Opinions
Building LGBTQ power beyond American dependency
Unity, an international political body, and economic sovereignty are key to reclaiming our future
Two weeks ago, I mentioned “LGBTQ + sovereignty” in this newsletter, the pursuit of self-determined, economically empowered, and politically independent queer communities that control their narratives, resources, and futures as a response to the new world order. A reader cheekily replied, “So your next installment will discuss how to build that power?” implying that it is easier said than done.
It’s a fair criticism. The amplitude and pace of the changes we experience make it easier to fall in love with the problem than to articulate the first steps in a response. Across the board, the people I speak with are overwhelmed and directionless. There’s a shared sense of paralysis as if the path forward for queer liberation has vanished entirely.
Our movement had placed its bets on a single horse: American support reliant on repeated electoral victories by the Democrats. We have become quickly addicted to funding from USAID, the State Department, other U.S.-dominated international organizations, diplomatic initiatives, and leadership from American companies. Recent reports describe how the reversal of this support is debilitating for our entire movement but also illustrate in their recommendations how hard it is to imagine an LGBTQ+ future without the U.S. government and corporations.
A figure I love to quote is that, according to MAP, the number of donors giving more than $25,000 to the most significant U.S. non-profit organizations dropped from an already bafflingly low 302 in 2019 to 134 in 2023 — a 56 percent decrease over five years, reflecting the disengagement of wealthy LGBTQ+ Americans.
One less-documented aspect of the new emerging world order is the consequences of our reliance on U.S. cultural imperialism. While the United States championed values that inspired movements for dignity and equality worldwide, LGBTQ+ people could envision a domino effect. A completely new American ethos, one that aligns with illiberal nations like Russia and China, could embolden the anti-LGBTQ+ movement everywhere.
Planning for the future is generally a painful exercise. It becomes even more challenging when it is not the one we worked towards. Our community has a strong preference for the present, too. This stems from a long-standing inability to envision a happy ending for our movement and personal lives. Long-term planning is not our forte.
Another obstacle is that the leaders articulating the response to the new world order are the ones who bet everything on a losing hand — those who linked our movement to a single political party as if our fight could be outsourced to straight American politicians and corporations. They also often are personally too deep in bed with the Democrats and corporations to envision an alternative strategy. They cling to the illusion that the subsequent Democratic victory will rescue us. And, as LGBTQ+ people increasingly struggle to find dignity and economic opportunities, they continue rearranging chairs at donor galas.
I wrote about how our long-term goals diverged from those of the Democratic Party two years ago in a piece titled “The Return of Vintage Homophobia Calls for Vintage Queer Tactics”: “Progressive politicians have a vested interest in making sure conservatives remain the villains in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality.”
The LGBTQ+ response to a changing world cannot rely solely on the U.S. midterm elections and success in U.S. courts. Many of the changes I described are irreversible: America has lost legitimacy on LGBTQ+ issues, and international economic development is no longer a global priority. Frankly, there is also a good chance that Democrats will become wobbly on LGBTQ+ issues as the campaign to vilify LGBTQ+ people gains momentum.
If the future evolves further into a world where “might make right,” where economic interests override human dignity, where philanthropy and economic development are abandoned, where strict norms of masculinity and the nuclear family make a comeback, and where authoritarian regimes set the terms — where do LGBTQ+ people stand?
In the past few weeks, I have thought about some first steps to regain control of our future:
— Rebuilding unity. In the last year, I have had many versions of a recent conversation with a prominent investor — someone whose track record includes backing some of the most iconic tech founders of our time — who argued that LGBTQ+ people are not “a people,” that we owe nothing to each other, and that we share little beyond sexual practice and loosely defined identities. It was a sobering reminder of how far we’ve drifted from the fierce solidarity that once defined our movement. Larry Kramer must be spinning in his grave. Many of our community’s most economically successful members share that view — intellectually confident yet oblivious to the sacrifices of our elders and our shared destiny. We must recreate a sense of shared destiny. We concede the foundation of collective liberation if we accept that we are just a scattered demographic and not a people bound by struggle, history, and shared hope.
— Establish a truly representative international body. I’d argue for an organized, democratic assembly where every LGBTQ+ person — who has paid modest dues — has a voice and a vote. This body would unite elected representatives across geographies and identities to define a shared political and economic vision, coordinate global action, and hold institutions accountable. It would foster a sense of common purpose and ownership, moving us beyond donor-driven agendas, geopolitical games, or national silos and toward a structure rooted in accountability, solidarity, and self-determination.
