The Fight for Bodily Autonomy Knows No One Gender
By Planned Parenthood of Greater New York’s Equity & Learning team
A marked day of visibility first implies that the trans community has been rendered invisible. With this, colonialism proves both eraser and pencil: deleting the diversity of global, gender-expansive existence from mainstream accounts of history and rewriting gender as a fixed, binary construct meant to bolster eugenic arguments for racial superiority and to justify slavery and exploitative labor under capitalism.
Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV), observed annually on March 31 — apart from prompting us to question why the trans community is otherwise made invisible — provides us with an explicit opportunity to commemorate the various experiences lived by the trans community, and invites us to celebrate transgender, non-binary (TGNB), and gender-expansive folks in all their humanity.
On this Trans Day of Visibility, we lift up and honor trans people of color, unseen in much of our histories, like William Dorsey Swann, an enslaved person known to be many “firsts”: the first to identify as a “Queen of Drag,” the first recorded person to file a legal complaint for queer discrimination, and the first known activist in the U.S. to lead a queer resistance group. While Swann’s legacy began a century before Stonewall, it has only just come to light thanks to the efforts of journalist Channing Gerard Joseph.
Last year, along with Swann’s story, the success of many other trans and gender-expansive champions was also brought into focus: 2021 saw trans visibility increase notably in politics and in media representation, as well as significant growth in grassroots organizing and concrete mutual aid. TDOV is certainly a time to name such accomplishments with pride, but to do so knowing that trans people should not need to be “achieved” or exceptional to be seen; for their lives to be valued.
While TDOV centers and celebrates trans joy, we cannot deny the barrage of attacks the community is experiencing. Last year was the deadliest year on record for TGNB people and with only three months into 2022, the backlash of the racist cishetero-patriarchy has already manifested into unprecedented, public bouts of discrimination — most recently across sports teams, in doctor’s offices, within the pages of schoolbooks and curricula, and even during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
We know that these attacks most adversely impact trans folks living at the intersections of identity, where racism compounds cissexism and leads to disparate health outcomes for Black trans women and femmes in particular. These attacks are meant to maintain the status quo, keeping interpersonal and systemic power in the hands of a few whilst using denial, intimidation, and carceral tactics to limit bodily autonomy and further push historically marginalized communities into the dark peripheries of the present.
Trans Day of Visibility reminds us that trans, gender-expansive, and non-binary people have always faced erasure and discrimination in western and white dominant cultures and calls us to name and reject transphobia as it is written into our history in real time. Breaking through this calculated excision — enforced through structural, rhetorical, political and interpersonal violence — is our work.
Planned Parenthood of Greater New York must ensure that trans people are seen, especially within our context of providing sexual health care, education, and advocacy; that their needs are addressed, their voices heard, and their experiences centered. The fight for bodily autonomy knows no one gender, and we must take the unwavering stance that trans lives are precious by identifying the ways that we, as providers, can dismantle harmful barriers to care and expand access to inclusive, affirming, and lifesaving services for all bodies, no matter what.
