Speeches from the Protect Trans Youth Coalition’s Rally and Lobbying Effort at the New York State Capitol Building
The following short speeches are transcribed from video taken at the Protect Trans Youth Coalition’s rally and lobbying effort on June 9th, 2025. The speeches are arranged in speaking order. For an overview of the formation of the Trans Youth Coalition, their organizational composition, and their work, including the events of that trip to Albany, keep an eye out for an incoming article in the People’s World.
Coalition friends take a video in the New York State Capitol | Adrien Michael Easterling
Marc
“These bills claim to protect fairness in sports, but what they actually do is isolate and punish trans youth for being who they are. You send a message that our existence is a problem that needs to be solved.”
Good morning New York, my name is Marc Pazzanese. I’m from Brooklyn, I’m in high school, I like to draw, I like to watch horror movies, and I like to go for walks in Brooklyn. I’m a transgender man, and I’m here today because bills S460 and A8239 would hurt kids like me. I don’t believe that’s what New York has ever stood for. New York has never stood for discrimination, and it should not start now.
When I started high school, I wanted to try out for the boy’s baseball team, and I wasn’t allowed to, not because of my lack of skills or effort, but just because I’m a trans man. I was told that I had to join the girls’ softball team which really pissed me off cause I’m a guy, why should I have to join the girls’ softball team? That’s a different sport… I wanted to play on the [baseball] team because I had never been part of a team sport, and I was really excited for it but they––not… I was really sad I didn’t get to play.
And that experience has stuck with me for a long time and it’s made me feel like I don’t belong anywhere or––it feels like I have to fight just to be seen as a normal kid, a normal kid. And I wasn’t trying to make a statement by joining the team, I just wanted to play. I feel the same kind of rejection in everyday life. I go to the grocery store, I’ll get called sir until they hear my voice and then suddenly its “ma’am,” and then I’ll just stay quiet because I don’t want to upset anyone, and I worry that if I speak up about being misgendered I’ll get rejected or hurt. I’m especially uncomfortable in public restrooms. I worry that someone will question me or worse. I learn to stay quiet, move quickly, and hide in the stall till no one else is there, not because I’ve done anything wrong, but because the world keeps telling me I shouldn’t exist.
I’m also a feminist. I care deeply about the rights and safety of girls and women, and that includes all trans girls and cis girls. Cis girls would also be affected by the bills. I know some of you may be afraid of change and you may be afraid of shifting ideas around[…] gender. What I don’t understand is how kids like me, just trying to live our lives, have become the target of legislation. We become nothing to you but a political pawn.
These bills claim to protect fairness in sports, but what they actually do is isolate and punish trans youth for being who they are. You send a message that our existence is a problem that needs to be solved. You’re not fighting for fairness, you’re not protecting women, you’re using youth sports as an excuse to silence trans people. I believe that some lawmakers supporting these bills generally think they’re doing a great thing, but I ask them to look at the real-world impact and not just the political side of this.
I’m not a political issue, I’m a person. My gender shouldn’t be the most important thing about me. Your words, your voice, your votes, and the bills you sign have real consequences. This isn’t policy, these are people’s lives. I’m not here to cause trouble, I’m not here to get attention, I’m here cause I want to live in a state that values fairness for everyone, that means making sure trans kids are safe, supported, and are able to grow up without shame or fear, a right I believe every child deserves.
Vote “No” on bills S460 and A8239! Thank you for listening to me.
Saoirse
“Anti-trans violence has already come to Upstate New York. It’s been here for a while, but now it’s really visible.”
Hello, I’m Saoirse, I’m a trans woman from Albany.
Anti-trans violence has already come to Upstate New York. It’s been here for a while, but now it’s really visible. It’s obvious that the political climate in our state is changing for the worse. As our representatives, leaders, neighbors, and families continue the dramatic turn to the right, we have a moral obligation to fight against it, whenever and wherever we can.
Our trans brothers, sisters, and siblings are all in danger, even in the so-called “liberal paradise” of New York. One would think that a bill such as this has no chance of passing here, and yet we have clearly seen that it is more likely to happen than any of us would like to admit.
I’m one of the trans elders here. I’ve seen how it used to be, and I thought that we had been making some progress in our state. Unfortunately that appears to not be the case, as we can clearly see by what’s going on.
I remember a time when I had to worry about housing discrimination and employment discrimination. Those were, for a time, no longer concerns of mine. Now, with this bill, I am worried to see how bad things are going to get if we don’t fight against it and stop it now.
Rio
“Trans people have always been here. We precede the colonization of this land. There’s been markers of two-spirit individuals way before there was evidence of anything of the latter.”
Okay, hello everyone! My name is Rio, I am a transgender woman from Florida and I wanted to share some notes I have for y’all. So, I think that this political climate is increasingly trying to put people in categories where they do not belong. And, it’s important to note that the Institute for Sexual Research was one of the first and largest book burnings that happened in Nazi Germany in 1933 in Berlin. The rise of fascism in this country is attacking trans children and we have to stand up and fight back for them.
