Thank You For Everything, Miss Major

Some insights I take with me from her life 

My life as a transsexual woman is only possible through the work and life of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and other revolutionaries like her. While her death this Monday saddens me, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the legacy she leaves behind. Few other figures in world history have occupied the space in my life that Miss Major does as a social and political role model, so when I say that I am concerned with the integrity of her legacy as she transitions into her place as an ancestor, I mean it as a personal thing. Her influence goes so deep for so many people. But her influence is also very wide, so much that it seems that every queer (and/or LGBT) institution has something to say about her in the last five days. This is a good thing. She should be important to all of us. I’m just wary, already, of the ways that revolutionaries are retrofitted to the political agendas of those who survive their passing. Miss Major was a Stonewall veteran and a Black revolutionary, and queers today should do everything in our power to study and carry out the struggle she helped ignite.

First of all, if you’re in New York, Bodyhack is hosting a free film screening of the documentary MAJOR! about Miss Major’s life tomorrow Saturday October 18, 5-8pm at Company Gallery. They’ve asked that people bring flowers for an altar. If you’re not available for that, this is a link to watch the doc free of charge at Vimeo on demand. I also highly recommend the memoir she published with Toshio Meronek, which you can probably find free at your library, or hmu to borrow my copy. Lastly, you should check out the 2017 oral history she did with AJ Lewis for NYC Trans Oral History Project, available for free in audio and text transcript. Now is the time to read and learn about Miss Major in her own words.

I met Miss Major at a book signing for Miss Major Speaks in 2023. I’ve talked about it before on this blog because, to date, it’s one of the most special experiences I’ve had as a trans person. Right up there in my mind with the time I saw a crowd of trans people force the cancellation of a TERF event downtown New York, or the time a transphobe in front of me at the Queer Liberation March was ejected from the crowd covered in spit, or any time I’ve ever watched a police line retreat from its barricaded position. My meeting her was very brief and entirely out of courtesy on her part. I stood in a line while she held court with family and loved ones who’d come out to see her, and before the end of the night I reached the front where she signed my book and gave me a hug. I got to say, “Thank you so much for everything,” and then it was the next in line’s turn to go.

I remember the way she answered an audience question about how to deal with internal conflict in movement work, something that feels more and more relevant to me every year. “Go to the person and ask them how they’re feeling,” she said. “Ask them what they need in order to continue the work you need to do. And then find a way to continue the work together.”

I am a little ashamed to admit how much this answer blew my mind, because it’s so obviously the clear and practical approach to conflict resolution. Compromise between comrades in times of conflict is so clearly necessary, but so rarely embraced in movement spaces I’ve been a part of in the last five years. I think there’s a common fear—I can attest to it in myself at least—that the stakes are simply too high for compromise, even among comrades and close friends, and so the better course of action is to dig in our heels. The lack of humility here is an expression of fear. By contrast, the stakes in Miss Major’s life and work were pretty much always higher than those in mine. Yet here she was anyway at the Poetry Project in the East Village, speaking unequivocally to the importance of mediation between comrades rather than rigid insistence on a particular agenda. 

Maybe part of the confidence in her response lay in her clarity regarding what in the struggle for Black and queer liberation is truly non-negotiable. Her work shows us sharp distinctions about who in the so-called “LGBT community” is a legitimate comrade in the fight for Black and trans life, and who is not. Miss Major’s writing on this in particular has been a huge gift to me, and I'd like to share a couple quotes. When asked about white gays not letting Black trans women into their spaces, she framed the problem this way in her 2017 oral history: “They had no time for us. To them, we’re like the scourge of the Earth.” Especially in this conversation, which I revisited to write this blog post, it's striking to me how Miss Major describes the anti-Blackness of the white gay movement as inseparable from its transphobia. Miss Major identifies in the assimilationist, pro-respectability set of white gays not allies in revolutionary struggle but rather opportunistic hoarders of wealth, who express their politics through academic opinions about which words are good or bad. Here's a quote that makes me laugh a lot but also resonates:

If you're not forefronting both Black and trans liberation in your work, then your work isn't it—if you can’t materially stand with Black trans people against white supremacy, you can sit the fuck down. To me, this whole conversation is like a balm for the sort of corruptive, unfocused queer rhetoric that imagines revolutionary struggle as a word game or a bourgeois political campaign. It brings me back around to ask, what is our work worth if pleasant words are more important than material action? What's our struggle for if not to honor those who’ve made it possible?

