First They Came for Us All: Responding to Anti-Transgender Structural Violence With Collective, Community-Engaged, and Intersectional Health Equity Research and Advocacy

Abstract

This article is a call for collective action across health equity researchers and advocates to build a more just world. We attempt to make sense of senseless structural and interpersonal brutality in the context of the current political climate across the United States, whereby the spectrum of gender nonconformity has been and continues to be stigmatized. From drag performance to transgender identities to gender-affirming health care, extremists have instrumentalized primary levers of democracy—the courts, legislatures, and social media—to attempt to outlaw and eradicate gender expansiveness and those who provide forms of support and care, including gender-affirming medical care, to transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive (TNBGE) individuals.