National
How data helps — and hurts — LGBTQ communities
‘Even when we prove we exist, we don’t get the resources we need’
When Scotland voted to add questions about sexuality and transgender status to its census, and clarified the definition of “sex,” it was so controversial it led to a court case.
It got so heated that the director of Fair Play for Women, a gender-critical organization, argued: “Extreme gender ideology is deeply embedded within the Scottish Government, and promoted at the highest levels including the First Minister.”
Data, like the census, “is often presented as being objective, being quantitative, being something that’s above politics,” says Kevin Guyan, author of “Queer Data.”
Listening to the deliberations in parliament breaks that illusion entirely. “There’s a lot of political power at play here,” says Guyan, “It’s very much shaped by who’s in the room making these decisions.”
Great Britain has been a ‘hotspot’ for the gender-critical movement. “You just really revealed the politics of what was happening at the time, particularly in association with an expanded anti-trans movement,” explains Guyan.
Ultimately, the LGBTQ community was counted in Scotland, which was heralded as a historic win.
This makes sense, says Amelia Dogan, a research affiliate in the Data plus Feminism Lab at MIT. “People want to prove that we exist.”
Plus, there are practical reasons. “To convince people with power, especially resource allocation power, you need to have data,” says Catherine D’Ignazio, MIT professor and co-author of the book “Data Feminism.”
When data isn’t collected, problems can be ignored. In short, D’Ignazio says, “What’s counted counts.” But, being counted is neither neutral nor a silver bullet. “Even when we do prove we exist, we don’t get the resources that we need,” says Dogan.
“There are a lot of reasons for not wanting to be counted. Counting is not always a good thing” they say. D’Ignazio points to how data has repeatedly been weaponized. “The U.S. literally used census data to intern Japanese people in the 1940s.”
Nell Gaither, president of the Trans Pride Initiative, faces that paradox each day as she gathers and shares data about incarcerated LGBTQ people in Texas.
“Data can be harmful in some ways or used in a harmful way,” she says, “they can use [the data] against us too.” She points to those using numbers of incarcerated transgender people to stoke fears around the danger of trans women, even though it’s trans women who face disproportionate risk in prison.
This is one of the many wrinkles the LGBTQ community and other minority communities face when working with or being represented by data.
There is a belief by some data scientists that limited knowledge of the subject is OK. D’Ignazio describes this as the “hubris of data science” where researchers believe they can make conclusions solely off a data set, regardless of background knowledge or previous bodies of knowledge.
“In order to be able to read the output of a data analysis process, you need background knowledge,” D’Ignazio emphasizes.
Community members, on the other hand, are often primed to interpret data about their communities. “That proximity gives us a shared vocabulary,” explains Nikki Stevens, a postdoctoral researcher in D’Ignazio’s Data plus Feminism lab.
It can also make more rich data. When Stevens was interviewing other members of the transgender community about Transgender Day of Remembrance, they realized we “think more complicated and more meaningful thoughts, because we’re in community around it.”
Community members are also primed to know what to even begin to look for.
A community may know about a widely known problem or need in their community, but they are invisible to institutions. “It’s like unknown to them because they haven’t cared to look,” says D’Ignazio.
That is how Gaither got involved in tracking data about incarcerated LGBTQ people in Texas in the first place.
Gaither received her first letter from an incarcerated person in 2013. As president of the Trans Pride Initiative, Gaither had predominately focused on housing and healthcare for trans people. The pivot to supporting the LGBTQ incarcerated community came out of need—trans prisoners were not given access to constitutionally mandated healthcare.
Gaither sought a legal organization to help, but no one stepped in—they didn’t have expertise. So, Gaither figured it out herself.
As TPI continued to support incarcerated, queer Texans, the letters kept rolling in. Gaither quickly realized her correspondences told a story: definable instances of assault, misconduct, or abuse.
With permission from those she corresponded with and help from volunteers, Gaither started tracking it. “We’re hearing from people reporting violence to us,” says Gaither, “we ought to log these.” TPI also tracks demographic information alongside instances of abuse and violence, all of which are publicly accessible.
“It started off as just a spreadsheet, and then it eventually grew over the years into a database,” says Gaither, who constructed the MySQL database for the project.
