When looking at all the push for reform in various areas of social justice (as if there is no overlap), the transgender community is often overlooked or mentioned as an aside. As if gender identity doesn’t intersect with sexual orientation, or health care access, or immigration status. You would think that no transgendered identified person wants to get married, or have access to affordable health care, or want to come out of the immigration shadows.

For example earlier this year I looked critically at the groundbreaking NAM study on Latina immigrants that seemed to look at cisgendered, partnered, straight Latinas, making invisible any Latinas that fell outside of those margins. It seems that the only time the media deals with the everyday issues in transwomen’s lives is when those lives are gone. And yes the critique is aimed at myself and this site as well.

It is within the accepted narrative for Latin America to be transphobic but in the U.S. the abuse and denial of basic rights is rarely even on the radar especially when it comes to immigration. In fact in a conversation i had just last week on the issue of who are Latina immigrants, there was an attempt, I felt by the other to paint transgender Latinas as outsiders or “one-offs” in the Latina immigrant community rather than an essential and regular part of it. It is attitudes such as this that create an atmosphere that is ripe for further abuse especially within the already unjust immigrant detention system.

except via From Marriage, to Health, to Immigration : Where are the Transgender Latinas? | VivirLatino.