May 8, 2013
Help Support Egyptt! Please Signal Boost

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(click here to donate)

Dear Friends & Community, 

We are writing to let you know of a community member who needs support after going through a major health crisis. Many of you know Egyptt, a long time activist and advocate for low income, trans communities of color. 


Egyptt was formerly co-coordinator of Trans Justice at the Audre Lorde Project. Prior to her work at ALP she was a crucial member of the Queers for Economic Justice Welfare Warriors group where she lead the way fighting transphobia within New York City’s welfare agency: the Human Resources Administration. Because of Egyptt’s work NYC’s Human Resources Administration has adopted its first ever transgender non discrimination policy, which Egyptt helped implement through many trainings of New York City employees.

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Additionally Egyptt has been a long time advocate at Housing Works advocating to have New York State pass the Gender Employment Non Discrimination Act (GENDA). She is also a brilliant performer, frequently showcasing her talent at the Housing Works fashion shows and many Trans Day of Remembrance events. Egyptt is now unemployed and has lost her apartment in Harlem. 

We are turning to you, our community, to support Egyptt as she navigates this challenging moment. We want to raise 10,000 for Egyptt to get back some of what she has lost in the last few months. She needs resources to get back into housing, to replace lost possessions, and to cover outstanding healthcare costs. 


With deep appreciation, 
Reina Gossett, Pooja Gehi, & Dean Spade

February 22, 2013
NYU OCCUPATION: STREET TRANSVESTITES FOR GAY POWER STATEMENT

i found this document -the first statement released by STAR during the NYU gay liberation front occupation- at the new york public library in Arthur Bell’s papers.

for more context i wrote about it last year here for Sylvia Rivera’s ten year memorial blog

OCTOBER 1970

GAY POWER WHEN DO WE WANT IT? OR DO WE?

 

This is the question that is running through our minds.  Do you really want Gay Power or are you looking for a few laughs or maybe a little excitement.  We are not quite sure what you people really want.  IF you want Gay Liberation then you’re going to have to fight for it.  We don’t mean tomorrow or the next day, we are talking about today.  We can never possibly win by saying “wait for a better day” or “we’re not ready yet” If you’re ready to tell people that you want to be free, then your ready to fight.  And if your not ready then shut up and crawl back into your closets.  But let us ask you this, Can you realliy live in a closet? We cant.

 

So now the question is, do we want Gay Power or Pig Power.  We are willing to admit that we need pigs.  But we only need t hen for crime control. We do not need them to beat and harass our gay brothers and sisters.  The pigs are not helping the people who are being robbed on the streets and being murdered.  How can they when theyre to busy trying to bust a homosexual over the head.  Or theyre to busy trying to catch someone hustling so they can arrest t hem.  But they do give us an alternative.  All we have to do is commit sodomy with them and they’ll forget they were saw us.  Until next time that is.  So again we ask you, do you want pig power or gay power?  This is up to each and every one of you.

 

If you want gay power then youre going to have to fight for it.  And youre going to have to fight until you win.  Because (striked through) once you start youre not going to be able to stop because if you do youll lose everything.  You wont just lose this fight, but all the other fights all over the country.  All our brothers and sisters all over the world will return to their closets in shame.  So if you want to fight for your rights, then fight till the end.

 

We would also like to say that all we fought for at Weinstein Hall was lost when we left upon request of the pigs.  Chalk one up for the pigs, for they truly are carrying there victory flag.  And realize the next demonstration is going to be harder, because they now know that we scare easily.

 

You people run if you want to, but we’re tired of running.  We intend to fight for our rights until we get them.

 

                                    Street Transvestites

                                    For Gay Power

 

[images of trans symbols on bottom)

 

January 28, 2013
Captive Genders: Teach-In on Abolitionist Imaginings and Transgender Activism

Next week my brilliant sibling Che & I will be hosting a teach in at UPenn on our Captive Genders chapter “Abolitionist Imaginings” We’ll be highlighting the work of STAR, Kiyoshi Kuromyia & the ongoing legacy of trans activism.