Gaither’s work especially focuses on the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which ostensibly includes specific protections for transgender people.
To be compliant with PREA, prisons must be audited once every three years. Numerous investigations have shown that these audits are often not effective. TPI has filed numerous complaints with the PREA Resource Center, demonstrating inaccuracies or bias, in addition to tracking thousands of PREA-related incidents.
“We are trying to use our data to show the audits are ineffective,” says Gaither.
Gaither has been thinking about data since she was a teenager. She describes using a computer for the first time in the 1970s and being bored with everything except for dBASE, one of the first database management systems.
“Ever since then, I’ve been fascinated with how you can use data and databases to understand what your work with data,” Gaither says. She went on to get a master’s in Library and Information Sciences and built Resource Center Dallas’s client database for transgender health.
But gathering, let alone analyzing, and disseminating data about queer people imprisoned in Texas has proven a challenge.
Some participants fear retaliation for sharing their experiences, while others face health problems that make pinpointing exact dates or times of assaults difficult.
And, despite being cited by The National PREA Resource Center and Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, Gaither still faces those who think her data “doesn’t seem to have as much legitimacy.”
Stevens lauds Gaither’s data collection methods. “TPI collect their data totally consensually. They write to them first and then turn that data into data legible to the state and in the service of community care.”
This is a stark contrast to the current status quo of data collection, says Dogan, “people, and all of our data, regardless of who you are, is getting scraped.” Data scraping refers to when information is imported from websites – like personal social media pages – and used as data.
AI has accelerated this, says D’Ignazio, “it’s like a massive vacuum cleaning of data across the entire internet. It’s this whole new level and scale of non-consensual technology.”
Gaither’s method of building relationships and direct correspondence is a far cry from data scraping. Volunteers read, respond to, and input information from every letter.
Gaither has become close to some of the people with whom she’s corresponded. Referring to a letter she received in 2013, Gaither says: “I still write to her. We’ve known each other for a long time. I consider her to be my friend.”
Her data is queer not simply in its content, but in how she chooses to keep the queer community centered in the process. “I feel very close to her so that makes the data more meaningful. It has a human component behind it,” says Gaither.
Guyan says that data can be seen as a “currency” since it has power. But he emphasizes that “people’s lives are messy, they’re complicated, they’re nuanced, they’re caveated, and a data exercise that relies on only ones and zeros can’t necessarily capture the full complexity and diversity of these lives.”
While Gaither tallies and sorts the incidents of violence, so it is legible as this “currency,” she also grapples with the nuance of the situations behind the scenes. “It’s my family that I’m working with. I think it makes it more significant from a personal level,” says Gaither.
Guyan explains that queer data is not just about the content, but the methods. “You can adopt a queer lens in terms of thinking critically about the method you use when collecting, analyzing, and presenting all types of data.”
(This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.)
Vice President JD Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, will visit Hungary next week.
An announcement the White House released on Thursday said the Vances will be in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, from April 7-8.
JD Vance “will hold bilateral meetings with” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The announcement further indicates the vice president “will also deliver remarks on the rich partnership between the United States and Hungary.”
The Vances will travel to Hungary less than a week before the country’s parliamentary elections take place on April 12.
Orbán, who has been in office since 2010, and his Fidesz-KDNP coalition government have faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ crackdown.
The Associated Press notes polls indicate Orbán is trailing Péter Magyar and his center-right Tisza party.
President Donald Trump removed Attorney General Pam Bondi from her post Thursday, following growing criticism over how she and the Department of Justice handled a range of issues, including matters related to sex offender and Trump ally Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump announced Bondi’s removal on Truth Social, where he also said Todd Blanche will serve as acting head of the Justice Department.
“Pam Bondi is a great American patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my attorney general over the past year,” Trump wrote on the platform. “Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown on crime across our country, with murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.”
Trump was seen as recently as Wednesday with the now-former attorney general at a Supreme Court hearing on citizenship.
The decision contrasts with Trump’s previous public praise of Bondi, the 87th U.S. attorney general and former 37th attorney general of Florida, who served in that role from 2011-2019 before joining the Trump-Vance administration. He has frequently lauded her loyalty and said he speaks with her often. Bondi was also one of president’s defense lawyers during his first impeachment trial.
