.gay Community Spotlight Interview : GATE - Global Action for Trans Equality

In this edition of .gay's Community Spotlight, we are highlighting GATE — Global Action for Trans Equality — an international advocacy organization dedicated to fighting for justice and equality for trans, gender diverse, and intersex (TGDI) communities around the world.

With a mission deeply rooted in these communities' movements, GATE works tirelessly alongside international, regional, and national partners to ensure that TGDI people have access to the resources, knowledge, and decision-making spaces necessary for them to thrive.

Read more about their advocacy work in our interview below. 

How would you describe your organization’s mission?

GATE - Global Action for Trans Equality is an international advocacy organization working towards justice and equality for trans, gender diverse, and intersex (TGDI) communities. Rooted in our movements, we work collaboratively with strategic partners at the international, regional, and national levels to ensure access to resources, knowledge, and decision-making spaces.

Our vision is a world free from human rights violations based on gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics. We aim to ensure that trans, gender diverse, and intersex (TGDI) people can enjoy their human rights and achieve the highest level of health and wellbeing possible.

Tell us about how that mission is brought to life through your work?

GATE focuses on advocating for the human rights of trans, gender diverse, and intersex people while also playing a pivotal role in strengthening the global trans, gender diverse, and intersex (TGDI) movements. Our work fits under three programmatic areas: Human Rights; Health; and Movement Building, and we have cross-cutting projects that fall under these three programmatic areas. We operate primarily through providing training, capacity building, resource mobilization (including providing small grants), and enabling opportunities for political mobilization.

Across all levels, from the global to the local, we provide freely accessible online training courses through our GATE eLearning Institute, which focuses on increasing the organizational capacity of TGDI activists and organizations to scale up their efforts and institutionalize best operational practices in order to help small- and medium-sized TGDI-led organizations to grow sustainably.

At the global level, we engage with the UN, WHO, UNAIDS, the Global Fund, and other human rights- and health-focused international bodies to ensure that the issues and needs of trans, gender diverse, and intersex (TGDI) communities are not only raised but are responded to in a timely manner. This has included:

• tracking the effect of the anti-gender movement (specifically the anti-trans backlash) on our communities and producing corresponding resources to enable an effective response; 

• successfully advocating for the depathologization (removal from the chapter on mental health disorders) of trans and gender diverse communities in the WHO International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11); 

• bringing trans and gender diverse human rights defenders to the UN Human Rights Council to engage in international advocacy through UN Trans Advocacy Week; 

• getting codes within global data collection systems, including WHO/UNAIDS/ISO, updated to be TGDI-inclusive; 

• hosting the International Working Group on Trans Masculine people and HIV, which aims to create new opportunities for the meaningful participation of this marginalized group in the global HIV response;

• advocating for changes in the strategies of international funding bodies such as the Global Fund to ensure that TGDI communities are included in the resourcing of the global HIV response at all levels.

At the regional and national level, we partner with TGDI-led organizations focusing on movement building, particularly through sub-granting. One such project is the THRIVE Consortium, which aims to strengthen the connections between trans rights groups worldwide and develop a more cohesive international trans movement. In particular, GATE practices a decolonized approach with our movement building work, where we trust in the expertise and knowledge of our national and regional partners that are rooted within the TGDI community and simply provide the tools, resources, and opportunities to enable them to sustainably increase their capacity. Such work includes:

• assisting national TGDI organizations to apply for emergency funding, such as in Uganda, to ensure the safety, security, and wellbeing of TGDI communities as a result of the anti-homosexuality bill;

• providing funding and 1-2-1 mentorship for data collection and report writing to civil society organizations to write submissions for UN processes such as UPR and CEDAW;

• providing “train the trainer” workshops to enable national organizations to deliver training and capacity building workshops to their staff and volunteers;

• providing funding to national and regional organizations to develop organizational plans, including advocacy; safety, security, and wellbeing; fundraising; and strategy based on community needs assessments and situational analysis; and

• providing core funding support through our sub-grants that cover staff wages, internet costs, and other relevant office expenses.

What would happen if your organization suddenly did not exist?

