“I think people can be very performative, and we live in a time where it can be about the clicks and engagements and impressions, and people will say the most volatile things to get attention,” says Raquel Willis. “And attention can feel like power, but it’s very short-lived and finite.”

Willis is a core team member of the Gender Liberation Movement, the organizers behind the Gender Liberation March scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 14 in Washington, D.C.

“It is comical to me or unfathomable to me that anyone would say, to my face, that I don’t deserve to live my life on my own terms,” she continues. “I think a lot of anti-trans rhetoric I face is people getting away with not having to directly face the folks that they’re talking about.

“It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about a conservative leader who’s hiding behind a podium, or we’re talking about the J.K. Rowlings and Elon Musks of the world, who are essentially hiding behind a computer or phone screen, spouting this hateful stuff. I don’t actually feel that most people can deny, especially in person, face-to-face, that everyone deserves to live their lives on their own terms.”

For Willis, freedom — primarily in the form of bodily autonomy and the right to self-determination — is not only a guiding principle in her own life but should be considered an essential human right.

“I try to live an unapologetic life,” she says. “So I am not apologizing for living my truth and speaking up and building the full life that I have.”

Born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, but now living in New York City, Willis is a writer/activist whose work has primarily focused on the idea of queer and trans liberation, especially with regard to Black trans folks. She has worked as a national organizer for the Transgender Law Center, as director of communications for the Ms. Foundation for Women, and as an executive editor at Out magazine, where she won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Magazine Article in 2020. Last year, she published a memoir, The Risk It Takes to Bloom, focusing on her life story and how she became steeped in activism, with an eye toward collective liberation.

The child of a middle-class city employee and an educator at a local technical college, Willis was raised in a conservative, tight-knit Catholic family who attended church weekly. Despite her upbringing, she felt different, as though she did not fit neatly into gender expectations for a young boy.

“I knew I was having crushes on other little boys in classes, and I think by about nine, I found myself praying to God at night that I would just wake up as a girl,” she recalls. “I was seen as very feminine. As I got older and matured, I dealt with some bullying — I was always just kind of called ‘gay.’ So I eventually came out as gay at fourteen. My mom did her best to be supportive, although she didn’t want me to tell my father until I graduated from high school.”

Willis recalls how her mother sought to find someone who could provide guidance, but the counselor was a Christian who rejected the idea of LGBTQ identity and refused to allow Willis to examine and analyze her own feelings.

“There was definitely a goal of trying to make me be straight,” she says. “I don’t know if that counts as conversion therapy.”

Eventually, Willis told her father and came out openly as gay in her school life, which lifted a burden off her spirit.

“Coming out freed me up to have a better high school experience,” she notes. “I ended up being the editor of my high school’s yearbook, which was very fun and fulfilling. And so, I decided I wanted to work in media just because I loved that experience.”

While attending the University of Georgia, where she studied journalism, Willis met other transgender people. She began exploring her feelings around gender presentation and even performed in drag, which opened her eyes to how she wanted to present in the world.

“By the last half of my college experience, my father had passed away, which was kind of a big catalyst for me to understand how short life is, and that I had been trying to live my life on his terms,” she explains.

Willis transitioned and quickly set about changing her vital documents to reflect her gender identity. Although the process was complicated, she figured it out, and was able to be hired as a newspaper reporter without her first employer being aware of her gender identity. She eventually came out professionally in 2014, motivated in part by the story of Leelah Alcorn, a trans blogger who committed suicide after allegedly being subjected to conversion therapy and being cut off from contact with schoolmates and the outside world, which Alcorn claimed, in her Tumblr blog, exacerbated her feelings of isolation and despondency.

“I did not have any thoughts around being an activist or anything like that,” Willis says. “I had done student organizing in college, but I never really saw myself as an activist. I just saw myself as someone with a deep conviction that LGBTQ+ people deserve to be protected and defended, and deserve the same access that any other person has.”

Willis put those beliefs into practice when she moved to Oakland, California, and began working as a communications associate, and then a national organizer, for the Transgender Law Center. Following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, Willis was given a speaking spot at the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C. –- although she felt trans women’s issues were treated more as an afterthought by march organizers. She has frequently spoken out against anti-trans rhetoric and threats of violence and has had her work published in various news outlets. A common thread in her writing has been a willingness to speak out on issues she’s passionate about, even if it upsets the proverbial apple cart.

A year ago, Willis began conversing with other activists, seeking to build a movement that would combine the ongoing fights over access to reproductive health care with fights over restrictions on transgender visibility. Those conversations resulted in the formation of the Gender Liberation Movement, a volunteer-run collective that centers on the idea of bodily autonomy and the right of people to pursue their own fulfillment, free from the constraints of gender stereotypes or societal expectations that are rooted in a person’s assigned sex at birth.