Privately, however, Trump had grown frustrated that Bondi was not “moving quickly enough” to prosecute critics and political adversaries he wanted to face criminal charges, according to multiple sources. The New York Times reported that her inability to charge former FBI Director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James with any crimes is a large factor in the president’s choice to fire her from the government’s primary law enforcement agency.
The move comes as Trump has sought to minimize public turmoil within his administration, avoiding the perception of a revolving-door Cabinet that defined his first term.
Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York who unsuccessfully ran for governor, has emerged as a leading contender to lead the Justice Department. He has been one of Trump’s most reliable allies.
“He’s our secret weapon,” Trump said of Zeldin in February during a White House event promoting the coal industry, adding, “He’s getting those approvals done in record-setting time.”
Bondi has also growing faced scrutiny from Congress.
The House Oversight Committee recently subpoenaed her to testify about the department’s handling of certain files, where she declined to answer key questions during a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing in February.
The Tampa native has a long history of opposing LGBTQ rights through her roles in government. As Florida attorney general, she fought against the legalization of same-sex marriage, arguing it would cause “serious public harm,” pushing forward a legal battle that cost taxpayers nearly half a million dollars. She also asked the Florida Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that found the state’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional.
More recently, Bondi established a “Title IX Special Investigations Team” within the Justice Department focused on restricting transgender women and girls from participating in women’s and girls’ sports teams and accessing facilities aligned with their gender identity. She also told Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to turn over the medical records of anyone under 19 who received gender-affirming care.
Her removal follows Trump’s decision last month to oust another controversial female Cabinet figure, Kristi Noem.
The White House
VIDEO: Gay journalist detained for booing Trumps at ‘Chicago’ opening night
Eugene Ramirez booed first family at Kennedy Center
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump attended the opening night of “Chicago” at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday. They were greeted by a mix of cheers, applause, and some audible boos.
Among them was Eugene Ramirez, a gay Washington resident, who later shared his account of the night after being briefly detained by security for booing the president and giving a thumbs-down gesture — an expression of what many would call a textbook definition of constitutionally protected speech to criticize the government.
Ramirez attended the opening night performance with a group of friends, hoping to catch a final show before the center undergoes two years of major changes under Trump oversight. The musical, based on a 1926 play of the same name, has become synonymous with Broadway success.
With music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse, “Chicago” has cemented itself as a cultural staple — known for its signature Fosse choreography, stripped-down staging, and sleek, campy aesthetic. The story follows Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, women who murder their husbands but — with the help of the manipulative, charismatic, and narcissistic attorney Billy Flynn — walk away scot-free.
It remains the longest-running American musical in Broadway history, and its 2002 film adaptation famously won the Academy Award for Best Picture. On this night, however, the production also became the backdrop for a very modern moment of political protest.
“I accompanied five friends to opening night of ‘Chicago’, as a way to enjoy a final performance in the Kennedy Center as we know it,” Ramirez began to recount to the Washington Blade, describing the moment his group settled into their seats inside the ornate Opera House theater.
Just before the performance began, the twice impeached president and first lady appeared in the balcony box, drawing immediate attention from the audience below. Theatergoers stood, cheered, clapped, and waved, while Ramirez made a different choice.
While accounts of the crowd’s reaction have varied, Ramirez said his response was intentional, immediate, and within his rights. Moments after booing and giving a thumbs-down while recording on his iPhone, security intervened.
The video of Ramirez booing the Trump’s is here:
“Within moments, the director [of security] and another guard approached and escorted me to a side area where several other security guards were waiting,” he said. “I was detained until everyone was seated and the lights dimmed.”
As he was escorted away, Ramirez said his instincts as a journalist kicked in. A former lead anchor for Sinclair’s national evening news broadcast, he said the situation immediately felt off — or more aptly put — as if he could see the strings being pulled from someone attempting to control the narrative.
“Journalism is a vocation, not just a job. I immediately knew there wasn’t just an uncomfortable interaction with security,” he said. “The Kennedy Center is a federally funded cultural institution, and being questioned about speech related to the president in that setting felt like something the public should know about.”
Ramirez explained the difference between a standard visit by a public official and this performance: the president’s appearance wasn’t just ceremonial; it was very clearly a media moment.