Miss Major is now rightly honored by a variety of non-profits, medical clinics, and bourgeois LGBT institutions who acknowledge her work as foundational to their existence. There’s often an irony in their acknowledgment, though. One example I clocked as particularly suspicious was the Human Rights Campaign, which made a statement Monday expressing condolences and recognizing Miss Major’s life and achievements. Six years ago, Miss Major herself signed an Open Letter to Human Rights Campaign from Trans Community Leaders which stated the following: 

The Human Rights Campaign’s statement Monday doesn’t include any mention of, say, a cash donation in her honor. Why is that? It’s not lost on me that HRC in 2025 is meaningfully different in certain ways than HRC in 2019, but we gotta ask: these people made 45.9 million USD last year. How much of that went directly to Black trans women? How much to sex workers?

In the course of her life, Miss Major organized on a variety of different scales and in a variety of different environments. She was the Executive Director of the Miss Major Alexander L. Lee TGIJP Black Trans Cultural Center in San Francisco until her retirement in 2015, then led House of GG in her later life. She was unapologetic in narrating her experience as a mother, a sex worker, a formerly incarcerated person, and a drug user. In response to a question by oral historian AJ Lewis regarding Miss Major’s background in sex work, she responded:

From the same interview, her narration of drug use and negative judgment from other queers:

I wonder how these quotes might land with the board of directors for leading queer nonprofits today. I wonder how many of those who describe her as an inspiration would actually count themselves as serious comrades to girls today in similar positions to those Miss Major describes in the 1960s. 

For that matter, I wonder how these statements land with other run-of-the-mill white queers, like myself, who might not control vast wealth but do enjoy greater material circumstances as a result of Stonewall and Black and Brown trans liberation struggle. Are we seriously ready to throw down for sex workers in our communities, now that many of us have work options in other fields? Are we, who can afford less risky coping mechanisms, ready to throw down for those of us forced to cope with work or pain by using drugs? Are we talking to, organizing with, and materially supporting our sisters in the carceral system?

Finally, another insight from Miss Major’s life that I’ll always take with me is her vocal anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism. She did not buy the lie that trans people must fear and reject cooperation with subjects of imperial violence around the world. Consistent in her work against state, racial, and gendered violence, she was a vocal advocate of liberation causes abroad, including in Palestine. When many bourgeois LGBT institutions downstream of her influence equivocated on how to handle their rhetoric on the Gaza genocide, Miss Major spoke without apology and carried a Palestinian keffiyeh in her proceedings as Grand Marshall of NYC Pride 2024.

I don't feel I offer any special insight about Miss Major’s life in this blog post, but I really hope that at least some of you click the links I left above and read about her life. I want to express my thanks in a chorus of other people doing the same. So much of my life, including the ideas I write about on here, owe a debt of gratitude to her work. It’s an honor to have lived and struggled at the same time as her. 

Thanks for reading my first post out of blog hibernation! Here’s an update: After my book release (which went really well!) I took a big step back from political commentary of any kind, including most posts on this blog. It’s cool to talk shit when it’s about stuff I know, but especially post-book release, I felt like I'd said just about enough for a while. Lately it’s been time for me to shut up a little and read other people’s ideas more than I post my own. Plus, I feel there’s enough commentary already on the topic of rising fascism without my own take in the mix.

That said, I've been writing a lot of fiction. I have a horror novella on submission currently and I’m working on a longer project that I’m not ready to talk about yet. Considering self-publishing the novella on here as a serial with some original artwork to go with it, if people have any interest in that. Until then.

Just some bitch,

evergreen<3