Adapted from a speech given at “Undeath Before Detransition”, a fundraiser for the feature film Love Bites by Women Against Film, May 22nd 2025 at Starr Bar in Brooklyn, NY.
Last week, unsurprisingly, the House of Representatives passed a new Trump-sponsored bill that included an insidious amendment. The bill dictates that medicaid will no longer cover gender-affirming care for anyone, of any age. In short, medicaid and public market health insurance no longer has a legal obligation to cover our estrogen.
Don’t panic! It hasn’t passed the senate yet. It very well may not! Still. It’s pretty bad.
We’re lucky though. We live in New York. Our state has laws in place that grant us Amida Care, and compel health insurance providers to cover HRT. There are inevitably legal challenges coming, if this bill is to pass the senate.
Growing up in Texas, we were not so lucky. There were no laws in place to protect my, or my comrade’s, access to hormones. In the time since I’ve moved to New York, Texas has passed laws that strictly prohibit transitioning in the way that we did. It’s a large part of why I came here. It’s probably a reason many of you did, too. These state protections matter, even if they only buy us time.
Over the past few years we’ve all heard a lot of bullshit about the importance ‘queer joy’ or whatever. I don’t want to tell you that trans joy will change the world, or that getting together with your friends will slow the force of cultural genocide; or the genocide of the Palestenians. It won’t.
Trans joy won’t save the world. It won’t save us. We can’t confuse personal pleasure for political action.
But. I want every trans person reading this to know that you matter, that we matter. That we deserve to have spaces for ourselves. That we deserve to have art that speaks to us, free of the cis gaze. Our art won’t change the world, it won’t even change the city. But, when we make art for each other, when we stick together, when we, as trans women, form community together, we can change each other.
That’s what Love Bites is about. It’s about how bitchy trans girls can be to each other. About how the world is ending and we’re the first to go. It’s about how no matter what trans girls say to each other, it doesn’t matter. We belong together. Every trans girl reading this: you belong.
Let me be clear:
As long as I’m alive they won’t take my sex.
‘Death before detransition’ isn’t enough. If they want my hormones, they will have to kill me, bring me back, and kill me again. They want to make me a man? They can’t. They don’t have the fucking power.
UNDEATH BEFORE DETRANSITION
TGIRLZ FOREVER.
Lily Pando is a writer of different types of stuff. She's head of women at Women Against Film. lilypando.com
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