New Voices for Reproductive Justice is a multi-state feminist organization dedicated to the health and wellbeing of Black women, femmes and girls, women of color, and LGBTQ+ people of color.
New Voices for Reproductive Justice is a multi-state feminist organization dedicated to the health and wellbeing of Black women, femmes and girls, women of color, and LGBTQ+ people of color. Knowing that poor, low-income and working class women, young women, incarcerated women, and queer women of color are ignored, criminalized, and made unprotected socially and economically grounds their strategies. They work to develop community leaders by providing community organizing trainings and opportunities for mobilization, amplifying their message, and building a sustainable organization to support a growing base of Black women, women of color, and LGBTQ+ people of color leaders. In the past year, they have expanded their SistahSpeak! Youth Project that educates young Black girls, femmes, and women in sexual and reproductive health and provides space for mentoring and developing community organizing skills. Through all of their work, New Voices for Reproductive Justice hopes to amplify the multi-issue, multicultural and multigenerational aspects of Reproductive Justice to shift the current “pro-choice” and “pro-life” language and framework towards Reproductive Justice language, theory, and practice.
Founded in 1999, Bold Futures (formerly Young Women United) works to build communities where all people have access to the information, education, and resources needed to make real decisions about their own bodies and lives.
Founded in 1999, Bold Futures (formerly Young Women United) works to build communities where all people have access to the information, education, and resources needed to make real decisions about their own bodies and lives. While Bold Futures understands that the issues facing LGBTQ people in New Mexico are similar to the issues New Mexico faces everyday, whether it is poverty, anti-immigration policies, incarceration and detention, criminalization of substance use and addiction, and inadequate access to health care, they uniquely address these issues through a LGBTQ-centered reproductive justice lens. Additionally, they are one of very few organizations in New Mexico working to address reproductive health in Spanish. Working in a rural state with specific histories of displacement and colonization that deeply affect their base of LGBTQ youth, women, people of color, and indigenous/Native peoples, Bold Futures moves through and within movements for criminal justice reform, birthing justice, and reproductive justice. They uplift the voices of their base through community organizing, cultural work, policy change, leadership development, and culture shift strategies.
Image credit: Nina Freer
Born out of the Black Lives Matter movement uprisings in 2015, Law for Black Lives (L4BL) is a Black femme-led organization of more than 3,400 radical lawyers, law students, and legal workers committed to creating a community of legal advocates that share the values and aspirations of the growing Black Lives Matter movement.
Born out of the Black Lives Matter movement uprisings in 2015, Law for Black Lives (L4BL) is a Black femme-led organization of more than 3,400 radical lawyers, law students, and legal workers committed to creating a community of legal advocates that share the values and aspirations of the growing Black Lives Matter movement. Although law has been an instrumental tool of white supremacy, queerphobia, misogyny, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy, L4BL recognizes that peoples’ lawyers, movement lawyers who take direction from community leaders and base-building organizations, have made vital contributions in progressive social movements of the past and around the world by using law as a valuable tool in struggles for liberation. They believe that a robust, responsive local legal infrastructure grounded in intersectional, feminist, and anti-racist values can support organizers, activists, and communities to develop defensive and offensive tactics to address the issues Black communities face. Collaborating with research and policy groups, activist organizations, and community organizers, L4BL uses a multi-layered approach of strategic advocacy, training and leadership development, and support for base-building organizations to focus on bail reform, decriminalization, and invest/divest reparations.
SisterSong is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multi-gender collective dedicated to eradicating reproductive oppression and securing human rights.
SisterSong is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multi-gender collective dedicated to eradicating reproductive oppression and securing human rights. Formed in 1997 by 16 women of color led organizations, SisterSong’s founders recognized that the women’s rights movement largely represented wealthy white middle-class women singularly focused on abortion rights, rather than access or other reproductive oppressions experienced by women and trans people of color. Thus, they articulated the reproductive justice framework that uniquely affirms the rights to bodily autonomy, abortion and contraception, and parenting in safe and sustainable environments with adequate resources. Focusing their work on severely marginalized communities, such as sex workers, youth, young parents, people with disabilities or HIV/AIDS, and people with incarceration or addiction experience, SisterSong is attuned to the interlocking oppressions that inflict multiple forms of violence, e.g. criminalization, violent attacks and intimidation, police brutality, poor healthcare access, exploitative migrant and religious laws, and in-accessibility to quality education. SisterSong maintains a strategic focus on the U.S. South where they see the region as ground zero for the War on Women. Their goals are to expand reproductive justice in other social justice movements, train the next generation of reproductive justice activists and leaders on the evolution of reproductive justice, and provide a platform for groups to collaborate on shared policy and advocacy goals.