As the only global organization focused exclusively on issues of gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics, if GATE ceased to exist, there would be no central focal point for advocating for trans, gender diverse, and intersex (TGDI) communities at the global level. GATE brings together TGDI communities from across the globe, facilitating networking and connections that would otherwise be impossible from a financial and organizational perspective. Our communities are extremely underresourced, with lack of funding being a core issue across all TGDI-led organizations. Underrepresentation, particularly within wider LGBTQI+ spaces, means that the voices of our communities are regularly overlooked and ignored, with engagement often being tokenistic at best. 

GATE works extremely hard to ensure that our communities have a seat at the table when it comes to all levels of advocacy, engagement, and policy-making. We have built up valuable relationships, not only with global bodies such as those at the UN and global philanthropic organizations, but also with other global and regional LGBTQI+, feminist, and Key Population (working on HIV) networks and organizations, thus facilitating shared advocacy that benefits us all. Our advocacy focuses on raising awareness of the issues facing our communities, backed by extensive data collection and research, and advocating for increase funding for our communities worldwide. Without GATE’s access to these spaces, and ability to reach decision-makers at the very top of the chain, our communities around the globe would suffer in all areas of their lives, in freedom from poverty and access to healthcare and basic human rights.

What can people do to get involved and help make sure that never happens?

GATE relies heavily on donations from philanthropic organizations. At the moment, we are trying to increase our fundraising efforts to increase the amount of our unrestricted funding. These donations could be put towards scaling up our sub-granting and capacity building efforts to ensure that TGDI-led organizations have access to the resources that they need to provide services to our communities on the ground.

If you want to support GATE’s work, you can set up a regular monthly donation, or donate one time. Alternatively, we have created a page that provides materials for individuals or organizations to run fundraising events on GATE’s behalf.

If you would prefer to support local organizations, we encourage you to ask questions before donating to an organization that claims to be working for the TGDI community. Key questions to ask are:

1. Does the organization have TGDI board members or staff? We recommend seeking out organizations that have 50%+ staff and board members from the TGDI community, at a minimum.

2. What percentage of the organization’s efforts are directly targeting TGDI communities rather than the LGBTQI+ community as a whole? For example, is there at least one program directly/exclusively targeting TGDI communities? 

3. Does the organization seek input from TGDI community members and engage them in their service delivery efforts? For example, do their community needs assessments disaggregate data so that TGDI community responses are not subsumed within other LGBTQI+ groups, such as men who have sex with men (MSM), but instead provide stand-alone statistics for trans women, trans men, gender diverse people?

4. Does their organizational strategy have specific targets relating to the engagement with and inclusion of TGDI communities specifically?

These questions will help you to understand whether the organization you are considering donating to is actively including and engaging with TGDI community members or simply tokenistically adding them onto pre-existing programs in order to access funding that could otherwise be used more effectively to reach TGDI communities.

Why does LGBTQ+ visibility matter to you?

For trans, gender diverse, and intersex (TGDI) communities, visibility is a double-edged sword. For the vast majority of our community members across the globe, visibility can mean discrimination, rejection, stigma, violence, and, all too often, death. Often, visibility is not a choice but rather something that is forced upon our communities as a result of living in societies that enforce strict gender binary norms. Both those that choose to be visible, most often through their activism, and those that do not, regularly face life-threatening situations that make everyday life a constant struggle of navigating through systems that do not recognize or support them.

On the other hand, without visibility, a lot of the progress that has been made would not have been possible. It’s usually through the activism of a TGDI individual or TGDI-led group that eventually leads to changes in laws such as the repeal of colonial-era laws that criminalized cross-dressing, the passing of legislation that enables legal gender recognition, and changes in health-related policies and processes that grants access to gender-affirming healthcare.

What we need, more than visibility, is allies. Allies from LGBQ communities, from feminist organizations and individuals, from families and friends, from healthcare professionals, and from lawmakers and politicians. With allies, together we can counter the anti-rights backlash that is affecting most prominently trans and gender diverse rights, but also reproductive rights, the right to a family, the right to bodily autonomy, and the right to privacy. If the first Stonewall riot is anything to go on, we are evidently stronger united than we are divided.

In your own words, what does “LGBTQ+ safety and support” mean specifically?

Violence is structural and used as a control mechanism. Acts of violence against LGBTQI+ people are not individual acts perpetrated by people who are “unwell” but rather consequences of a system that upholds discrimination. Trans organizations currently face a gap of over 50% between the demand for funding and the activities that receive it, including activities relating to safety and support.