— Lay the foundations of economic sovereignty. Political power without economic power is always borrowed — and today, LGBTQ+ communities remain locked out of capital flows, investment ecosystems, and financial decision-making at every level. I spent the last 15 years assessing our socio-economic outcomes, and we are systematically getting crumbs. To change that, we must architect our economic infrastructure: an interconnected system of community development financial institutions, social investment funds, queer-owned enterprises, and financial vehicles designed by and for LGBTQ+ people. We must tap into our community genius to foster employment and economic independence. The Global LGBTQ+ Inclusive Finance Forum I am co-organizing this fall is a first step — less a conference than a catalytic engine to define standards, scale innovations, and mobilize capital across borders. From Nairobi to São Paulo to Manila, we can seed an economy that doesn’t just include us but belongs to us because economic independence is the precondition for lasting freedom.
What comes next for LGBTQ+ people is a question of imagination. For LGBTQ+ people, the challenge is to bridge our creativity with our aversion to planning for the future. If we are to reclaim the trajectory of our movement, we must be less reactionary and more strategic. The collapse of old certainties is not a tragedy — an American-driven queer liberation movement was also inexorably tied to the doomed U.S. brand of capitalism, but an opening. We are being called to imagine more than a world where generous straight allies toss us the scraps of their power and goodwill. Our sovereignty — political, cultural, economic — is not something to be granted by the Democratic party or won in U.S. courtrooms. It is something we must build with intention, with vision, and with each other. This is the work of a generation. Let’s begin.
Fabrice Houdart is a human rights and corporate social responsibility specialist with 20 years of experience at the World Bank and the United Nations. In 2022, he founded the Association of LGBTQ + Corporate Directors, and in 2023, he co-founded Koppa, a nonprofit focused on LGBTQ+ economic empowerment. He originally published this article on “Fabrice Houdart | A Weekly Newsletter on LGBTQ+ Equality” on March 23.
The racist felon in the White House has sunk to what many people consider a new low, with his posting the disgusting depiction of the Obamas on his social media site. The depths to which he will sink would be considered unfathomable to many. But there is nothing we should think him incapable of. With this latest post, and refusal to apologize, I have to question the principles and decency of anyone, who still in any way, is willing to support him.
I once thought to give people taken in by his lies and carnival barker routine, the benefit of the doubt. I had the benefit of always knowing Trump was a liar and slimeball, having met him years ago in New York. I understood he learned well at the feet of his mentor, Roy Cohn, who was one of the more disgusting figures in New York politics. But not everyone knew that history. But now, after his behavior and actions, during the first year of his second term, I will not give the benefit of the doubt to anyone. If you still stand with the felon, you are a person with no principles, or decency, yourself. If you still support him you are standing with a man who first glorified the murder of a VA nurse, Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis, calling him a domestic terrorist. A man who said the ICE agents who did it were just doing their job. He did the same when they murdered Renee Good in cold blood, calling her a ‘domestic terrorist.’ He supported his agents acting like the Gestapo when taking a five-year-old boy into custody on his front stoop.
The felon went to Davos and in a stunning attack on our allies, claimed the men and women in their military never joined us on the front lines in Afghanistan, insulting all those who fought, and died, with our troops. He was either too dumb to know, or chose to disregard, that Article 5, a critical clause in the NATO pact, which means an armed attack on one member of the alliance will be treated as an attack on all members, was only invoked once in NATO’s history, and that was after the Islamist terrorists attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.
He is destroying our country, and all our credibility around the world. He bows down to Putin and other despots. He clearly wants to be King of our country, and now an Emperor in the eyes of the world, as he threatens Greenland, and threatens to attack numerous other countries.
The problem those sycophants have, is I believe the people of the United States will finally understand he is destroying what is best in their lives. They will rise up and depose him; they will do it with their votes. Many of those who believed his lies and promises, are now seeing him as the “Emperor with no clothes.” He lied to them, and fooled enough of them, to win the election. They are waking up to the fact he is more senile than they thought Biden was, and clearly much less intelligent. They are seeing him for the grifter he is and finding out he cares not a bit for them, or their welfare. He clearly couldn’t care less that their grocery prices are going up, their rents are going up, their heating costs are going up, and for some, their healthcare costs are tripling. None of that bothers him in the least. He cares more about getting gift planes from Qatar, selling crypto coins, seeing Melania make money on a weird so-called documentary, and giving tax breaks to his rich friends and corporations.
The American people have fought a revolution before. We fought a king and won. This revolution may look different from that, and from the French Revolution. We may man/woman the barricades but will do so without guns. We will win with our votes.