“We’re all being failed by restrictive notions of who we should be,” says Willis. “Whether you’re talking about the attacks on queer and trans youth, or about the loneliness epidemic for cis men and boys, or about cis women and girls who are facing increased hate and violence because they’re charting their own destinies independently of their more masculine counterparts.

“And so, we need to be building a world where we understand the connections between our gender experiences and where we fight for it to be a bit freer for everyone.”

METRO WEEKLY: What is the Gender Liberation Movement?

RAQUEL WILLIS: The Gender Liberation Movement is a collective that came about a year ago in conversation with other organizers, Eliel Cruz and Fran Tirado. It focuses on bringing together the fights around reproductive justice and the fights around access to gender-affirming care.

We see the attacks on abortion access and reproductive justice, as well as on gender-affirming care, as attacks on this fight for gender liberation, but also as attacks on bodily autonomy and self-determination.

The organizers of the movement started meeting about a year ago. We had previously worked together on the Brooklyn Liberation Marches of 2020 and 2021. During those marches — the first of which brought out upwards of 20,000 folks in June 2020, after the unfortunate murder of George Floyd — we brought together a group focused on Black trans lives. It was a major demonstration, held at the Brooklyn Museum, and it was a very spiritual, transformative moment. For the first time, I think we all kind of felt like, ‘Oh, there are more people with Black folks, with the trans community, than it often feels like there are against us.’

And then, the second iteration focused on trans youth, because we started to see the increase of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, largely targeting trans youth, and we had a powerful roster of young trans and nonbinary speakers, and did a march around their issues.

Over a few months of meeting, we were also able to bring on Sarah Sophie Flicker, who had been instrumental with the Women’s March of 2016, which I had spoken at. So there were a lot of cross-movement connections already in the mix. We really wanted to bring more organizers and initiatives into the fold, to build a national mobilization around these issues. And that is where Gender Liberation March started to be born.

MW: What is the goal of the Gender Liberation March?

WILLIS: The goal is to have a larger cultural shift around how we talk about reproductive justice and also gender-affirming care. We need to be understanding that everyone deserves gender liberation, and we all deserve to make decisions about our own bodies on our own terms.

We are also working with some of our organizational partners to develop a policy framework that taps into the changes we need to see in some of these other arenas — in policy, within the legal world, and on and on. We have a number of organizational partners so far, including: We Testify, Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, Red Canary Song, the National Women’s Law Center, the TransLatin@ Coalition, Lambda Legal, Jewish Voice for Peace, Advocates for Trans Equality, Gen Z for Change, Black Feminist Future, Middle Church, and the Women’s March, just to name a few.

MW: The issues mentioned primarily can be considered national issues, but the bulk of them are often regulated at the state level. So what can be done at the state level following the march?

WILLIS: I think we need to be having conversations with our organizational partners about what that looks like. Our hope is to push a larger paradigmatic shift in how we discuss these issues, because we know that attacks on reproductive justice, on abortion access, are not isolated from attacks on gender-affirming care. Unfortunately, we don’t often discuss those links or fight for those issues in the same discussions or in the same organizing work. So it is important for us to make those connections, and that’s what we’re doing. I am not a policy wonk or expert, so I can’t speak to specifics, but we have partners in our collective who are working to build out that policy framework.

MW: Politically, we’ve started to see a shift between how the two major political parties approach social issues, with the once “laissez-faire” party advocating for a more authoritarian approach to personal behavior and life choices, and what was once considered the “big government” party adopting more libertarian rhetoric. Have you noticed that shift, or do you have a reaction to how those political entities are messaging around those issues?

WILLIS: I think it is interesting that conservatives have oriented themselves around this idea of putting all these guardrails in place so people can’t make decisions about their own bodies. I think when we’re talking about authoritarianism and fascism, there’s this idea that there are certain people who don’t deserve to make their own decisions about bodily autonomy. Overwhelmingly, that discussion has focused particularly on cis women, but we also know that these attacks on trans youth are really just a gateway to figure out how to curtail the rights of trans adults.

My point is that we can’t allow these fights, particularly in the way they are framed by conservatives, to continue. We have to be pushing back against that, and saying, “No, it’s not okay.” Just because you may not understand why trans people exist or why someone may need an abortion doesn’t mean you have the right to tell people what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

On the other side of the political aisle, I think that when looking at the rhetoric, especially of the VP hopeful, Gov. Tim Walz, there has been a shift to this idea of “mind your own damn business.” I think Democrats are trying to make the larger point that people should be able to make decisions about their own bodies without being restricted or judged in these kinds of horrendous ways that Republicans appear to endorse.

