Every Trans Day of Visibility brings with it a call to be more aware of trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive communities and the myriad struggles they face in the U.S. and abroad every day—yet so often, even that most well-meaning of notions presupposes a largely cisgender audience. But at the Gender Liberation Movement’s Liberation dinner hosted by Laverne Cox, Elliot Page, Sasha Colby, and Brian Michael Smith in Los Angeles’s West Adams neighborhood, the audience was firmly, defiantly, and joyfully gender-expansive—ensuring the night felt like the definition of “for us, by us.”
Guests at the ACLU-sponsored event, including Kiersey Clemons, Zaya Wade, Nori Reed, and Miranda July, first took in a moving and wide-ranging conversation between singer and TV personality Michelle Visage and her oldest child Leo Case. South Central L.A. native Bay Davis also delivered a galvanizing poetry performance before everyone gathered for an intimate and elegantly coursed dinner, executed by Devonn Charles Francis’s Charles & Francis.
Some attendees were happy to reunite, after recently witnessing each other be arrested in Washington D.C. during a demonstration against proposals by the Department of Health and Human Services that would block access to gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. Despite the cheery mood at dinner, the increasing threat to trans health and quality of life was never far from anyone’s mind, even as wine was poured and citrus salad was consumed.
“I’ll never forget the father of one of my patients, who pawned his wedding ring to finance a cross-country drive to access his teen’s hormone care,” said Dr. Morissa Ladinsky. The clinical professor of pediatrics at Stanford University has spent years providing gender-affirming care in Alabama. “I’m often asked by adults of trans experience, ‘What can I do?’, and my answer is always the same: ‘Keep being you.’ Visibility and representation have infinite value.”
In between courses, parents of trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive youth told the warmlys supportive room about how they are endeavoring to advocate for their children within an increasingly hostile landscape. Speechwriter Andy Dumont is father to Violet; an eleven-year-old trans girl who has, as he proudly notes, “been advocating for herself and other kids like her since she was six-years-old.” Dumont laid out his family’s plans to move country to ensure Violet’s health and safety. “I look around tonight and I see so many beautiful trans adults. I want my girl to be a trans adult.”
Towards the end of the evening, Juniperangelica Gia Loving, the co-executive director of Genders & Sexualities Alliance (GSA) Network, took the mic to talk about the importance of nurturing the kind of familial and chosen-family bonds that Gender Liberation Movement cofounders Raquel Willis and Eliel Cruz had made central to the event. “We have parents who are here, ready to support their babies in ways that so many of us around this table dreamt of, and now so many of us get to be that for our own babies…even under every discouragement and pressure point, the choice to love ourselves and love our babies is the formula for survival, and our people have known that.”
Photo by: Liam Woods1/8Bay Davis
Photo by: Liam Woods2/8Kiersey Clemons and Elliot Page
Photo by: Liam Woods3/8Eliel Cruz, Michelle Visage, and Raquel Willis
Photo by: Liam Woods4/8Elliot Page and Brian Michael Smith
Photo by: Liam Woods5/8Lake Dorn and DeVonn Charles Francis
Photo by: Liam Woods6/8The assembled audience at the Gender Liberation Movement's Liberation dinner
Photo by: Liam Woods7/8A shot of the Liberation dinner in progress
Photo by: Liam Woods8/8Some of the night's floral displays