The wealthy like Jeff Bezos, and others who see themselves as American nobility, corporate and media giants, who think the felon will make them even richer if they kneel before him, will in the long run be very disappointed. He has some power for a few more years, but even that will be curtailed when Democrats take back Congress in January 2027.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
I was a “chubby” kid. A “husky” kid. Horrible terms that still make me cringe. Food issues stem through the family tree. I remember hearing a family member vomit when I was in elementary school; the residual scraps left floating in the toilet. I tried sticking my finger down my throat as a teen — an easy purge after a buffet binge. “Easy” being a sick way of looking at such a violent act to oneself, but the swiftness of an occasional act turning to addiction is frighteningly simple.
I was in my early 20s when I went on another diet in a series of crash diets, but this one hit different. I barely ate and worked out intensely each day. I decided to reward myself at the end of the week with a large pizza and breadsticks. Devouring a whole pizza (and more) was not new to me. I could down an alarming amount of food and hit the pillow in a haze. I didn’t know about nutrition, calories, or balance for many years to come. The meal went down the toilet, and I resumed my starvation diet. The calorie deficit pushed me closer to addiction’s ledge, and the hunger sent me over.
The sporadic binge turned to several a week — running to the local country store for a smattering of chips, candy, soda, honey buns, cookies, anything to fill me up. Soon, it was a regular appointment, arranging a home buffet to mindlessly stuff my body for hours ‘til I knelt over the ceramic bowl.
The binge-n-purge cycle turned twice daily. If I couldn’t binge at home in private, I would gorge at buffets or in my car — throwing up in restaurants, grocery stores, lobby restrooms. I lived in a house with a septic tank at the start of my illness. I clogged the tank, causing vomit to rise to the surface of the soil. Fearing further damage, I started throwing up in trash bags, collecting them in large bins, and driving them to public toilets to dispose of them. This went on for seven years, all through college, internships, and my first corporate job.
The older man I was with was losing himself at the same time, falling deeper into the abyss of severe depression he’d battled lifelong. We saw the best in each other at the start, and the worst by the demise. His bouts of darkness were beyond my repair, no matter how hard I tried to tackle the impossible fix. How is a 21-year-old supposed to convince a 46-year-old to seek treatment, talk him down from suicidal tendencies, get him to understand people love him? I couldn’t navigate it, and food seemed to be the one thing in my control.
It also became my reward and my excuse to treat myself in the face of any stress or accomplishment. He wants to kill himself: binge. I aced a test: binge. Work was rough: binge. Food was all I lived for. Friends, family, love all took a backseat. I was ruled by a hidden hunger I kept secret from nearly everyone, though my emaciated frame didn’t go unnoticed.
I was productive through the battle, working full time, graduating college summa cum laude, landing a solid job and moving up the ladder. All common addict attributes. Bulimia consumed me ‘til I was nearly 30 — four years after splitting from my first love, two years after he killed himself, and three years into a relationship with the man who would become my husband, and later my ex-husband.
They say the difference between privacy and secrecy is that privacy is about respect, whereas secrecy has shame attached. So, let’s drop the shame and the secrets held far too long. It’s been 12 years since I spent my days, nights, and thousands of dollars gorging and purging for hours. Twelve years since I was face down in a toilet at my own will.
I was a TV producer for a decade, booking more than 15,000 segments through the years. I often received pitches for February’s Eating Disorder Awareness Month and made a point to share these stories every year. Still, every pitch and every spokesperson I booked was with a woman. The stigma surrounding body dysmorphia in men continues despite men representing up to 25 percent of people with eating disorders, with members of the LGBTQ+ community at a higher risk, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. Men are also more likely to not recognize a problem, and their cases tend to be more severe by the time they see a doctor.
Living in secret and hiding is not living. It’s shame-based and the ultimate red flag that something needs to change. It will haunt you ‘til you are unrecognizable to yourself and everyone around you. You don’t need to share your story with the world, but opening up to someone is a crucial step in recovery and healing. Living in lies and maintaining deception is the heaviest of burdens
Addiction is blinding. You are unable to see the joys, the freedoms, and opportunities awaiting when you’re solely focused on soothing your addiction’s rage. Living for the fix pushes every other interest out of focus. When you start to release the devil on your back, you make room for wings to spread and space to fly into passions suffocated far too long.
It’s taken a lot of work, therapy, reflection and learning. Not to say I’m recovered, not to say I’m healed. I’ll forever have this devil on my back. It’s about learning to quiet his rage, soothe his anxiety, and ensure his safety and love. It’s a lifelong path of healing more with each day, each year.
And there is always hope. Even in the deepest depths of despair and isolation and ‘I’ll-never-get-better-ness.’ Whatever your circumstances, those tinges of hope are worth clinging to. They’ll carry you through.
