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Trans News Network
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Trans News Network (TNN) is a worker-run nonprofit LGBTQ+ newsroom publishing articles that impact trans communities.

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transnews.network
Readers, when we said TNN's reporting is in-depth, hard-hitting and unrepentantly radical, we meant it.

If you want to support the Liberation is a Riot series, and all our journalism, donate and share our winter fund drive transnewsnetwork.networkforgood.com
This winter, please consider a tax-deductible donation in support of Trans News Network!
TNN’s reporting is in-depth, hard-hitting and unrepentantly radical. Every dollar goes towards keeping trans journalists out of poverty and informing the public about what our communities are facing. ...
transnewsnetwork.networkforgood.com
December 18, 2025 at 10:54 PM
Reposted by Trans News Network
transnews.network
Article edited by @davidforbes.bsky.social

These tropes have spread due to bad social science (backed by the U.S. government and establishment) and bad history, especially a whitewashed version of the civil rights movement.

The reality of liberation struggles is more complicated, and instructive.
“The claim that armed self-defense was a necessary aspect of the civil rights movement is still controversial,” Cobb, a legendary journalist and former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary, wrote. “However, wielding weapons, especially firearms, let both participants in nonviolent struggle and their sympathizers protect themselves and others under terrorist attack for their civil rights activities. Their willingness to use deadly force ensured the survival not only of countless brave men and women but also of the freedom struggle itself.” He lays out a multitude of examples, like the heavily-armed Deacons for Defense and Justice group that mobilized against segregation and worked closely with civil rights organizers. “If we had a picket line, these guys were standing on the corner, on both sides of the street,” CORE organizer Fred Brooks recalled. “Wherever we went it was like a caravan; these guys in their pick-up trucks with their high-powered rifles.” Renowned radical civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer put it bluntly: “I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom, and the first cracker even look like he wants to throw some dynamite on my porch won’t write his mama again.” Cobb wrote his history to counter the ongoing sanitization of the realities of that struggle. He’s honest about divisions within the movement over the use of armed force, but also emphasizes that fears that armed demonstrations and defense would lead to overwhelming retaliation proved unfounded. Instead, in plenty of cases local segregationist governments folded in the face of them. “It may be that ‘nonviolent’ is simply the wrong word for many of the people who participated in the freedom struggle and who were comfortable with both nonviolence and self-defense, assessing what to do primarily on the basis of which seemed the most practical at any given moment,” Cobb concluded.
December 18, 2025 at 10:46 PM
Reposted by Trans News Network
transnews.network
Stonewall was, as the saying goes, a riot. In fact, the working class queer and trans people who fought the police defied demamd by the moderate Mattachine Society and other more establishment groups to "maintain peaceful and quiet conduct."

The reality of that struggle is still important today.
Shortly after the Stonewall riots, according to Susan Stryker’s Transgender History, moderate cisgender gays and lesbians broke off from their queer siblings and formed the Gay Activists Alliance. While they started off more militant than the “homophile” movement that preceded Stonewall, by 1973 the leadership veered away from radicalism in favor of currying favor with the establishment. They pushed out militant activists in favor of working with the political status quo in elections, political campaigning and drawing all their resources towards the gentry. GAA went on to influence the first Pride march years later. Stryker dishearteningly noted how in 1973 trans activist Sylvia Rivera was “forcibly prevented from addressing the annual commemoration of Christopher Street Liberation Day.” While GAA disbanded a year later, their legacy lives on through efforts to whitewash Stonewall and the utilization of the riots’ name to endorse political candidates. This is all in spite of Stonewall’s reality as not a protest, but a violent riot that was widely supported by people in the local community. “Bottles, rocks, and other heavy objects were soon being hurled at the police, who began grabbing people in the crowd and beating them in retaliation. Weekend partiers and residents in the heavily gay neighborhood quickly swelled the ranks of the crowd to more than two thousand people, and the outnumbered police barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall Inn and called for reinforcements,” Stryker wrote. “Outside, rioters used an uprooted parking meter as a battering ram to try to break down the bar’s door, while other members of the crowd attempted to throw a Molotov cocktail inside to drive the police back into the streets.” “Minor skirmishes and protest rallies continued throughout the next few days before finally dying down. By that time, however, untold thousands of people had been galvanized into political action.”
December 18, 2025 at 10:52 PM
transnews.network
*demands. Pardon us, readers, we get enthusiastic when writing about Stonewall.
December 18, 2025 at 10:58 PM
transnews.network
Readers, when we said TNN's reporting is in-depth, hard-hitting and unrepentantly radical, we meant it.

If you want to support the Liberation is a Riot series, and all our journalism, donate and share our winter fund drive transnewsnetwork.networkforgood.com
This winter, please consider a tax-deductible donation in support of Trans News Network!
TNN’s reporting is in-depth, hard-hitting and unrepentantly radical. Every dollar goes towards keeping trans journalists out of poverty and informing the public about what our communities are facing. ...
transnewsnetwork.networkforgood.com
December 18, 2025 at 10:54 PM
transnews.network
Stonewall was, as the saying goes, a riot. In fact, the working class queer and trans people who fought the police defied demamd by the moderate Mattachine Society and other more establishment groups to "maintain peaceful and quiet conduct."

