Lessons on trans liberation from the U.S. South

This article Lessons on trans liberation from the U.S. South was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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In a recent exchange between President Donald Trump and Maine Gov. Janet Mills, she publicly declined to comply with Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletic participation. The governor’s act of defiance made headlines as electeds, advocates and organizers grapple with how they might respond to the president’s anti-trans agenda. 

This practice of defiance and dedication to trans lives is nothing new to reformers in the U.S. South who have a message to national organizers: the fight may look different but the endgame remains the same. We have to protect our trans neighbors fearlessly and without exception. 

On the campaign trail, then-candidate Donald Trump and allies spent over $215 million on anti-trans ads. Since his inauguration, the president has taken aim at gender-affirming care, transgender military service, any practice of inclusion in sports and schools, and so much more. This new far-right political landscape is a change of ideology nationally, but in states like Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and others in the South, providing resources and safe spaces for trans people in spite of conservative anti-trans legislatures is nothing new. 

“The focus for folks across the movement has to be on helping [trans] people through this crisis,” said Adam Polaski, communications and political director at the Campaign for Southern Equality, or CSE. 

CSE is a North Carolina-based organization that in 2023 launched the Southern Trans Youth Emergency Project, designed to close the gap between the consequences of anti-trans laws and the support that transgender youth and their families need. One way the initiative supports transgender youth is through direct emergency funds, small grants that support travel and lodging for individuals seeking gender-affirming care with unimpacted providers. After providing over $500,000 in direct emergency funds to 1,000 families and individuals across the south, CSE expanded the project to serve trans folks in need on a national scale — renaming the project the Trans Youth Emergency Project. 

“These bans and executive orders are unfair and cruel, but also they are not the end game for families,” Polaski said. “And there is help that’s available. It is going to be harder to access your care, it is going to be unnecessarily expensive, but it is possible and the Trans Youth Emergency Project is here to help people through that.”  

In 2023, North Carolina advocates and organizers faced three bills targeting trans youth. The bills ban gender-affirming care for minors, restrict how gender identity can be discussed in schools, and prohibit transgender athletes from competing on girls’ sports teams. While organizers with Equality North Carolina, the state’s ACLU, and North Carolina’s Association of Educators worked in opposition to the legislative efforts, they all became law under the Republican statehouse. Initiatives like the Trans Youth Emergency Project seek to mitigate the damages of these Republican-led initiatives and provide protections and resources for trans folks outside of traditional political lobbying. 

“Sometimes we have to reimagine the way that it looks like to win or to have influence,” Polaski said. “And so maybe you can’t stop the bad bill from passing, but let’s create a program that helps work around the bill, or helps blunt the impact of the bill.”

That route of influence, through direct community service, is a note that Polaski hopes carries significance for activists and organizers on a national scale. 

“I hope more organizations are considering the ways that they can respond to people’s immediate needs, which could be through financial resources,” Polaski added. “It could be through tangible guidance and tangible information that often has to be kind of custom and tailored, and one on one. Folks have unique experiences, a fact sheet is not going to help them through a particular crisis.”

CSE’s national program expansion is a model with southern roots that finds consistency with work being done in other southern states. 

“In the South we’re focusing on survival,” said Brooke Lever, a community organizer in Memphis who has been producing queer showcases and installations for over seven years. “There is an anger, and I don’t know how best it can be directed, but I do know people that have actually been doing the grassroots organizing for years in Memphis.” 

Lever specifically mentioned My Sistah’s House, a grassroots, transgender-led organization in Memphis, Tennessee, that provides services for primarily Black and brown transgender and non-binary individuals. My Sistah’s House provides safe spaces, emergency shelter and access to health and social services in a state ranked “negative” in every category of LGBTQ equality by The Movement Advancement Project. 

One of the organization’s founders, Kayla Gore, converted a six-bedroom house into an emergency housing facility for “TLGBQ people in need of shelter.” As the organization looks to expand impact they have raised funding to build 20 tiny homes to increase their capacity to offer housing services to the communities they serve. 

Local organizations addressing gaps in care with direct services continue to be a proven model of impact in the South. But meeting the needs of trans folks at this moment is even deeper than direct services.  

“Social media is propagating this idea that we [trans people in the South] are isolated and alone,” Lever said. “So planning in-person events and having opportunities to work with one another and collaborate with one another artistically is like a spiritual activity. In Memphis, I’ve been seeing a really great response in sort of doing what I think we’ve always done. The people who care [about trans people] find places to make space.”

Addressing the needs of the community and making space for that community to exist, are two directives coming from organizing in the South. Similarly in Atlanta, groups are meeting this new political moment with the things that have always worked: fighting shoulder to shoulder. 

“If you don’t fight now, when are you gonna fight?” said Jason Arnold, an LGBTQ organizer and co-chair of community outreach at PFLAG Atlanta. “I have a voice. I have a platform. And with those things, I want to be able to lift my trans siblings up here in Atlanta. Ask trans people, how can I support you? How can I show up for you? What do you need from me?”

PFLAG Atlanta’s work involves community education, where hard conversations create room for growth. PFLAG Atlanta is moving to support trans folks and their families through support groups tailored to trans teens, parents and allied groups. 

“When I lead conversations about gender-affirming care I will ask folks, ‘Who here takes Viagra? Who takes hormones? Who’s had hair transplants? Who’s on birth control?’” Arnold said. “Welcome to gender-affirming care, because you don’t even know it, but you engage in it every day. So it’s not a case of them, it’s a case of us.” 

Putting these attacks aimed at trans people in a larger community context is essential to opposing harmful legislation, according to Arnold. This work is happening at a time when Georgia’s Republican state senate voted to pass Senate Bill 39, which would block state money for gender-affirming care in state employee and university health insurance plans, Medicaid and the prison system. The bill faces another vote in the House and potential legal challenges before it could become law. 

As national organizations and activists search for answers on how to protect trans rights under a Trump administration, the messages from organizers in the South are to double down on services, education and resistance. 

“We don’t see enough direct support for folks,” Polaski said. “There are families and people who are uniquely impacted and really tangibly impacted by these attacks. They need information. They need financial support. They need community. And so I think that should be a focus of the movement for the coming years.” 

While activists have lost some political influence to protect the trans community, Polaski says that showing up in every other means of care will be essential over the next two years. 

Providing care means providing direct services but it also means showing up. Queer visibility can also be a form of resistance and protest, which is a note that Lever says national organizations should pay attention. 

“I was taught to believe that queer visibility and queer power is radical,” Lever said. “I definitely have felt a shift as I’ve gotten older. What are the priorities for an LGBTQ rights organization? Is it to make enough money to self-sustain and grow? Or is it to distribute resources until it’s empty?”

Listening to organizers working on trans liberation in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and other southern states tells a story of communities eager to do what they can to meet this moment by defending trans folks in new ways and old ways alike. 

“When we fight back, that is how they see our presence,” Arnold said. “We’re fighting like we’ve always been fighting. Now we get vocal, now we get loud, now we show them our strength in numbers.”

This article Lessons on trans liberation from the U.S. South was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/03/lessons-on-trans-liberation-from-the-u-s-south/