What happens when LGBTQ+ people "can't rely" on media platforms or policy drivers? They make their own.
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The organizers behind the Brooklyn Liberation Marches of 2020 and 2021, and last year's Gender Liberation March have founded a new movement seeking to unite LGBTQ+ people and women with their fellow Americans in the fight for bodily autonomy.
The Gender Liberation Movement is a grassroots and volunteer-run national collective that focuses on "direct action and cultural events, media advocacy and narrative change work, and policy work," according to co-founder Eliel Cruz. The organization aims to "elevate content creators, organizers, and advocates who are doing work across the country."
Attendees of the Gender Liberation Movement's 2021 Brooklyn Liberation Action Cole Witter for GLM
"Folks were interested in a space and a collective that was going to bring various movements together and work towards solidarity between a lot of different fights, but largely between the fight for reproductive justice, abortion access, and gender-affirming care," co-founder Raquel Willis tells The Advocate. "Because we can't rely on a lot of these platforms and outlets that we have historically, we're figuring out ways to prop up storytellers so that they can share their own stories on their own terms."
While the organizers have long considered the idea of expanding to a collective, it became especially pressing after the election of Donald Trump and subsequent falling in line of major media organizations and corporations. Several tech titans attended the inauguration, including Elon Musk, owner of Twitter/X, SpaceX, and Tesla; Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post; Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg; out Apple CEO Tim Cook; and Shou Chew, the CEO of TikTok, who all occupied the front row ahead of his cabinet members.
Over a dozen major companies have abandoned DEI initiatives, and Meta has taken it a step further by announcing new content rules that allow users to abuse LGBTQ+ people, including posts calling them “mentally ill” and denying the existence of transgender people. Part of GLM's mission is to address this by "seeing how we can utilize media advocacy to defend and protect our voices," Willis says.
"We are seeing the increasing betrayal of social media platforms and traditional media platforms, particularly against folks who are marginalized, but of course against trans and queer folks," she continues. "We know that it's important to be the masters of our own narratives."
This also applies to electoral institutions, which the activists say have continuously failed to protect LGBTQ+ people. At a time when the president is denying their existence, Cruz specifically says that the "the majority of [Democrats] are not fiercely defending the lives of trans people."
"Especially underneath the Trump administration, but even under Dem leadership, we need to hold these individuals to a higher standard ... and not just accept a Republican-light agenda in policy and in how they view trans people," he says. "The era where we can accept a sentence here and there affirming lives of trans people is very much over."
Protesters during Gender Liberation Movement Capitol Bathroom action where Raquel Willis was arrestedAlexa B Wilkinson for GLM
Willis, who was arrested last month alongside whistleblower Chelsea Manning and over a dozen other activists while protesting Republicans' trans bathroom ban on Capital Hill, says that the very "fact that Donald Trump is the president is a failure of our democratic processes to safeguard our freedoms."
"It's clear for a lot of people that so many of the institutions we've relied on for as long as many of us can fathom have failed us," she adds. "What's going to be important over the next four years is for us to build the institutions and the collectives that are actually going to work for everyone. And it's going to be important that any agenda that is put forth speaks to the experiences of queer, trans, and intersex folks, and women, folks of color, and migrants in particular."
GLM is currently "looking for foundations and funders," Cruz says, emphasizing that "we're volunteer run and we're trying to become a full fledged organization." One of their upcoming events is a "Freedom to Be Quilt Panel-Making Event" with the ACLU in Brooklyn on Saturday, Feb. 1.
Willis stresses that the organization is not just for LGBTQ+ people or cisgender women, as "we are in an increasingly authoritarian era" rife with "attacks on bodily autonomy, and we all have a body."
"Gender liberation work is important because it taps into everyone's lives, not just queer and trans people, despite kind of the assumption that it's only about us," she says, adding, "This agenda that the Trump administration has already started to clarify this week makes it clear that so many groups on the margins are going to have to come together and see the connections between our experiences, rather than allowing them to tear us apart."