The reality of that struggle is still important today.
Shortly after the Stonewall riots, according to Susan Stryker’s Transgender History, moderate cisgender gays and lesbians broke off from their queer siblings and formed the Gay Activists Alliance. While they started off more militant than the “homophile” movement that preceded Stonewall, by 1973 the leadership veered away from radicalism in favor of currying favor with the establishment. They pushed out militant activists in favor of working with the political status quo in elections, political campaigning and drawing all their resources towards the gentry. GAA went on to influence the first Pride march years later. Stryker dishearteningly noted how in 1973 trans activist Sylvia Rivera was “forcibly prevented from addressing the annual commemoration of Christopher Street Liberation Day.” While GAA disbanded a year later, their legacy lives on through efforts to whitewash Stonewall and the utilization of the riots’ name to endorse political candidates. This is all in spite of Stonewall’s reality as not a protest, but a violent riot that was widely supported by people in the local community. “Bottles, rocks, and other heavy objects were soon being hurled at the police, who began grabbing people in the crowd and beating them in retaliation. Weekend partiers and residents in the heavily gay neighborhood quickly swelled the ranks of the crowd to more than two thousand people, and the outnumbered police barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall Inn and called for reinforcements,” Stryker wrote. “Outside, rioters used an uprooted parking meter as a battering ram to try to break down the bar’s door, while other members of the crowd attempted to throw a Molotov cocktail inside to drive the police back into the streets.” “Minor skirmishes and protest rallies continued throughout the next few days before finally dying down. By that time, however, untold thousands of people had been galvanized into political action.”
December 18, 2025 at 10:52 PM
transnews.network
Article edited by @davidforbes.bsky.social

These tropes have spread due to bad social science (backed by the U.S. government and establishment) and bad history, especially a whitewashed version of the civil rights movement.

The reality of liberation struggles is more complicated, and instructive.
“The claim that armed self-defense was a necessary aspect of the civil rights movement is still controversial,” Cobb, a legendary journalist and former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary, wrote. “However, wielding weapons, especially firearms, let both participants in nonviolent struggle and their sympathizers protect themselves and others under terrorist attack for their civil rights activities. Their willingness to use deadly force ensured the survival not only of countless brave men and women but also of the freedom struggle itself.” He lays out a multitude of examples, like the heavily-armed Deacons for Defense and Justice group that mobilized against segregation and worked closely with civil rights organizers. “If we had a picket line, these guys were standing on the corner, on both sides of the street,” CORE organizer Fred Brooks recalled. “Wherever we went it was like a caravan; these guys in their pick-up trucks with their high-powered rifles.” Renowned radical civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer put it bluntly: “I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom, and the first cracker even look like he wants to throw some dynamite on my porch won’t write his mama again.” Cobb wrote his history to counter the ongoing sanitization of the realities of that struggle. He’s honest about divisions within the movement over the use of armed force, but also emphasizes that fears that armed demonstrations and defense would lead to overwhelming retaliation proved unfounded. Instead, in plenty of cases local segregationist governments folded in the face of them. “It may be that ‘nonviolent’ is simply the wrong word for many of the people who participated in the freedom struggle and who were comfortable with both nonviolence and self-defense, assessing what to do primarily on the basis of which seemed the most practical at any given moment,” Cobb concluded.
December 18, 2025 at 10:46 PM
transnews.network
Within living memory queer and trans communities have faced genocides — and defied them. Militant groups like ACT-UP show that organizing and confrontation, not waiting on political elites who don't care about our existence, can win some real victories: transnews.network/p/reagan-era...
Reagan-Era AIDS Activists Call for New ACT UP-Style Movement for Trans Liberation
In an exclusive interview, two prominent members of ACT UP, which has been credited with saving millions of lives, hope to inspire younger LGBTQ activists to embark on a bold trans liberation movement
transnews.network
December 18, 2025 at 5:17 PM
transnews.network
Reminder that those who study and warn about genocide, especially the Lemkin Institute, have loudly warned that trans healthcare bans are an openly genocidal attack on our existence: transnews.network/p/opinion-re...
Opinion | Republicans Want To Kill All Trans People—And Many Democrats Would Let Them. What Can History Teach Us About Resisting Queer Genocide?
“Never forget conservatives want to kill you and liberals want you to die quietly.”
transnews.network
December 18, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Reposted by Trans News Network
davidforbes.bsky.social
For those keeping track, this makes two recent, draconian pieces of anti-trans legislation — the NDAA's sports ban and now the blanket trans youth care ban — that would not have passed the House without Democratic support.
December 18, 2025 at 1:52 AM
Reposted by Trans News Network
transnews.network
We're a worker-run trans newsroom that's done *a lot* with your support over the past six months. Every dollar we get goes to journalism and paying journalists fairly.
We’ve done so much since our launch, just six months ago. We played a key role in bringing public pressure to stop the trans medicaid ban, reported on anti-trans bills moving under the radar in congress, investigated queer and trans creators kicked off Itch, delved into how N.C. Democrats passed anti-trans laws, rallied our communities to survive genocide, analyzed pro-trans bills making their way to California’s anti-trans governor, revealed a trans protesters’ harrowing experiences in jail and reported on Catholic bishops’ sweeping attack on trans healthcare. We have much, much more on the way.
December 4, 2025 at 6:05 PM