Content warning: This article mentions gun violence, sexual violence, transphobia, and xenophobia.
As March comes to a close, I have been contemplating the strange irony of celebrating Women’s History Month during a time when the most vulnerable populations in the United States are experiencing such a sharp rise in state-sanctioned violence. From the ICE raids that have disproportionately targeted Latino communities to the proliferation of anti-abortion laws and abortion bans across the country, the shift towards fascism that is being helmed by the second Trump administration has proven deadly for those among us who have historically been forced to the margins of our society.
When we talk about feminism, it is often a very specific version of feminism. We discuss the suffragette movement and the fight to achieve voting rights for women; we discuss the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973, which determined abortion to be an essential liberty. And while these movements and successes are undoubtedly valuable, they do not tell the full feminist story. The full feminist story, for instance, would remember that it was through the labor and care of transgender women — many of them women of color — that we are today able to enjoy bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, and the freedom to express our gender identity.
Yet these privileges, which some of us have access to, are by no means universal. In fact, though it was transgender women and women of color who advocated fiercely for these rights across an intersection of identities, it is often the case that those same women are the ones to whom these rights are not extended. As we move through this Women’s History Month, it is imperative that we are aware of this disparity — and that we actively work to mend it.
Abortion access, for instance, has become an incredibly pressing issue in recent years. But when this problem is addressed, people tend to default to examining it through a gendered lens that prioritizes cisgender women over others, even though anti-abortion laws can impact people across a diversity of identities. By focusing on anti-abortion legislation under the presumption that only cisgender women are harmed by its passage, we neglect the transgender and non-binary people who do not identify as women but still have the capacity to get pregnant. This exclusion is dangerous not only for how it serves to further divide us, but also for how it strands transgender people once again on the outskirts of feminist activism. Conversely, legislation that seeks to ban gender-affirming care for trans people can consequently harm people of all identities who rely on those same medications or surgeries for reasons unrelated to their gender expression.
To that end, anti-abortion rhetoric is not as inherently separate from anti-trans rhetoric as some may believe. Although they manifest themselves in different ways, both of these ideologies are predicated upon the argument that certain people do not deserve bodily autonomy, and it must be stripped away in order to better control them. It is for this reason that transgender rights cannot and should not be detached from feminist activism; the two are intrinsically intertwined, and it is the responsibility of cisgender women to deliberately include and center the experiences of transgender women — and transgender people as a whole — within their activist work.
Between November of 2024 and November of 2025, twenty-seven cases of “fatal violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people were recorded” by a report published by the Human Rights Campaign. Furthermore, the 399 transgender and gender non-conforming people who have been victims of fatal violence since 2013 were disproportionately people of color, with Black trans women being specifically targeted. And as ICE continues to expand its anti-immigration raids in multiple states, it is imperative for us to be aware of the distinct forms of violence that undocumented and immigrant women face when forcibly taken into detention facilities.
These statistics further highlight the importance of building a feminist future that exists across identities, rather than remaining focused on a single story. Feminist issues do not begin and end with cisgender women; they are all-encompassing, and they extend far beyond a binary, gendered view of the world. Transgender women and women of color have always been a part of the feminist struggle for equal rights, and in order for us as a society to truly extend our protection to those groups, we must build a movement that prioritizes the safety and dignity of our most vulnerable populations.
For this future to come to fruition, there are a myriad of ways that you can, in this current moment, act to uplift the voices and lives of those around us. Amplify the words of marginalized people and center their experiences, their lives. Attend protests. Sign petitions. These are all methods by which change is enacted, and I would encourage you to engage with them actively and with intention. Above all else, continue educating yourself. Women’s History Month is an excellent time to get interested in these topics, but it does not have to end there.
The seminal writings of bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Angela Davis are a fantastic place to start approaching feminist theory through the voices and lived experiences of Black women. To define the concept of intersectionality as it was originally conceived, you can turn to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1989 paper Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex, where the term was first coined. Then continue to go deeper, delving into the complexities of a feminist movement that grapples with not only women’s rights, but with addressing discrimination at all levels and across all identities. Research the lives of transgender activists such as Christine Jorgensen, Marsha P. Johnson, and Sylvia Rivera, all of whom pioneered the queer and trans movements and advocated for bodily autonomy.
The story of the feminist movement should not be defined by a singular identity or a singular experience. Nor should the feminist movement be confined solely to the fight for women’s rights. The systemic problems that enable our freedoms to be taken away by those in power harm everybody in disparate ways. It is our duty to acknowledge these disparities, educate ourselves, and create a feminist future in which all of us — truly all of us — are granted liberation, justice, and peace.