I don’t know where I’ll be next year, let alone a future once so clear. And I’m okay. You’re okay. The other side isn’t perfect. Nothing is. But what a gift to make it there and experience life unshackled from your ghost.
There’s so much to see.
Kyle Ridley is an Emmy Award winning journalist with more than two decades in print and television.
Opinions
Why trans suffering is more palatable than trans ambition
We are most readily accepted when framed as victims
In the current media and political climate, stories of trans suffering move quickly. Stories of trans ambition do not.
A trans teenager denied healthcare. A trans woman attacked on public transit. A trans man struggling with homelessness. These narratives circulate widely, often accompanied by solemn op-eds, viral posts, and carefully worded statements of concern. The pain is real. The coverage is necessary. But there is a quieter pattern beneath it: trans people are most readily accepted when they are framed as victims—and most resisted when they present themselves as agents with desire, confidence, and upward momentum.
This distinction has sharpened in recent years. As anti-trans legislation has proliferated across statehouses and election cycles have turned trans lives into talking points, the public script has narrowed. Trans people are legible as objects of harm, but far less comfortable to many audiences as subjects of ambition. Survival is tolerated. Aspiration is destabilizing.
The reason suffering travels more easily is not mysterious. Pain reassures the audience. It positions trans people as recipients of concern rather than participants in competition. A suffering subject does not threaten status hierarchies; they confirm them. Sympathy can be extended without requiring a recalibration of power, space, or expectations. In this framing, acceptance remains conditional and charitable.
Ambition disrupts that arrangement. A trans person who wants more than safety—who wants money, authority, visibility, creative control, or institutional influence—forces a different reckoning. Ambition implies permanence. It implies entitlement. It implies that trans people are not passing through society’s margins but intend to occupy its center alongside everyone else.
You can see this discomfort play out in real time. When trans people speak about wanting success rather than safety, the response often shifts. Confidence is scrutinized. Assertiveness is reframed as arrogance. Desire is recoded as delusion. The language changes quickly: “unstable,” “narcissistic,” “out of touch,” “ungrateful.” In public discourse, confidence in trans people is frequently treated not as a strength, but as a warning sign.
Media narratives reinforce this dynamic. Even ostensibly positive coverage often relies on redemption arcs that center suffering first and ambition second—if at all. Success is framed as overcoming transness rather than inhabiting it. A trans person can be praised for resilience, but rarely for dominance, excellence, or command. Achievement must be softened, contextualized, and made reassuring.
This is especially visible in cultural reactions to trans people who refuse modesty. Trans figures who express sexual confidence, professional competitiveness, or political authority routinely face backlash that their cis counterparts do not. They are accused of being “too much,” of asking for too much space, of wanting too much too fast. The underlying anxiety is not about tone; it is about proximity. Ambition collapses the safe distance between observer and observed.
Politically, this preference for suffering over ambition is costly. Movements anchored primarily in pain narratives struggle to articulate futures beyond harm reduction. They mobilize sympathy but have difficulty sustaining leadership. A politics that can only argue from injury is perpetually reactive, always responding to the next threat rather than shaping the terrain itself.
This matters in a moment when trans rights are no longer debated only in cultural terms but in administrative, legal, and economic ones. Influence now depends on institutional literacy, long-term strategy, and the willingness to occupy decision-making spaces that were never designed with trans people in mind. Ambition is not a luxury; it is a prerequisite for durability.
Yet ambition remains suspect. Trans people are encouraged to be grateful rather than demanding, visible rather than powerful, resilient rather than authoritative. Even within progressive spaces, there is often an unspoken expectation that trans people justify their presence through pain rather than through competence or vision.
This is not liberation. It is containment.
A society that can tolerate trans suffering but recoils at trans ambition is not offering equality; it is managing discomfort. It is willing to mourn trans deaths but uneasy about trans dominance, trans leadership, or trans desire that does not ask permission. It prefers trans people as evidence of harm rather than as evidence of possibility.
None of this is an argument against documenting suffering. That work remains essential, particularly as legal protections erode and violence persists. But suffering cannot be the only admissible register of trans life. A politics that cannot imagine trans people as ambitious cannot sustain trans people as free.
Ambition does not negate vulnerability. Desire does not erase harm. Wanting more than survival is not ingratitude—it is the baseline condition of citizenship. The question is not whether trans people deserve ambition. The question is why it remains so unsettling when they claim it.
Until that discomfort is confronted, acceptance will remain conditional. Sympathy will remain cheap. And trans futures will continue to be negotiated on terms that stop just short of power.
Isaac Amend is a writer based in the D.C. area. He is a transgender man and was featured in National Geographic’s ‘Gender Revolution’ documentary. He serves on the board of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia. Contact him on Instagram at @isaacamend
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