploring their small and growing artist roster, as well as their events, residencies, workshops, and other opportunities. They rely on grants and donations to fund their non-profit, provide all of this to the community, and support the artists they work with.

Donate to Trans Music Archive

Thank you to all of my subscribers. As a reminder, I write these posts between my other work, sometimes — like today — finishing up with a sleeping baby strapped to me. The more paid subscribers I have, the more time I can easily dedicate to this writing. If you find it valuable, please subscribe, share with others who might benefit from or enjoy it, and consider upgrading to a paid sub.

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Now go listen to OHYUNG’s album if you haven’t already!!!