Founded in 2011 in Budapest, Hungary, Radical Queer Affinity Collective (RQAC) is a transnational queer and trans feminist collective committed to building a network of activists in Hungary.
Founded in 2011 in Budapest, Hungary, Radical Queer Affinity Collective (RQAC) is a transnational queer and trans feminist collective committed to building a network of young queer and trans activists in Hungary and the Central and Eastern European region. They center the experiences and voices of queer and trans youth, sex workers and migrants. Through direct action, cultural activism and capacity-building, they tackle and challenge homonormativity and transphobia. An early achievement was their creation of a community space called “KLIT” in Budapest. The first of its kind, the space provided a safe platform for queer and trans youth to convene and organize discussion groups, workshops, trainings, and cultural and political events, changing the landscape for queer youth activism in Central and Eastern Europe. When in late 2014 they had to close their community space due to lack of resources, gentrification and harassment, RQAC transitioned into using alternative platforms of communication and engagement to continue their movement-building efforts. RQAC is grounded in nurturing collective and self-care as key strategies to building autonomous and safe communities.
Zwischengeschlecht.org / StopIGM.org is an international intersex human rights NGO based in Switzerland.
Zwischengeschlecht.org / StopIGM.org is an international intersex human rights NGO based in Switzerland. It was co-founded in 2007 by Daniela Truffer, an intersex person and IGM survivor, and her partner, Markus Bauer.
The NGO confronts and exposes perpetrators and accessories of intersex genital mutilation (IGM), promotes human rights, and raises awareness of intersex and IGM practices.
StopIGM.org has authored and co-authored soon 20 international NGO reports, resulting in UN treaty bodies globally condemning IGM as a harmful practice, torture and other violations of international law. It supports intersex persons seeking redress and justice, has organised over 100 nonviolent protests in 7 European countries and was featured in over 200 media reports around the globe.
Intersexioni was founded in 2013 by a group of volunteer activists and scholars interested in the intersectionalities between different issues, with a special focus on intersex human rights.
Intersexioni was founded in March 2013 by volunteer organizers and scholars of different backgrounds and experiences. Since the beginning, their main focus has been the advocacy for intersex human rights. They have been the first group in Italy to analyze the intersex issues in a scientific and academic way, and to advocate for intersex rights, to lobby, to inform, and to disseminate as well, and, up to this day, we are the only one. The main reason for which this group was founded was to advocate and analyze the logic of discrimination, inequality, domination and oppression over different groups by adopting an intersectional approach.
The choice of the group’s name ‘intersexioni’ – that means ‘intersections’ with the X of ‘intersex’, instead of the Z of the italian word ‘intersezioni’ –reflects their goal to bring and join together the intersectionalities between different forms of discrimination based on sex characteristics, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnic and somatic characteristics; the intersection of sexism, racism, and classism; sex/gender–based violence, bullying, homo–transphobia, and intersex–phobia; the intrinsic hierarchies on a dualistic vision of the world.
Their overall mission was and is to analyze and deconstruct the logic of domination and oppression, with the goal to promote the respect of the fundamental rights of every living being in order to build a better, more equal, fair, and welcoming society.
Caribe Afirmativo’s community has one of the highest levels of inequality, violence and lack of opportunities for its inhabitants, including violence and discrimination against LGBT communities.
