Hello everyone
How absolutely lovely and amazing to see so many of you here today. It truly warms my little transgender heart, and I wanna give a huge shout out to the organizers for making today happen.
My name is Ada, and today I’m going to talk a bit about what international trans solidarity means and why it matters so, so, so much that you’re here today.
First off, I want to tell you the story of a trans woman called Christine Jorgensen. Some of you probably already know her, but I think she’s a good place to start when we want to understand how trans rights and trans culture moves through the world.
In 1952, Christine returned to the US from a trip to Denmark. Unable to get proper care in the US, she had come to Europe to seek help in getting gender-affirming care. While visiting her family in Denmark, she met an endocrinologist who helped her start hormones.
Later on she got special permission from no other than Denmark’s first female minister of justice to receive surgical treatment.
I like this story, because it’s an early example of cis-trans female solidarity, something which transphobes and TERFs want us to believe doesn’t exist. Yet it was already a thing 73 years ago.
When Christine returned to the US, she was met by an ecstatic press. She quickly became a national sensation and used her charm and wit to spread the word on the importance of gender affirming trans healthcare and spread knowledge about what it means to be trans.
Christine is an excellent example of what can happen, when trans people thrive with help from across national borders. Her medical treatment in Denmark made waves in the US, and from there spread even further across the world.
But obviously we can’t talk about international queer solidarity without touching upon the Stonewall rebellion. Just like Christine Jorgensen, Stonewall is the story of how the fight for equal rights is global, not just local.
It probably doesn’t require much explaining here, but in brief, Stonewall Inn is a gay bar on Christopher Street in New York City, which was raided by the police in 1969. These raids quickly led to spontaneous riots and demonstrations, now known as the Stonewall rebellion, Stonewall riots or Stonewall uprising.
Since then, pride parades and protests have been held across the world during summer to commemorate the events at Christopher Street.
To this day, many pride events in Germany are still named Christopher Street Day, not Pride, to maintain that historical connection.
LGBT+ history is littered with stories like these of international cohesion.
The first French trans woman to receive gender-confirming bottom surgery performed under the name Coccinelle.
According to the Queer Arab Glossary, Coccinelle is now used as a slang word between Palestinian trans women to refer to each other.
In 1997’s Ecuador, a prominent LGBTI+ organization, which fought against the country’s criminalization of homosexuality, was similarly named after Coccinelle.
International solidarity also shows in the symbols we use to represent ourselves. Aside from the rainbow flag, which originated in the US, the pink triangle also serves as a powerful symbol for the queer liberation movement.
In the 1930s and 1940s, an upside down pink triangle was used by the German Nazi regime to designate homosexual and transsexual prisoners.
In the 1970s, it was reclaimed by LGBT+ rights groups globally, but was turned the right side up to suggest an active fight against discrimination.
LGBT+ organizations have also spread and worked across borders for decades. If we look at Scandinavia alone, it turns out that both the main Swedish and Norwegian LGBT+ organizations originated as branches of the Danish Kredsen af 1948. While they are now separate organizations, but their common history connects them to this day.
These days, we are seeing something else spread across borders: anti-trans hate, vitriol, discrimination and even legislation.
Politicians in Georgia, Belarus and Hungary are copying Russian anti-LGBT+-laws and implementing them within their own borders.
In February, the Argentinian presidential office decided to ban hormone therapy for children, which follows in the footsteps of similar anti-trans restrictions set in motion by countries like the UK, Finland and Sweden.
Meanwhile, American conservatives are actively stoking anti-LGBT+ sentiment and policies in countries across the african continent.
And in Denmark, Dansk Folkeparti is copying Trump rhetoric one-to-one by trying to enforce a state that only recognizes “two biological sexes”, which in essence erases trans people from society.
Things look pretty bleak right now, and it feels like we’re surrounded on all sides by bigots.
But what we can learn from Christine Jorgensen, Stonewall, Coccinelle, the pink triangle, the Scandinavian LGBT+ organizations and so many other beautiful stories of international queer solidarity is that we can fight back together, and that we are never alone.
We have each other’s backs, we celebrate our victories together and we raise each other up in times of despair.
Together, we can spread queer joy, queer rage and queer rights all over the world.
