We are still here. We have always been here. And we are just getting started.

Our culture is not pain. Look closer: it’s late-night phone calls between chosen family, the click of a pill bottle that means HRT day, the laughter over inside jokes about pronouns, the glitter that never fully washes off, the unapologetic way we love each other in public.

Here’s a piece written for the transgender community and LGBTQ culture, intended to be read aloud, shared, or used as a statement of solidarity. More Than a Spectrum: A Place for Us

And to LGBTQ culture as a whole: do not forget that trans rights are not a new wing of the house. We were always here. We were at Stonewall. We were in the ballrooms of Harlem, voguing our truths long before the mainstream saw us. We were in the early gay rights marches—Harvey Milk stood with trans people, Sylvia Rivera refused to be left behind. When we say “trans rights are human rights,” we are asking you to remember that our fight is your fight. An attack on trans healthcare is an attack on bodily autonomy for all queer people. A ban on drag is a burning of the queer archive.

LGBTQ culture—the drag queens who threw the first bricks at Stonewall, the lesbians who ran underground health clinics during the AIDS crisis, the gay men who danced defiance into the night, the bisexual and pansexual voices demanding we stop erasing complexity, the queer elders who whispered history when textbooks erased it—that culture is our scaffolding. You gave us language when we had none. You gave us family when blood failed. You showed us that gender nonconformity is not a flaw, but a fierce and ancient form of truth.