Transgender
rights have been on the chopping block since
the Trump 2.0 administration took office.
Pushback, however, has been equally fierce
across the country in Trump’s attempt to erase
our trans and non-binary communities from the
social fabric of American life. Our trans and
non-binary communities have clapped back in
political and artistic ways.
For
2025 Women’s History Month, and international
Women’s Day, I honor two black transwomen-
Rita Hester and Giselle Kristina Byrd. I honor
Hester for her life and legacy and Byrd for
her historic appointment.
On
November 20, 2024, the 25th Anniversary of
Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), The
Theater Offensive (TTO) received a special
citation from City Councilor At-Large Julia
Mejia.
“The Theater of Offensive in
Recognition of uplifting LGBTQ+ voices and
fostering inclusion through the power of art
since 1989, creating liberating works by,
for, and about queer and trans people of
color, dismantling oppression and inspiring
communities...the Boston Council extends its
best wishes for continued success,” it
states.
“This is historic,” I told
Giselle Byrd. The award, however, came as a
total surprise to Byrd. “It was
overwhelming, to be honest,” Byrd told me,
the new executive director at TTO. “To
receive this recognition from Councilor
Mejia is a reminder that queer and trans
artists are not only a highly valuable
reflection of society, but we can help
create the world that we wish to inhabit.”
The
New Girl on the Block
Under
Bryd’s leadership, TTO is entering a new era
of LGBTQ+ theater, emphasizing people of
color, and her lived experiences shape the
mission. “While traditionally marginalized
voices are being silenced, and trans women of
color, like myself, suffer an epidemic of
violence, TTO centers those creative voices
365 days a year,” Byrd shared at a press
conference in 2024. Since 2024, Byrd has been
the ED at TTO in Boston and is the first black
trans woman to head a major regional theater
company in the country.
Since
2024, Byrd has been the ED at TTO in Boston
and is the first black trans woman to head a
major regional theater company in the country.
As a trans woman, Byrd recognizes the torch
that is passed on to her and the black and
brown transcestors’ shoulders - past and
present - she stands on, like Marsha P.
Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and those whose lives
have been cut short due to violence, like Rita
Hester. “With my appointment, I was becoming
the first Black trans woman to lead a
significant American theatre company,
something my ancestors and transcestors fought
for in their lifetimes, but did not get the
chance to see their dream fulfilled,” she
wrote in Out Magazine. “I now carry their
torch.”
The
Danger of a Single Story
Bryd
brings a unique perspective critical to social
justice, inclusion, and storytelling as a
black Southern trans woman. She encourages
artists to explore outside the box and flip
the script on white queer cis-gendered
conventions that both straight and LGBTQ+
theatergoers have become accustomed to expect.
Trans representation at TTO is essential to
Byrd. She wants TTO to be a welcoming space
for trans and non-binary artists to explore
their stories - a diversity of realistic
portrayals.
Hester’s
story is a one-dimensional narrative that fits
the dominant trope about black trans women.
Byrd is working to change that through art.
Hester’s story shows the politics of memory,
what gets remembered, told, and canonized for
what and whose purpose as an international
icon. The tragedy is cemented in our public
understanding of Hester. In telling her story,
however, we cannot skip over her death and its
significance.
Cold
Case
After
twenty-five years, Hester’s murder is still an
unsolved cold case like most transgender
murders. On November 28, 1998, Hester was
found dead in her first-floor apartment with
twenty stab wounds to her chest, just two days
before her 35th birthday. Hester’s murder
kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web
project that became the catalyst for the
annual International Transgender Day of
Remembrance on November 20.
Rita’s
murder occurred in an era when the “trans
panic defense” - a defendant melodramatically
pleads temporary insanity for killing - was a
legal strategy. According to Trans Murder
Monitoring, a research project by TGEU that
tracks the murders of trans and gender-diverse
people globally, 320 transgender people were
murdered, beaten, or shot between October 1,
2022, and September 30, 2023. They were
predominately black trans women, an alarming
trend HRC has tracked for decades.
Violence
against Black trans women has been depicted as
“a pandemic within a pandemic.” They are
killed disproportionately because of
socioeconomic factors due to “transmisogynoir”
- the intersections of anti-black violence,
cissexism, and transphobia. Transmisogynoir
contributes to black trans women
disproportionately battling/unemployment,
poverty, housing insecurity, suicide,
HIV/AIDS, health care disparities, sexual
assault, police brutality, incarceration, and
a life expectancy between 33-35 years.
Honoring
Herstory
Boston
is finding many ways to honor Hester’s life.
Her life and legacy are memorialized in
“Rita’s Spotlight,” a mural in Allston
installed in 2022.
In
2024, TTO honored TDOR in community with
Hester’s family sharing reflections on Rita’s
life and artistry, and posthumously awarded
Hester their Legends Award. Hester’s nephew,
Taufiqul Chowdhury, received the award on her
behalf. Taufiqul shared that he imagined
Hester becoming a famous poet or TV star. He
told The Advocate in 2023, “I wish that she
could have lived long enough for me to see her
perform. She was educated, and she loved to
write. So who knows, maybe she’d [have
written] something and could have gotten
published.”
A
week before her death, Hester wrote her last
poem. “It’s a little foreboding and not out of
pain or sorry. You come to understand there is
some sense she needed to get this out and put
on paper,” Taufiqul told me. “And I am super
thankful that she did because the words I now
have hanging up in my home like a shrine.” The
poem “Look to me, my family” is on Hester’s
mural.
Trans
Rising
Hester’s
poem will likely find artistic expression in
TTO’s advocacy promoting trans visibility,
amplifying their voices - past and present. I
asked Bryd what’s the importance of TTO and
LGBTQ+ artistic creativity in light of Trump’s
executive orders rolling back protections for
transgender people and terminating DEI
programs. In an open letter to the community
on TTO’s website, Bryd clapped back:
“We will not cower in the
face of what’s to come. Instead, we will
stand even more boldly on our promise to
present liberating art by, for, and about
Queer and Trans People of Color.”