But I want to be clear: Gender Liberation Movement and Gender Liberation March is about endorsing values, not political parties. We are endorsing the larger values of bodily autonomy, self-determination, collectivism, and the pursuit of fulfillment for everyone.

We also know that, regardless of what happens come November, we will be continuing to have these fights around bodily autonomy. So we’re trying to get folks to stretch that muscle around understanding those connections sooner rather than later because we know that Project 2025 — authored by the Heritage Foundation and partially presented to the world, thanks to the other VP hopeful, JD Vance — is coming. The people behind that plan are going to try and implement it, regardless of who is in the Oval Office.

MW: Since you brought up his name, I wanted to ask you about some of these ideas that JD Vance appears to have endorsed — both in his foreword to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ book and in his blurb praising alt-right activist Jack Posobiec’s book. Both books promote the idea that it’s not enough to just win politically but that conservatives, after being victorious, need to actively push for the erasure of “wokeness” from the public sphere, and the elimination — or intimidation into silence — of anyone who does not line up 100% with their agenda. For people in the trans community, who are already under attack, does that rhetoric disturb you, and how far away do you think we are from a point where the government is actively carrying out ideological purges, if Project 2025 is implemented?

WILLIS: That’s a big question. I can’t speak to how far away we are from those kinds of things happening, but I think the mentality around Project 2025 — and the larger idea that some people deserve to exist with dignity and integrity while others don’t — is rooted in hate and fear and violence.

In a time when we are struggling to name genocide for what it is, particularly in regard to what’s happening to Palestinians, and then, of course, what’s happening around the world, whether we’re looking at Congo or Sudan, the United States has to be prepared to look inward and see the kind of genocidal elements that exist domestically. And so, when I think about Project 2025, and these ideas of trying to erase trans people from public life — which some conservative figures have already said is the goal –- I see the worst instincts of humanity.

Similarly, when we’re talking about this fight to erase trans people from existence, it’s connected to gender-based violence, both domestic and sexual in nature, which we are not talking about right now, in the robust ways we were just a few years ago.

So I think all of this is connected because, again, the values of the Gender Liberation Movement are rooted in bodily autonomy and self-determination, first and foremost. And so, we are trying to make the connections so people understand that all of our rights are at stake and everyone’s liberation is at stake at the same time.

MW: How do you communicate that message to a larger audience who may not be familiar with LGBTQ issues?

WILLIS: I think it’s about making the connections between the issues that people already care about. We know, overwhelmingly, the American public agrees that folks who need abortions should be able to make decisions about their own bodies. So our starting point is making that connection around that discussion of bodily autonomy with the other discussions around gender-affirming care. I think that we have a lot of education that needs to happen around LGBTQ+ identity, and the validity of it, and the existence of it. We still have a culture that sees being gay or being trans as something that kind of happens later in life or is the result of being “exposed” to something. We haven’t done enough work to educate parents and adults on how to best support youth who are gay and who are trans and any kind of queer. So conservatives have taken advantage of that ignorance gap for their own means.

MW: How do you combat ignorance? How do you fight against unawareness of a population’s existence, or someone’s outright refusal to acknowledge — even intellectually, let alone by observation — that people move about the world in a certain way?

WILLIS: I think education and storytelling can be key to helping shift folks’ thoughts on more marginal experiences, but I also think that we have to be strengthening a value around empathy. Because at the end of the day, it isn’t just that you need to know the ins and outs of the queer and trans experience, it’s also just that you need to recognize the basic idea that each human being deserves dignity and respect.

MW: When you’re engaging in storytelling, how do you connect to people on a human level? How are you reaching out, or connecting similarities between your story and the experiences of people outside the LGBTQ community?

WILLIS: What’s been clear to me is that we are all saddled with expectations, whether they’re from our parents and guardians, or from society, that we don’t live up to. And so queer and trans people are not unique in that regard. I think we need to be empowering folks to shatter expectations that don’t fit them, which are often rooted in gender.

When I think about boys and men who are told they can’t express certain emotions without betraying their gender, I think about how they need to be liberated. When I think about women and girls who are told they can’t be the drivers of their own destinies, I think about how they need to be liberated. And when I think about queer and trans and nonbinary folks, we’re also dealing with all of those expectations.

