We offer this report as a tool for personal, political, and institutional change. We envision a world where the lives and well-being of Transmasculine people are seen and valued, and where all people have access to safe and meaningful health care.
In the report
executive summary
Our key findings and frameworks for health justice.
values and methodology
Learn how we organized and conducted research.
data findings and visuals
Tools for understanding health and health care inequities based on a survey of 310 transmasculine participants.
take action & stay connected
Ideas and resources to get involved and make change.
Executive summary
Transmasculine Health Justice: Los Angeles (TMHJ:LA) calls attention to serious health inequities impacting Transmasculine people* on Tongva Land (Los Angeles). This report was assembled as part of a research and organizing initiative led by Gender Justice Los Angeles and based on the principles of research justice, healing justice, and collective care. We analyzed findings from the community-generated Transmasculine Sexual Health & Reproductive Justice Survey that engaged 310 participants in Los Angeles County in 2017. This survey remains the single largest effort to understand and respond to inequities facing Transmasculine people in Los Angeles to date.
The health inequities facing Transmasculine people are preventable. Existing inequities are the result of deliberate power structures that impose a gender binary, restrict bodily autonomy, and create dangerous conditions in health care. TMHJ:LA calls for action towards health justice through: community building, cultural organizing, education, policy change, and community-led research. Our report centers Transmasculine Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) who experience health inequities at the intersections of transphobia, anti-black racism, colonization, and xenophobia. We imagine and work for a future where all Transgender, Gender non-conforming, and Intersex (TGI) people can age, heal, evolve, thrive and create families and kinship with dignity.
Health justice is universal access to health care grounded in the values of informed consent, bodily autonomy, accessibility, and racial and economic justice.
Health care and medical autonomy are a human right. All people should be able to access health care systems and medical treatments equitably and with respect for human dignity. This requires policies and protections that increase safety, choice, and autonomy in accessing health care.
Gender-affirming care improves health care systems for everyone.
Health justice is investing in trauma-informed care and removing assumptions about gender, sexuality, bodies, and risks. Health justice is not just a matter of changing terminology in health care, but about addressing the role of health care systems in contributing to health and reproductive inequities for Transmasculine people, and especially Transmasculine Black, Indigenous, People of Color.
Transforming trauma requires interrupting violence at its roots.
Health justice is preventing and responding to the alarming rates of often invisible violence experienced by TGI people by targeting its fundamental causes while resisting systems of state control and policing. We must invest in violence prevention efforts led by TGI people. We need transformative justice and healing strategies that interrupt cycles of trauma, violence and health inequities.
Health inequities are preventable.
Health justice is understanding the connection between systems of power and health inequities and building on this link to provide health care.
We are taking action for health justice and building a foundation for change.
The health organizing work of transmasculine people adds to our collective understandings of how we can heal and be cared for. Health justice means investing in strategies of collective care by and for TGI people.
Values and methods
Trans people have a long history of organizing our own health information and care practices. Participatory action research is one of many political tools that can be used to resist our erasure in health fields and to advocate for access, autonomy, protection, and dignity in care. We see our work as part of a broader social movement for research justice, health justice, and collective care.
This report has been shaped and made possible by dozens of community organizers, researchers, advocates, artists, and health care workers. Our shared interests are in supporting our own and each other’s well-being, ancestral wisdom, universal health care and medical autonomy for all, sexual and reproductive freedoms, racial and economic justice.
Data findings and visuals
Transforming institutions
rejecting gatekeeping & racism
Transforming trauma
harm reduction for ourselves and each other
Take action & stay connected
This report highlights some of the serious health and health care inequities facing Transmasculine people. As we work to envision and create the futures we want, we lift up some of the many ways Transmasculine people and our allies can and do take action now to reduce harms and build communities of care.
community building
We need each other and fight for each other.
health care practice
Health care workers are essential.
policy advocacy
We can fight to redistribute resources.
research justice
We are building the knowledge we need.
* For the purposes of this project, the term Transmasculine is used to refer broadly people who are men, transgender, nonbinary, or otherwise gender non-conforming, and/or two-spirit people who were designated female at birth.
Trancestors acknowlegement
We honor the legacy of our transcestors and especially the Black and Indigenous people before us. We honor our ways of knowing – past and present– as we fight for a future where all trans, nonbinary, and intersex people are recognized as worthy of love, protection, safety and belonging.
Recommended citation: Perez, E.A., Jordan, S.P., Plascencia, H.T., Binarao Salagan, J.W., Brown, C., Fields, J.J., Fuller, L.A., Olaes Miramontes, G.R., Posadas, L., & Rojas, L. (2021) Transmasculine Health Justice: Los Angeles, Gender Justice Los Angeles. http://www.tmhealthstudyla.org/2021-report.
OUr partners
