Family Matters: Queer & Trans Folks Redefining Family Formation
June 3, 2025It’s 2025 and the concept of “family” is no longer confined to the 1950s Leave It to Beaver TV era, which centered cisgender white heterosexual nuclear families. Our families are expansive, inclusive and beautifully diverse. At the helm of a cultural revolution, queer and trans folks are building and nurturing communities that challenge the ideas of the traditional family and conservative “family values”.
For generations, chosen families have been the cornerstone of queer and trans communities. Rooted in mutual support, love and care, our communities have always found and formed family and kin in the ways that we’ve needed to survive and thrive.
Despite policymakers’ efforts to erase and invisibilize our communities through anti-queer and trans laws and the rollback of our reproductive freedoms, queer and trans folks are still defining our own lives, growing our families and determining our futures.
PARENTING ON OUR OWN TERMS
Mia Cooley is a Black queer mama of two who had grown tired of not having an inclusive space for parents that looked like her, so she created her own. xHood is a community for Black Queer people to build and nurture healthy families and parent happy children.
“I was led to create xHood because I knew that families both in the Black and LGBTQIA+ communities have a long history of being what outsiders might call non-traditional. We’ve formed in the way that we do because we had to call on the resources around us, and that hasn’t always been immediate or even biological family. Limiting the family structure to those boundaries has never served us.”
Darra Gordon doesn’t just do the work, she lives it. After 20 years in nonprofit leadership, she was recently appointed as the CEO of Family Equality, whose mission is to ensure everyone has the freedom to find, form, and sustain their families by advancing equality for the LGBTQ+ community.
In an interview with The Advocate, Darra shared, “Family Equality’s mission is so deeply personal to me. I’m a proud member of the community. My wife and I are raising three children, and our oldest is nonbinary. The work we do at Family Equality is not just professional. It’s about protecting and uplifting families like mine.”
OUR COMMUNITY, OUR KIN
In an effort to combat a housing crisis affecting transgender and queer people of color (TQPOC) in Memphis, Tennessee, Kayla Rena Gore and Ellyahnna C. Wattshal founded My Sistah’s House (MSH). My Sistah’s House primarily serves TGNC people of color, many of whom have recently been released from incarceration, are experiencing intimate partner violence, and/or are experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity Because they serve a large number of trans and non-binary people who are experiencing homelessness, MSH now includes the Tiny Homes Project. Tiny Homes residents can access support services through MSH so that they can prepare to move into permanent housing. Residents also have access to health and social services.
Before becoming the CEO of Trans Women of Color Collective (TWOCC), a grassroots global initiative led by trans and gender non-conforming people of color, Nyla Foster was a plaintiff in a landmark federal lawsuit against the state of Kansas, fighting for the right of trans residents to correct the gender marker on their birth certificates—a case that reshaped legal protections for the trans community in Kansas.
Nyla’s leadership is rooted in community care, political clarity, and a deep commitment to building systems that center healing, housing, and collective liberation. She and her team at TWOCC work to uplift the lived narratives, experiences, and leadership of trans and gender non-conforming people of color, their families, and comrades while building toward collective liberation for all oppressed people through healing and restorative justice.
Through their programmatic work like mutual aid, leadership development groups, queer vendor market and movement collaborations, TWOCC is establishing community and kin in the Kansas area for QTBIPOC folks.
WE SURVIVE, WE THRIVE
At Forward Together, we believe that family formation is core to reproductive justice. QTBIPOC communities have always found and formed family and kin in the ways that we’ve needed to survive and thrive. Like a quilt, Forward Together is weaving a more expansive definition of family that covers us all. From chosen family to othermothers to polycules, we honor and advocate for all the kinship bonds that our communities hold dear. We will continue to uplift and acknowledge the work of the queer and trans women who are defining their own lives, determining their own futures and creating safe places for our people so that we can grow and support our loved ones in safe and healthy environments.
LET’S SHIFT THIS SH*T
We must live our desired future in the now in order to transform culture, conversations and policies! Art and culture have always been central to our freedom struggles. We use art to keep each other alive, organize, live with joy and imagine freedom. For decades we’ve commissioned and created art as an act of resistance. Through our historical projects like Mamas Day and Trans Day of Resilience, we’ve worked with visual and performance artists to refine families, create safe spaces, share real stories and to shift this sh*t.
Join us by downloading and sharing some of the art that best represents your family and community.