Click here for more info! Hope to see you there!

January 24, 2013
Riding the elevator to creating change/creating chains success!

Riding the elevator to creating change/creating chains success!

January 18, 2013

“We (Lesbian Feminist Liberation) found out there were plans to have a transvestite as part of the entertainment for the 1973 Gay Pride rally in Washington Square following the march and we decided to make a statement critical of transvestites…we decided we were going to stand up on that stage and tell everybody what we thought.  We stayed up the whole night before the rally and typed up this little statement.  We thought it was very important.  You see, we were creating theory at the time.” Jean O’Leary, founder of Lesbian Feminist Liberation, later the first president of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF)

“The transgender community was silenced because of a radical lesbian named Jean O’Leary, who felt that the transgender community was offensive to women because we liked to wear makeup and we liked to wear miniskirts.  Excuse me! It goes with the business that we’re in at the time! Because people fail to realize that -not trying to get off the story -everybody thinks that we want to be out on them street corners.  No we do not.  We don’t want to be out there sucking dick and getting fucked in the ass.  But that’s the only alternative that we have to survive because the laws do not give us the right to go and get a job the way we feel comfortable.  I do not want to go to work looking like a man when I know I am not a man” Sylvia Rivera

A case could be made that we should have included transvestites rights but I don’t think that gay people wanted to be identified with that.  We were trying to get away from that image.  And we were trying to get the bill passed.  So the transvestites were excluded from the bill and they never got reinstated.” Jean O’Leary

“I thought free loving was the thing, I found it doesn’t pay the rent…During the daytime they all call us fags and freaks.  At night I get even.  I freak on them.  I make them pay for all the insults they gave me.  I can have a nice conversation with them, give them words of wisdom.  But I’m getting back at them. My way.” Marsha P Johnson


January 8, 2013

My afternoon pick me up!  Warhol star Holly Woodlawn talking about her relationship with Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling, from the 2004 film”Superstar in a Housedress.”

December 5, 2012
Debating 'Gender Identity Disorder' and Justice for Trans People

My brilliant friend Chase Strangio wrote a really great piece in the Huffington Post on the underlying anti-mental illness/anti-crazy tone of the movement to get GID or GD out of the DSM, and the effects that has on low income, disabled and people of color who are TGNC!  Click the link to read!

October 23, 2012

Pay It No Mind - The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson

This beautiful documentary is now entirely online! Please PAY IT SOME MIND!

September 8, 2012
A New Queer Agenda with Lisa Duggan, Kenyon Farrow, Amber Hollibaugh, and Richard Kim

NYC area friends! please join me & other contributors wednesday September 19th to help launch The Scholar & Feminist Online“A New Queer Agenda! I am super excited about the piece I wrote with my sibling Che Gossett and friend AJ Lewis called  Reclaiming Our Lineage: Organized Queer, Gender-Nonconforming, and Transgender Resistance to Police Violence.  And the issue is filled with so many other brilliant writers, activists and educators!

details below! photos by the illustrious Syd London!

A New Queer Agenda

Lisa Duggan, Kenyon Farrow, Amber Hollibaugh, and Richard Kim

August 25, 2012
"Friends: that image saying that only people with a vagina should be able to express an opinion about women’s reproductive rights is really awful. Please don’t share it. It really aggressively locks trans women out of conversations or control over their own bodies and lives, as well as ciswomen cancer survivors who have undergone vaginectomy. I’m totally into messages that support the leadership of people who are most affected by gender oppression and I appreciate messages that acknowledge that some people who aren’t women (e.g. trans men) are directly impacted by misogyny—but this doesn’t really do these things. It reinforces transphobic and ableist hierarchies as well as the sexist idea that woman = vagina."

Gabriel Arkles sharing light & brilliance as usual.  If you haven’t read it yet I STRONGLY recommend you read his article, Prisons As A Tool For Reproductive Oppression: Cross-Movement Strategies For Gender Justice immediately.