International Trans Day of Visibility extends far beyond mere recognition: it’s an affirmation of the existence, beauty, and resilience of trans and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) folks.
We also recognize visibility as a double-edged sword – one that has led to escalating and relentless violence intended to break our spirits and undermines our movements toward trans liberation.
However, at Borealis our grantee partners—whose wisdom guides our work across all nine of our funds—have taught us a powerful lesson in sustenance amid oppression: joy is an act of resistance.
To choose joy is an intentional act of strength. It is not an exercise in denial, nor is it an unwillingness to reckon with pain. Faced with antagonism from the people, policies, and practices seeking to erase trans and gender-nonconforming communities, they instead choose to organize, choose fellowship, and live whole. In doing so, TGNC folks are building a future in which trans lives are celebrated in their divinity, where their perspectives are recognized and valued, and where trans folks get to grow old in a world that cherishes them.
At Borealis Philanthropy, we stand firm in our commitment to elevating and centering the full brilliance that trans people bring to this world. Below, we’re honored to share just a sliver of the work our grantee partners are leading to build futures in which trans lives are held as sacred.
While these stories of our partners are not exhaustive, we are, without question, grateful and humbled to resource the work of all of our incredible grassroots partners, who are creating new worlds and leading with joy as an act of resistance and resilience, so that we may all be free.
Stewarding Land for Liberation
The Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom exemplifies the ancestral connection between land and liberation. Built by and for Black, queer, trans and gender-nonconforming people, the Acorn Center, nestled on 8 acres in Georgia, is adorned with a saltwater pool, a pond, and a medicinal herb farm—creating a natural oasis for healing, joy, and visioning liberated futures. Throughout the year, the Acorn Center invites Black and trans artists, performers, and writers to retreat on the land, to deepen their healing and spiritual justice practice; expand their creativity, and tend and care for the land, which nourishes them in return.
In an ever-changing world overrun by the overwhelm of technology, the transformative impact of reconnecting with land cannot be overstated. Emanuel H. Brown, founder of The Acorn Center, shared, “Land stewardship offers places for Black trans people to anchor their dreaming. The minute they step foot on this land, we see a shift. We see them say, ‘if this is possible, whatever I’m dreaming is actually possible,’” underscoring how stewarding land can offer a pathway towards collective liberation and healing.
Trans Joy Takes Center Stage
Every year, trans joy is front and center at the Lavender Rights Project’s Black Trans Comedy Showcase, a celebration of the radiance and resilience of trans lives. Ebo Barton from the Lavender Rights Project points out the importance of this work, given how “[trans joy] is often missing in our conversations around policy, advocacy, and all the terrible things that the government is doing to us. The Black Trans Comedy Showcase is where we can laugh together, and bring celebration and joy back to our communities.”
Through the showcase, Black trans comedians share their craft and perspectives with a crowd that mirrors their own beautiful identities. It’s a moment for Seattle’s TGNC community to come together as a collective and rejoice in shared belly laughter. Finally, by centering trans joy as a means to fundraise, the Lavender Rights Project offers an alternative way to resource trans movements—shifting away from narratives centered on pain, and instead building power from a place of joy and abundance.
Tracing the Ancestral Wisdom of Resilience
Collective care and healing practices have always been integral to spiritual and political liberation. In Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety, Black queer feminist editors Cara Page and Erica Woodland explore the liberatory practices that have sustained BIPOC, queer and trans movements throughout history. Grounded in ancestral wisdom, they call on us to adopt a healing justice framework by:
- Upholding community-led responses that interrupt cycles of trauma and prioritize collective well-being.
- Adopting an emergent process to address trauma, grief, crisis, and violence (both present and historical).
- Reconnecting to ancestral lineages of integrative care and resilience.
- Challenging the medical industrial complex by intervening in the harms and abuses that perpetuate ableism, and capitalism.
- Leaning on community wisdom to build power and create new models of safety and holistic care.
The traditions that have sustained BIPOC queer and trans movements have been purposefully left out of the history books. Erica underscores that “we need to hold fast to our ancestral ways in the midst of confinement, enslavement, and attempted genocide. [We must] be really thoughtful about the things we need to bring forward to ensure that our peoples exist in the future.” Whitewashing history is a deliberate strategy to keep BIPOC, queer and trans folks disconnected from our lineages and diminish our spirits. Through their work, Erica and Cara are reclaiming ancestral power, resilience, and innovations–continuing the legacy of liberation and healing.
Black Trans Empowerment Week
Black Trans Empowerment Week is a love letter to Black trans and gender-nonconforming people; an expression of gratitude and admiration for TGNC folks’ resilience, Black trans trailblazers of our past, and visionaries who are forging new and radiant futures.
The Mahogany Project and Save Our Sisters United co-created Black Trans Empowerment Week as a constellation of virtual and in-person liberatory spaces, including an opening ceremony, strategic gatherings, and a community brunch. It’s a week dedicated to trans folks telling their own stories, and shaping their futures unbounded by the harmful narratives that permeate the mainstream.
Atlantis Narcisse of Save Our Sisters reminds us to “encourage people to see you not as your body of work, but as the body that does the work” in a powerful call to move beyond reductive narrative and recenter the beauty of trans lives.
How Can Funders Resource Trans Futures?
For too long, philanthropy has operated by only reacting to crises—especially for issues experienced by BIPOC trans communities. This cyclical, boom-bust practice constricts organizers’ ability to vision and help co-create a world in which trans folks can not only survive, but thrive.
Philanthropy must upend this framework, and approach funding through an entirely new lens: resourcing trans joy, and doing so through an abundant framework.
By doing so, trans communities will be well-resourced, year-round, and into the long-term, not only to fend off coordinated attacks, but also to scheme, build, co-create, rest, and reimagine.
At Borealis, we distribute rapid response funds to ensure organizers can navigate each critical and new moment, but also provide unrestricted, multi-year funding to cultivate ecosystems where trans folks are resourced to move beyond survival. We’re investing in the leadership of trans people of color guiding us towards radiant and abundant futures and ensuring they have space to cultivate their well-being and experience unbridled joy while advancing this work.
Although funding for trans movements has increased in recent years, only 36% goes to organizations led by trans folks, underscoring a critical gap in the equitable distribution of resources—one that must be addressed in order to benefit the communities we caim to serve. Here are ways we encourage our funder peers to resource BIPOC, TGNC folks by utilizing a lens of abundance and joy:
- Grant multi-year, flexible, and unrestricted funding. Trust that trans-led organizations know best how to serve themselves and their communities.
- Embrace trans-joy as a framework. Shift from emergency-only funding to seeing yourself as an accomplice in co-creating a future where trans folks thrive and get to grow old. This will require abundant funding and abundant time. Commit to the long haul.
- Make space for trans leadership and guidance. Elevate BIPOC TGNC voices. Pursue a participatory grantmaking process to ensure that funding decisions are held with care by the communities your resources aim to serve. Ensure your own staff is representative of these communities, too.
- Create dedicated funds to support the holistic well-being of trans organizers—but also fund at the intersections across all of your issue areas. Recognize that only by centering BIPOC, queer, trans, and disabled folks in our decision-making do we make progress toward a liberated future for all.
- Support work in areas and geographies that have been historically under-resourced, such as the global South or rural areas.
And finally, consider partnering with Borealis’ Emerging LGBTQ Leaders in Philanthropy Fund and Fund for Trans Generations to resource a national network of grassroots organizers for justice. Together, we can reimagine philanthropy as a force that uplifts the joy, healing and flourishing of the communities we serve—until our work is no longer necessary.