Thank you.
How absolutely lovely and amazing to see so many of you here today. It truly warms my little transgender heart, and I wanna give a huge shout out to the organizers for making today happen.
My name is Ada, and today I’m going to talk a bit about what international trans solidarity means and why it matters so, so, so much that you’re here today.
First off, I want to tell you the story of a trans woman called Christine Jorgensen. Some of you probably already know her, but I think she’s a good place to start when we want to understand how trans rights and trans culture moves through the world.
In 1952, Christine returned to the US from a trip to Denmark. Unable to get proper care in the US, she had come to Europe to seek help in getting gender-affirming care. While visiting her family in Denmark, she met an endocrinologist who helped her start hormones.
Later on she got special permission from no other than Denmark’s first female minister of justice to receive surgical treatment.
I like this story, because it’s an early example of cis-trans female solidarity, something which transphobes and TERFs want us to believe doesn’t exist. Yet it was already a thing 73 years ago.
When Christine returned to the US, she was met by an ecstatic press. She quickly became a national sensation and used her charm and wit to spread the word on the importance of gender affirming trans healthcare and spread knowledge about what it means to be trans.
Christine is an excellent example of what can happen, when trans people thrive with help from across national borders. Her medical treatment in Denmark made waves in the US, and from there spread even further across the world.
But obviously we can’t talk about international queer solidarity without touching upon the Stonewall rebellion. Just like Christine Jorgensen, Stonewall is the story of how the fight for equal rights is global, not just local.
It probably doesn’t require much explaining here, but in brief, Stonewall Inn is a gay bar on Christopher Street in New York City, which was raided by the police in 1969. These raids quickly led to spontaneous riots and demonstrations, now known as the Stonewall rebellion, Stonewall riots or Stonewall uprising.
Since then, pride parades and protests have been held across the world during summer to commemorate the events at Christopher Street.
To this day, many pride events in Germany are still named Christopher Street Day, not Pride, to maintain that historical connection.
LGBT+ history is littered with stories like these of international cohesion.
The first French trans woman to receive gender-confirming bottom surgery performed under the name Coccinelle.
According to the Queer Arab Glossary, Coccinelle is now used as a slang word between Palestinian trans women to refer to each other.
In 1997’s Ecuador, a prominent LGBTI+ organization, which fought against the country’s criminalization of homosexuality, was similarly named after Coccinelle.
International solidarity also shows in the symbols we use to represent ourselves. Aside from the rainbow flag, which originated in the US, the pink triangle also serves as a powerful symbol for the queer liberation movement.
In the 1930s and 1940s, an upside down pink triangle was used by the German Nazi regime to designate homosexual and transsexual prisoners.
In the 1970s, it was reclaimed by LGBT+ rights groups globally, but was turned the right side up to suggest an active fight against discrimination.
LGBT+ organizations have also spread and worked across borders for decades. If we look at Scandinavia alone, it turns out that both the main Swedish and Norwegian LGBT+ organizations originated as branches of the Danish Kredsen af 1948. While they are now separate organizations, but their common history connects them to this day.
These days, we are seeing something else spread across borders: anti-trans hate, vitriol, discrimination and even legislation.
Politicians in Georgia, Belarus and Hungary are copying Russian anti-LGBT+-laws and implementing them within their own borders.
In February, the Argentinian presidential office decided to ban hormone therapy for children, which follows in the footsteps of similar anti-trans restrictions set in motion by countries like the UK, Finland and Sweden.
Meanwhile, American conservatives are actively stoking anti-LGBT+ sentiment and policies in countries across the african continent.
And in Denmark, Dansk Folkeparti is copying Trump rhetoric one-to-one by trying to enforce a state that only recognizes “two biological sexes”, which in essence erases trans people from society.
Things look pretty bleak right now, and it feels like we’re surrounded on all sides by bigots.
But what we can learn from Christine Jorgensen, Stonewall, Coccinelle, the pink triangle, the Scandinavian LGBT+ organizations and so many other beautiful stories of international queer solidarity is that we can fight back together, and that we are never alone.
We have each other’s backs, we celebrate our victories together and we raise each other up in times of despair.
Together, we can spread queer joy, queer rage and queer rights all over the world.
Thank you.