Caribe Afirmativo, founded in 2009, is an LGBT organization working in the Caribbean region of Colombia, with offices in Cartagena and Santa Marta. Caribe Afirmativo’s community has one of the highest levels of inequality, violence and lack of opportunities for its inhabitants, including violence and discrimination against LGBT communities. Caribe Afirmativo documents and monitors human rights violations of LGBT people and provides support to individuals who file complaints to demand justice at the local, regional and international levels. They conduct research on lesbophobia, homophobia and transphobia and has produced work on race and racism in the Caribbean. They also work to insert the voices of LGBT communities in post-conflict processes. Finally, they use art and activism as strategies to raise visibility and create participatory spaces for community development, including supporting the popular theatrical group led by transgender women in Cartagena. *** En Español*** Caribe Afirmativo, fundada en 2009, es una organización LGBT que trabaja en la región caribeña de Colombia, con oficinas en Cartagena y Santa Marta. El Caribe colombiano tiene uno de los niveles más altos de desigualdad, violencia y falta de oportunidades para sus habitantes, incluyendo la violencia y la discriminación contra las comunidades LGBT. Caribe Afirmativo documenta y monitorea rigurosamente las violaciones de derechos humanos de las personas LGBT y ofrece acompañamiento a personas que someten quejas para exigir justicia a nivel local, regional e internacional. Realiza investigaciones sobre la lesbofobia, la homofobia y la transfobia y ha producido trabajo sobre la raza y el racismo en el Caribe. También trabaja para insertar las voces de las comunidades LGBT en procesos posteriores a conflictos. Por último, usa el arte y el activismo como estrategias para elevar la visibilidad y crear espacios participativos para el desarrollo comunitario, incluyendo apoyar al grupo teatral popular liderado por mujeres trans “Transformando” en Cartagena.
Founded in 2013, it is the first openly lesbian group in the southern Andean region of Peru, where there are high levels of institutional violence and hate for LGBT people, and where extreme religious fundamentalism halts all power to make decisions.
Movimiento Lesbia is a young lesbian organization based in the city of Arequipa, Peru. Founded in 2013, it is the first openly lesbian group in the southern Andean region of Peru, where there are high levels of institutional violence and hate for LGBT people, and where extreme religious fundamentalism halts all power to make decisions. Many of the members are under 30 years old and come from areas of the city that are very marginalized. Its mission is to end discrimination and violence against LGBT communities, in particular violence against lesbian and bisexual women. *** Movimiento Lesbia es una joven organización lésbica con base en la ciudad de Arequipa, Perú. Fundado en 2013, es el primer grupo abiertamente lésbico en la región sureña andina de Perú, donde hay altos niveles de violencia institucional y de odio hacia las personas LGBT, y donde un fundamentalismo religioso extremo acapara todo el poder para tomar decisiones. Muchas de las personas miembro tienen menos de 30 años y provienen de áreas de la ciudad súmamente marginalizadas. Su misión es acabar con la discriminación y la violencia hacia las comunidades LGBT, en particular la violencia contra las mujeres lesbianas y bisexuales.
Chouf is a feminist organization working about women bodily and sexual rights in Tunisia.
Chouf is a feminist organization working about women bodily and sexual rights in Tunisia. The organization is based on an egalitarian principle that rejects any hierarchical ordering of its members. Chouf defines itself as a group of activists who rely on audiovisual material in their work. In fact, they strongly believe that these audiovisual tools are the most pertinent and effective means to effect immediate change in our social environment and rid us of the stereotypes and prejudiced views we face on a daily basis. They have a multiplicity of objectives, but they all revolve around one necessity: allowing tunisian women, and more specifically FSF women, a safe environment in which they can express themselves freely and work on developing their potentials; an opportunity that otherwise would have been very difficult to obtain given the double discrimination that these women have to face. Indeed, they are oppressed not only for their womanhood, but also for their sexual orientation that is regarded as a deviation from established social norms. In the transitional context they are living after the revolution, feminism has never been of such importance as it is now for the young generations. The rising threat of a radical politicization of Islam that they have witnessed during the past months, together with the patriarchal nature of our educational and societal models, has made it necessary for them to defend their rightful place as women in Tunisia.
For women of the organization Chouf, feminism has always been the source of their inspiration and growth, guiding our involvement in politics and integration in the social and cultural affairs of our country. Their life choices, their professional careers, and their struggles have always been shaped by their deep awareness of being women. That is why they do not associate their feminist vision with any political system. On the contrary, they define it as an acquired awareness and a shattering of the guilt often suffered by women in their search of intellectual and physical freedom; including having a sexuality that does not correspond to what is expected of them in a society governed by men for their own benefit.