Safety and support for trans, gender diverse, and intersex (TGDI) communities means tackling the structures of violence that target our identities, creating solid support systems that are institutionalized within broader social support systems, and creating community safety, security, and wellbeing plans that ensure that we protect TGDI individuals and organizations, as well as wider LGBTQI+ community members and networks, from physical and virtual threats, and to help prevent burnout.

To facilitate TGDI organizations responding to the issue of safety and support, GATE developed an online training course to enable TGDI activists to collectively develop an organizational safety, security, and wellbeing plan that considers not only the organization but its staff, volunteers, and service users, as well as wider community members that may not yet have accessed its services.

Who are some of your LGBTQ+ heroes?

GATE’s heroes are our fellow trans, gender diverse, and intersex (TGDI) community members that are working on the ground to positively impact their lives and the lives of their fellow community members. Our heroes are TGDI community members who are just living their lives to the best of their ability despite social and cultural circumstances that discriminate against them. Whether visible or not, our heroes are TGDI people who continue to exist regardless of what life throws at them and those who do not survive the journey. Every life matters. Every trans, gender diverse, and intersex person matters, and the work that we do at GATE is led by them, for them, and with them. Without our community members, GATE would not exist. 

If you could give LGBTQ+ youth one message, what would it be?

It can be frustrating to hear “It Gets Better” when you’re stuck in a situation where you cannot be true to yourself, and having the freedom to get out of that situation seems a long way off. Trust yourself, but also protect yourself. If it’s not safe to be yourself at home, find somewhere where it is safe, seek out your community. You are loveable and valuable. We are your community, we are here, we do exist, and we love you.

Tell us about a time when you felt like the work you do at your organization really mattered or made a difference for the communities you serve?

In 2019, GATE held an end-of-project workshop that brought together the leaders of trans-led organizations from across the Asia-Pacific region and the Latin America and Caribbean region. The project focused on increasing trans and gender diverse engagement with HIV funding mechanisms in their countries, and the workshop, held over 3 days in Peru, facilitated some incredible discussions that included the sharing of experiences and learnings from engaging with governments and working to overcome discriminatory systems that limit the health and human rights of their communities. In addition to the sharing of knowledge, a discussion came up about regional networks, in which colleagues from the Asia-Pacific region shared their experiences of having a regional network that supported and facilitated their work. This inspired the Latin American and Caribbean participants to set about forming a similar network in their region in order to provide ongoing support and knowledge-sharing opportunities at the regional level.

This story epitomizes the importance of what we do at GATE. We create spaces and facilitate opportunities for our community members to come together and learn from one another. The formation of this regional network was driven not by GATE but by the participants at the meeting. This goes back to the root of how GATE works: we trust in the expertise and knowledge of our community members and simply provide the tools, resources, and opportunities to enable them to sustainably increase their capacity in whatever way they decide is best for them collectively.

Anything else you would like to share with the .gay audience?

Trans, gender diverse, and intersex (TGDI) people are, first and foremost, fellow human beings. Often, in the process of providing allyship, TGDI individuals are subjected to intrusive questioning, objectification, and commodification - particularly when organizations use the presence of a TGDI community member to justify funding that will not be fairly redistributed to, and by TGDI communities.

Do not use us for your gain. Instead, ask how we can use you for our gain, and offer your services, expertise, knowledge, skills, and, where possible, financing to increase our capacity to advocate for ourselves. Nothing about us without us means enabling us to lead the way, stepping back and giving us space to speak, and recognizing our knowledge, our expertise, and our skills through payment. Don’t expect us to provide services for free, but rather offer payment upfront as you would to any other individual.

Make no assumptions, treat us as you would like to be treated, and, above all else, be kind to everyone, including those who make mistakes. We’re all in this together, but that does not mean that we all share the same knowledge and experiences.

If you would like to find out more about GATE’s work, head to our website, or follow us on social media at the following links:

• GATE Facebook @gateorgofficial

• GATE Twitter @gateorg 

• GATE Instagram @gateorg 

• GATE Threads @gateorg (new)

• GATE YouTube Channel

• GATE LinkedIn @gateorg