By, Ruel Nolledo | Freelance Writer
August 1, 2025
“I couldn’t find myself in history. No one like me seemed to have ever existed.”
Leslie Feinberg, author of Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman
This August, First 5 LA joins California in observing the second annual Transgender History Month. Established by the State Assembly in 2023 via a house resolution, the monthlong observance is the first of its kind in the U.S. Although other states like Illinois, New Jersey and New York offer occasions to celebrate the transgender community — including a Day of Visibility on March 19 and a Transgender Awareness Month in November — there are no observances that focus on understanding how transgender individuals not only existed in the past but helped shape the American experience as we know it today.
“There seems to be a general understanding that transgender people are a phenomenon of the 21st century,” observed archaeologist Gabby Omoni Hartemann. “The erroneous idea that we transgender people ‘have no past’ feeds the notion held by many cisgender people that we don’t belong in the present.”
It is a notion that finds no firm ground in California, where inclusion, anti-discrimination, anti-harassment, and gender-affirming protections and services are made evident in individual, family, community and state-level commitments to the rights, privacy and well-being of transgender and gender diverse people.
“As long as there has been a California, there have been transgender people here contributing to their community,” said Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), one of the co-authors of the state house resolution. “Making history, expanding civil rights and helping to build a California that is more inclusive and prosperous for everyone.”
With trans history being mostly oral history, Transgender History Month plays a vital role in combating misinformation, increasing public understanding, and fostering a more inclusive, evidence-based approach to policy and care. That’s especially crucial today, because the erasure of transgender people from public consciousness isn’t just a thing of the past — it’s happening right now:
- According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, a record-breaking 953 anti-trans bills were introduced in 2025 alone. Of those bills, 878 were introduced at the state level, while 75 are under consideration in Congress. As of this writing, 120 anti-trans bills have already been signed into law in 2025.
- Meanwhile, the administration has issued a series of anti-trans executive orders since the start of the year. For example, one of the earliest orders, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” effectively erases both transgender and intersex individuals.
Such policies create overwhelming systemic barriers for transgender individuals in accessing housing, healthcare, education, public assistance, and other essential service systems. In perinatal care settings, for example, expecting trans parents experience a host of challenges, such as a lack of cultural competency, transphobia, inappropriate medical care and institutional erasure. In addition, Black TGE parents face considerably greater risk of poor pregnancy outcomes due to their race and gender.
“There was a lot of trauma,” said one Black parent regarding their experiences with the health care system. “Most of that came from inside the birthing world, with medical professionals. There was a lot of questioning about my identity, a lot of misgendering. Being told I shouldn’t be in spaces I was seeking care from because they were considered “women’s spaces.”
To address these challenges, First 5 LA supported AB 2319, a 2024 state bill intended to reduce the disproportionate mortality rates of Black women and other pregnant persons of color. Signed into law last year, the bill expands current implicit bias training of health care providers to include all birthing people, including nonbinary persons and persons of transgender experience. California health care providers worked to ensure that perinatal care providers completed the updated training by June 1 of this year. Initiatives like this are vital to ensuring that expecting transgender parents feel safe and respected, which is essential to reducing mortality rates.
Transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive parents and families are a vital part of Los Angeles County. That’s why First 5 LA is dedicated to ensuring our systems and organizations truly work for and support every child and their family across race, ethnicity, class, sexual and gender identity, and more.
This August, we join communities and families across L.A. County and across California in celebrating Transgender History Month and the significant advances made and to come in creating a culture of inclusion.
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