Trans people have always been here. We precede the colonization of this land. There’s been markers of two-spirit individuals way before there was evidence of anything of the latter. So, there are whole systems of considerations that are beyond what can just be observed medically, and doctors do not have a way of really gauging what the spiritual implications of being trans really are.
We need to prevent doctors from being violators and that they do their jobs correctly and protect trans children. Thank you.
Lana
“Trans women are already disproportionately affected with HIV and AIDS as a result of stochastic terrorist attacks like these sibling bills inform. Bills like these aid and abet murder against trans girls and women. They add to the same political abuse that makes us sicker and sicker so we die en masse [in] the next epidemic or pandemic. ”
Hi, my name is Lana Leonard, my pronouns are they/them and I’m here today representing Act Up New York.
First and foremost, this bill is going to violate transgender and non-transgender children, disproportionately Black and brown kids who are already beholden to the harshest penalties of bias amid this country’s systemic hellscape. These bills represent a dangerous precedent for the way trans adults and youth are treated in healthcare and in public settings. Bills like S460 and A8239, known as Rhoads Bill and Mikulin Bill, gaslight kids, parents, and doctors, putting them in impossible positions of violence, discrimination, or the possible need to relocate, in some cases again, in a country that claims to be for freedom.
Bills like this contain rhetoric with devastating impacts on the health and well-being of youth, and these politicians don’t seem to give a shit. Trans women are already disproportionately affected with HIV and AIDS as a result of stochastic terrorist attacks like these sibling bills inform. Bills like these aid and abet murder against trans girls and women. They add to the same political abuse that makes us sicker and sicker so we die en masse [in] the next epidemic or pandemic.
In 2023 the CBC estimated over 39,000 people were diagnosed with HIV in the US. 51% of those diagnosed were between the ages of 25 and 44. Increasingly, these cases reflect trans youth and adults. When we neglect children for the ignorance and arrogance of power-hungry adults, we tell children it's okay to neglect their bodies, health, and ignore signs of gender-dysphoria into their own adulthood. This directly relates to the way so many were afraid to acknowledge AIDS and HIV symptoms.
At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, there were many preventable deaths because of bills written with lies, reported in the new. Anti-gay opinions unconscious of the facts of HIV and AIDS. The same profit-driven messaging tactic is being used right now against immigrants, Palestinians, and transgender youth of all cultures.
Democrats like Joseph P Addabbo Jr., Siela A. Byone, and Monica R. Martinez stand here falling for traps, wasting tax money on studying the junk of children who just want to play ball. For what? All because they won’t accept that transgender people have existed before them? Before this country? The truth is: we’ll continue to exist. History will label these politicians “cowards,” “soulless people,” who sold out children to line their pockets. In fact, these bills have a direct correlation to District 2’s Resolution 248, which was brought to the floor and passed by the CEC in March of 2024. Since then, a large coalition of activists, trans children, parents of trans children, trans and allied educators, and concerned community members have been showing up to get rid of the resolution. The members of the CEC behind that resolution have actively invited anti-trans adults to verbally assault children in public meetings, for which the CEC members pay absolutely no attention to members of the public. If bills S460 and A8239 are passed, they would affirm this behavior and Resolution 248, even though all of these are illegal under New York human rights law. These kids should be dreaming about their worlds expanding, not living in the nightmares of your gender obsession.
Kill these expensive, inhumane bills! Let us live! Protect our kids!
Let us live! Protect our kids!
Let us live! Protect our kids!
Dr. Anabel Ruggiero (PhD, Chemical Engineering)
“Our legislators’ attempts to cloak their bigotries in scientific sounding language have left us with a bill that is ill-equipped to address the normal variation present just within cis people.”
One of the things I wanted to comment on today was, specifically, the text of the bill. Cause when I went to read the bill originally I thought, you know, I would do the obvious linear attack of analyzing its bigotry towards trans students. Well, our legislators attempted to conceal their bigotry with sciency sounding language. Typically, they were talking about ”biological male,” and “biological female” students. Luckily for me, since the authors have only taken basic biology and I've taken graduate level human biology courses, I decided to point out how ridiculous the resulting bill is.
First, what does it even mean to be “biologically male” or “biologically female?”
Is it based on which gametes the embryo is able to produce? Of course not, embryos don't produce eggs or sperm!... Okay more charitably, is it sex chromosomes at birth, at conception, or the person's genotype? Well, there is this one instance of a cis woman, phenotypically female, who gave birth to a healthy girl... only to learn afterwards that both her and her child have XY chromosomes. The reason why this can occur is because sex differentiation occurs after conception; the initial trigger for sex differentiation is a well timed increase of fetal testosterone levels that can sometimes occur without the Y chromosome, or fail to occur with it. Alright, so we can conclude that genotype, at any point in a human's life, is insufficient to determine that person's sex.
