History
Intransitive was founded in March 2017 in response to the gap of intersectional Trans spaces in Arkansas. Two weeks after starting Intransitive we launched our first campaign, organizing and mobilizing Trans people across Arkansas to stop TERF (Trans exclusionary radical feminist) recruitment events. That same month, we held the first Trans march in Arkansas in downtown Springdale.
Intransitive has provided Trans competency trainings to organizations, businesses and community members across Arkansas, Texas, Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Puerto Rico. Our work is statewide and lives at the intersections of mutual aid and organizing. We are an organization of Trans people, majority of whom are neurodivergent and/or disabled BIPOC.
In 2020, we launched two mutual funds to aid Trans people in emergency situations. We know that it is easier to politicize our community when they are housed and fed. Since then, we’ve launched three more mutual aid funds and given out over $75,000 dollars, primarily to Black and Brown Trans women in Arkansas.
In Spring 2021, we pushed out a massive digital and on the ground campaign against 8 anti-Trans bills introduced in Arkansas. We mobilized people around the state, the country, and as far as Mexico, Canada, UK and Australia into flooding the legislators’ and the governor’s phone lines and emails. By summer 2021, we purchased a building in an area with a predominantly Black and Immigrant community. We spent five months renovating it ourselves along with volunteers, and on December 17, 2021 we opened the first ever Transgender Community Center in Arkansas.
In 2022, we held our first Queertonomy Gathering, bringing together change makers from around the state to organize and mobilize around body autonomy. In 2023 we changed Arkansas by creating the Queertonomy Coalition; the first time that organizations across Arkansas came together to fight in alignment against the 2023 legislative attacks on our autonomy.
Intransitive works to advance the cause of Trans liberation in Arkansas through art, education, advocacy, organizing and culture in order to create effective systemic change and on-the-ground impact. We focus on supporting and building the leadership of Trans people with the commitment to a vision and strategy rooted in the grassroots experience of Trans migrants of color.
Mission
Essential Concepts of Intransitive:
Whole selves: Intransitive creates intergenerational spaces in which all of a Trans person’s identities are honored and affirmed – no one is asked to prioritize one over the other, and no one is left behind. We believe in building, renewing, and supporting Trans leadership.
Self-determination: Intransitive creates spaces in which people can grow and be challenged, and are expected to strive to be their best whole selves. Intransitive expects that members will not hinder the self-determination of others through acts of racism, sexism, ability, classism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, hatred, and intolerance.
Community Care: Intransitive creates spaces in which Trans people can overcome feelings of isolation and individualism. Spaces in which we can provide collective community care and sustainability of ourselves and our movement. Intransitive sees the interconnections between different systems of oppression. Intransitive also connects the experience of Trans Arkansans to global conditions, and trains people to see the connections between the conditions of their individual lives and larger systems.
Member-driven: Intransitive’s commitment is to its members. We want to strengthen members’ skills and help them build connections with each other.
Vision: Intransitive is visionary, not reactionary. Intransitive organizes for hope, not in response to fear. We build, connect, and sustain a kind of organizing that is not limited by the boundaries of race, class, culture, ability, gender and sexuality; an organizing that amplifies hopes and dreams of transformation to a better world. We organize to build the world we really want to live in.