“The White House press pool was there, and it was clear this was an effort to manage the president’s image in the media,” Ramirez continued. “The irony was not lost on me that this was happening on opening night of ‘Chicago’, a musical about manipulating the press to shape public perception.”
According to Ramirez, the explanation he received from Kennedy Center Director of Safety and Security Karles C. Jackson Sr., was brief, but illuminating.
“He said, ‘they don’t want booing,’ and even called out my thumbs-down gesture. He never clarified who ‘they’ were, but whether it was the administration or the Kennedy Center, the distinction felt meaningless,” he explained. “Mr. Jackson ultimately told me he was just trying to do his job, shook my hand, and allowed me to return to my seat once the lights dimmed and the overture started playing.”
Ramirez said he didn’t blame the guard individually, noting the broader context of the Kennedy Center’s uncertain future and the pressures staff were under.
“With the center closing in the coming months, some of these security guards being pressured to restrict our freedom of speech may only have a few weeks of work left.”
He believes the decision to remove him was driven less by disruption than optics, particularly given the presence of the press.
“It was very clearly about protection — whether protecting the president from visible dissent, or his image before the media present. There was no disruption as almost everyone was standing and reacting loudly to the arrival of the president and first lady, with cheers, applause, and hand gestures. The difference was that my reaction, unlike most, was negative.”
Drawing on his experience covering public officials, Ramirez said the incident felt more about controlling perception than security.
“Usually, law enforcement may monitor or intervene if there’s a disruption, but here there was no disruption at all. Simply expressing dissent in a public, cultural space drew the attention of security. It made it feel less like a matter of decorum and more like an effort to control the narrative around the president,” he said. “It’s about what happens when dissent is treated as disruption rather than a right.”
“The show hadn’t started. I threatened no one. Billy Flynn would have approved of the optics. The rest of us should be paying attention.”
Ramirez framed the incident as part of a broader constitutional concern, one that is plaguing the Trump-Vance administration as they continue to reject rules and normalcy set forth by other reserved presidents.
“Being singled out by security at a federally funded institution for expressing dissent shouldn’t be brushed off; it undermines the First Amendment,” he said, looking at it slightly distanced from it now. “Being of Cuban heritage, and a journalist, it’s a right I’m not willing to give up readily.”
“Publicly funded cultural institutions should allow visible dissent, even in politically charged moments,” he added. “Of course, I understand the need to manage disruptions during a performance, but that was not the case here.”
The themes of “Chicago”, a long-running satire about media manipulation and public perception, added another layer of irony to the experience, Ramirez explained.
“The satire truly leapt off the stage! A show about controlling the narrative, manipulating the press, and covering up truths by leaning on showmanship and distractions. The show is decades old, but could’ve been written today. We’re being razzle-dazzled daily and it’s getting harder to tell fact from fiction, no matter where you get your news.”
He, being gay, also acknowledged how hard it must have been for the performers on stage, assuming that at least some in the cast were also members of the LGBTQ community — and artists — two things Trump doesn’t always get along with.
“It was not lost on me that many of the actors on that stage, that the president and first lady presumably applauded, are members of the LGBTQ community which this administration has rolled back protections for under the guise of religious liberty and free speech, resulting in blatant discrimination.”
He pointed to a particular number that felt surreal given the circumstances.
“Its ‘Razzle Dazzle’ number celebrates keeping audiences off balance; at its climax, a massive American flag descends as the song celebrates blinding audiences to what is real. Watching that scene after being detained for a thumbs-down was surreal.”
Ramirez said the show’s closing lines were especially sharp given the presidential audience and what he just experienced.
“At the end of the show,
Velma says: ‘You know, a lot of people have lost faith in America.’
Roxie replies: ‘And for what America stands for.’
Velma: ‘But we are the living examples of what a wonderful country this is.’
Roxie: ‘So we’d just like to say thank you and God bless you.’
They had both just gotten away with murder!”
His closing lines, however, were a bit more pointed than “scintillating sinners” Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly’s were in the show.
“Democracy only works when citizens are allowed to boo,” he said. “Tuesday night at the Kennedy Center, ‘Chicago’ made that point better than I ever could.”
The Blade reached out to the Kennedy Center but did not receive a comment back.
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