So what about phenotype, AKA the actual physical or genetic traits––or physical representation of genetic traits––which, as I’ve demonstrated, can deviate from genotype. Well… let's ask about gametes again... does a hysterotomy strip a woman of her womanhood? It strips her of her ability to produce gametes. Does a vasectomy strip a man of his manhood? Does infertility strip you of your gender? And if our legislators are willing to tell us that a female's capacity to bear children is what makes someone female when we are talking about children…? Ew, that's just a really gross way to think about young girls.
Okay, what about sex hormone levels? Well, let's take a look at typical sex hormone levels for prepubescent cis boys and girls. Typical testosterone levels in prepubescent cis boys are 1.80 to 5.68 ng/dl, and for cis girls it's ... 2.69 to 10.29 ng/dl? Wait, young cis girls have more of the "man" chemical than cis boys?
Here's my point: our legislators’ attempts to cloak their bigotries in scientific sounding language have left us with a bill that is ill-equipped to address the normal variation present just within cis people. I've barely touched on intersex conditions, and I’ve not even mentioned trans people. Our legislators should stop being fools, and grow the stones to lay their disgusting bigotries bare for all to see.
Leah
“Targeting trans girls could easily expand to also excluding gender non-conforming and non-binary kids too.”
I have two kids. I have a cis daughter and I also have a gender non-conforming kid. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about today, is me in that role, because I’m concerned that these bans exclude all girls. Targeting trans girls could easily expand to also excluding gender non-conforming and non-binary kids too.
These bans don’t just take away the benefits of sports––benefits like teamwork, acceptance, public receiving of awards, the chance to push yourself, support––they could also lead to more bullying by isolating trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming kids as marking them as “not normal,” or “not okay,” in their own schools. And can you imagine the message that this sends to cis girls? From their school officials? That it is acceptable to exclude and divide each other?
Shame!
This bill is not about protecting girls. It’s about keeping things the way they always have been. It’s about shutting people out from spaces that should be welcoming to everyone. It’s about turning us against each other so that we don’t focus on things that really matter like equal access to school sports for all students.
That’s what Title IX stands for! I grew up in the 70s, and I refuse to go back.
I say, “Let us go forward––together.”
Adrian Michael Easterling and Moth
“Erasure and genocide do not start with murders. They begin with false trust in the government so they are able to criminalize our existence while we sleep... We cannot live in fear, because if we do, they have already won.”
These are New York bills but they are not a New York-exclusive problem. I want you to hear from my dear friend Moth, a transgender man who lives in Alabama:
“A tomboy, that’s what they always assumed I was, ‘interested in boy things,’ but the moment I found out that people felt like me, it was ‘wrong.’ It was ‘indoctrination’ while they had me in church telling me that the country needs to return to ‘Christian morals,’ and to them, that meant getting rid of people that felt the way that I feel.
It was scary; it was more than scary. Constantly, I hear arguments from my parents and grandparents as to why being transgender or queer is ‘wrong.’ Just recently my grandfather showed me a political cartoon that demonized trans sports players. None of these threats have been made against me, but I have heard my father call non-binary friends ‘it.’
It hurts me because it makes me feel like I can never be myself around any of them. When I began using my chosen name in college, I tried keeping it away from my mother, but that didn’t work well, and it was obvious she was disappointed. She never said anything against me, but it was always the glances and the sighs. The hidden resentment that their ‘perfect little girl’ could be possibly someone they didn’t know. Truthfully, they don’t care to know me.
I have found solace in friends like Adrian who’ve helped me understand that I’m not broken. I am somewhere where my voice is silenced out of fear for my own safety. There is no gender affirming care that is safe from the government’s hypocrisy. Even just going to the hospital is terrifying in an emergency. I constantly have to choose between who I am going to be and if the people around me will be okay with me, the real me. No neutral bathrooms to be found, I’m deadnamed any time I’m around my family, even from the ones that know my name in order to keep me safe from the others.
It is easy to feel discouraged from it all, and it isolates me. But with all you hear today, I know there are people out there fighting for my true freedom, my freedom of expression.”
I have been told by fellow activists and sitting politicians that this bill would not pass, and that it is “only sports.” It is never just sports. We cannot take for granted that our lawmakers––Democrat, Republican, or whoever––will look after us without any of us holding them accountable.
Erasure and genocide do not start with murders. They begin with false trust in the government so they are able to criminalize our existence while we sleep. New York, California, all the sanctuary states are only ever a single bill away from becoming Alabama or Texas.
We owe it to our siblings, our children, mothers, fathers, and all those who came before us, and all those who will come after, to fight with everything we have, no matter how pointless it seems.
We cannot live in fear, because if we do, they have already won.