I don’t even actually think that my experience as a trans person should be seen as so dissimilar from a cis person’s experience, because cis people face gender restrictions all the time — we just don’t name them as that. We can, again, talk about who is deserving of expressing certain emotions or who are not; who is seen as having power or not; or being the head of a household or not. Even when talking about gender-affirming care, we can acknowledge that trans and nonbinary people are not the only ones who may need hormone replacement therapy or surgeries that might be considered “gender-affirming” in a different context. I think we have to be looking at commonalities rather than dissimilarities.

MW: When you talk about the behavioral and even ideological expectations that are placed on people by institutions or society, I’m reminded of the internal debates of the Catholic Church, which is an institution with which we are both familiar. And I think about how, currently, the Catholic Church’s stance is that women cannot join the priesthood, and that priests cannot marry and must remain celibate. But I’ve also known, since childhood, that many rank-and-file Catholics — though they’d never speak out publicly, only in private — actually disagree with the Church’s stance on who is worthy of becoming a priest. Similarly, do you believe that there are many ordinary people, living their lives as private citizens, who secretly agree with the idea that they are constrained by gender norms or stereotypes but don’t wish to speak out for fear or backlash?

WILLIS: I actually believe that most people have some kind of gripe with gender norms. I think that we’re just not primed to see them or think about them.

It could be as simple as the cis straight woman who hates the expectation of having to do this chore in comparison to her cis straight male partner. Or it could be the person who is infertile and therefore can’t “deliver” on some of these essentialist ideas of womanhood and manhood that are rooted in having children. It could be the cis gay man who maybe is more feminine, but feels rejected by the masculine corners of the gay community.

I think these are some elemental things that we just don’t discuss enough when we talk about gender expectations. I actually think that trans and nonbinary people are windows of possibility, because on some level, we reject large swaths of this gender doctrine of who people are “supposed” to be. It’s an opportunity to dream of another way, not an opportunity for us to be fearful that we will lose our place or standing in society, which I think is often at the heart of the anxieties that cis straight people have around gender.

MW: You previously mentioned the idea of empathy for others as part of gender liberation. How do you define empathy, and how do you model empathy in a way that others can emulate?

WILLIS: To me, empathy is about not necessarily having to have the exact same experience as another person to see that they are deserving of a full life. I think empathy is about seeing connections between your experience, even if it’s dissimilar, and the other person’s.

I don’t need to be an immigrant to know that it could be difficult navigating in a country that can have very limited ideas around what it means to be a “true participant” within society. I don’t need to be disabled to know that there are so many barriers against seeing them as full participants in society and deserving of a full life. I don’t even need to be someone who can get pregnant to understand that a person who can become pregnant deserves to make decisions about their own body. To me, that’s empathy in action.

Empathy is being able to imagine what it might be like for the other person because I’m actually actively listening to what they are saying about their experience. Those are things I expect as a Black trans woman who knows that the vast majority of folks don’t know what my personal experience is like. My journey as a Black trans woman from the South, from a very traditional Black family that was also Catholic, has been one around demanding the ability to have softness and to consider myself as precious and deserving of grace. Those are things that are not told to kids raised as little boys. I don’t see empathy or emotion or connection or warmth as a “soft” thing, so to speak. Those are things I have had to fight for, and those are things that I’m trying to fight for other people to be able to experience.

MW: In terms of what is planned for the Gender Liberation March, can you tell us details about the march and any ancillary events?

WILLIS: So the Gender Liberation March is happening on Saturday, September 14, starting at noon, in Washington, D.C. We are finalizing the specific location details but keeping them close to the vest for now, out of safety precautions. We will be having a march and rally. We will have speakers and performers and a fabulous lineup. And then we will lead participants to a festival, where there will be different stations.

There’s going to be a get-out-the-vote station where folks will be able to register to vote. There will be separate stations for art, or other fun, engaging activities. So folks should not expect just a show of resistance but a celebration of the world that we’re trying to build together. Folks can sign up at genderlib.com. We are working with a bus coordinator so that folks can pack buses to come to D.C., and are trying to make it as accessible as possible. We want folks from all across the country to come and join in this experience with us.

Gender liberation is the power to defy or transcend gender expectations that harm and limit us all. That’s at the heart of this project: we want people to be freed up to make decisions about their own bodies and futures, without judgment, without hate, and without suffering violence for their choices. And so, if you are a gender liberationist or think you might be, we would love to see you in D.C. on September 14.

To learn more about Raquel Willis or purchase a copy of The Risk It Takes to Bloom ($29, St. Martin’s Press), visit www.raquelwillis.com.

The Gender Liberation March will take place on Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024 in Washington, D.C. Location to be announced. For more information or to sign up for updates, visit www.genderlib.com.

Follow Raquel Willis on X at @RaquelWillis_.