Lawmakers in Florida are meeting for another legislative session and nine bills have been proposed that would impact transgender Floridians.
Gender-affirming healthcare restrictions, bathroom bans, sports bans, and the inability to change gender on legal documents are just some of the anti-trans bills and policies that Florida lawmakers have passed in the last few years.
New ones impact diversity, equity and inclusion policies and allow a trans persons' work colleagues to misgender or deadname them, among others.
And to add to the fear and uncertainty, at least 350 transgender people were murdered globally in 2024.
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An organization that tracks the figure has counted more than 5,000 deaths since 2009.
Advocates say this is fueled in part the bills, which brought trans lives into public conversation. Even when bills didn’t pass, homicide and suicide rates went up.
"This has been an ongoing issue since trans people existed, which is forever, but also historically, I think, since probably 2014, 2016 when the first bathroom bans started,” said Kayden Rodriguez, a transgender social work therapist. “There's just been constant negative messaging.”
Finding community
Rodriguez said trans people are scared and that fear leads to isolation — and that's why it's more important than ever for them to build community.
"In my clinical experience, resiliency is built not from journaling all the time or something, but it's built from being in community spaces and having relationships," he said.
Rodriguez said while online spaces are most accessible for people, it's important to look for in-person events, too.
His advice for finding events, groups and meet ups for trans folks:
- Start with a Google search to see what organizations, social media pages, and events pop up
- Connect with folks at established LGBTQ+ organizations like St. Pete Pride, TransNetwork, PFLAG, and the Fitzlane Project, which helps fund therapy for trans youth.
- Ask other trans people about where and who they turn to. Find out how you can access invite-only groups through platforms like Discord.
- Follow the folks and organizations that people you connect with are following on social media.
Some of those happening are locally in connection with the Tampa Bay Transgender Film Festival, which takes place March 28-30.
"No ally, no well-intended person with money is going to come along with space and time and create that for us. We're going to have to be the ones to build these things for ourselves as we always have. The liberation that we desire is the liberation that we will create.”Lindsey Spero, trans and nonbinary activist in St. Petersburg
Other advice? Rodriguez says to stop the doom-scrolling.
“Instead of spiraling on all the social media that's going around, find specific articles from trusted sources and just do like a once a week or a couple of times a week run-through instead of constantly ingesting the media,” Rodriguez said.
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“If you're on Tik Tok, on Instagram, 24/7, you are constantly adjusting it, and it's not good. I know everyone says that all the time, but it really impacts the way that your brain functions, whether you realize it or not.”
Most of all, he said, trans people have no obligations right now to protest, pass out petitions, show up at public meetings, or create organizations and events.
“Your obligation is actually to just live the best life that you can, because that is the opposite of what everyone else wants. And so that's going to be the most activism that you could really do,” Rodriguez said.
Creating your own community
If you are inclined to start your own meet-up, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to doing that, but there are blueprints by others who have walked that path that can help get you started.
Take Lindsey Spero, for example. They’re a trans and nonbinary activist in St. Petersburg who created a social and support group for transmasculine people who, they say, can be one of two things:
“We can either continue to be ambassadors of patriarchy, which is exactly like every other man around us, or we can look at patriarchy, look at the ways that colonization has created binary systems that we fall into just as quickly and just as easily as the system and we've criticized for so easily so long in our lives,” Spero said.
“We have a really unique opportunity to show up in the world different differently, and create a blueprint for masculinity that others want to follow.”
They call their group, which met for the first time in the end of January and had more than 30 folks in attendance, “Swamp Bois.”
"No ally, no well-intended person with money is going to come along with space and time and create that for us,” Spero said. “We're going to have to be the ones to build these things for ourselves as we always have. The liberation that we desire is the liberation that we will create.”
Here’s their advice for starting a meet up:
- “Understand that revolution is a long-term game, and it's been happening a lot longer before you were born, and will be happening long after we die. And so to sustain yourself and to sustain your communities, you need to understand your role and what you have the capacity for and what you can be good at within community, and that looks completely different for everyone and all of us right now.”
- Consider a decentralized approach. Do you need to be the one running and organizing things? How could you help start a community that will flourish and grow whether you’re there or not?
- Think small, at least initially. You may not have the time, funding, or resources to start your town’s first pride event, but a book club is accessible. “While it is beautiful and powerful to hope and dream, and that's what keeps us all going," Spero said. "We also have to look realistically at the energy and the time and the scenarios around us and realize what we can do, how that can bring us closer together, use our energy toward that and understand that with consistency.”
- Don’t burn out too quickly by taking on too much, too often. In a culture of instant gratification, particularly with younger generations, Spero says, “with consistency, with time, things will grow and things will change and become better … it’s so much more difficult to learn long-standing patience and suffering through the realities of change in life to know that good will come and there will be good outcome on the other side of it.”
- Always unpack your internal biases. We all have them. Race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation — it’s all intersectional. Get comfortable sitting in rooms full of people, even other trans people, who have completely different opinions, perspectives and worldviews than you do.
“Our liberation as trans people didn't come because we existed and acted exclusively to ourselves. Our liberation didn't come just because we, a few trannies, stood outside Stonewall," Rodriguez said.
"I really, truly believe that it is a matter of getting to know one another and understanding each other's whys, and harnessing that power within each other because all of our whys are going to be completely different.”
And Spero agrees with Rodriquez: The act of just existing in trans bodies is revolutionary.
“Trans people have always existed, they will always exist, and we deserve to see each other and see ourselves" Spero said. "And it's inherently very revolutionary for trans people to gather in the south and gather in Florida, in a place where they do not want us, and they've made it very loud and clear that they don't want us, and we say, ‘Well, we're here anyway. We're going to stay here anyway. We're going to be ... happy about it anyway.’”
