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This June, a Pride celebration organized by Alliances, a multi-generational and multiracial group of incarcerated queer and trans people, was held inside Washington State’s largest prison.

Yet behind the skits and the celebration of queer joy expressed at the June 3 Pride event inside the Twin Rivers Unit at the Monroe Correctional Complex, the continued punishment of trans women and queer people “for their own protection” was not far from the minds of the event’s participants. A core group of about 10 people within Alliances made this celebration possible, with the support of other (often overlapping) inside networks, like the Black Prisoners’ Caucus.

Amid all the parades, poppers, and parties that arrive in June, remembering the origins of queer liberation movements — open rebellion against police and resistance to other forms of carceral repression — gets harder and harder.

Yet as everyday life for queer people in the U.S. — particularly those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), or young — is criminalized, Alliances’ event within the Monroe Correctional Complex offered a potent beacon: We need to be organizing for anti-carceral worlds, and have queer dance parties.

Across the U.S. a patchwork of laws attempts to erase transgender lives and regulate all bodies through the familiar weapon of criminalization. From bathroom access to passports and other identifying documentation, gender is increasingly narrowed. Proposed legislation will restrict other core rights including parenting. Even in “blue” cities and states, hospitals and universities have preemptively curtailed support for gender-affirming care, and supportive medical professionals, parents/caregivers, and educators now face fines and prison terms and loss of licensure and prosecution. Beyond the potentially lethal impacts on transgender lives, these new forms of the old practice of “eugenics policymaking,” according to an interview with historian Jules Gill-Peterson, aim to police all lives.

As a Trans Person in Federal Prison, I’m Being Punished for Existing

Incarcerated queer folks, particularly those who are BIPOC and transgender, are at the front lines of these attacks. “This is a pattern that a queer incarcerated person is well familiar with,” an Alliances member told Truthout. “The simple expression of our identity is incomprehensible to a system that necessitates the categorization and regulating of our bodies.”

“The simple expression of our identity is incomprehensible to a system that necessitates the categorization and regulating of our bodies.”

“The simple expression of our identity is incomprehensible to a system that necessitates the categorization and regulating of our bodies.”

And yet the struggle for decarceration and our survival needs queer joy, as Alliances and other networks of systems-impacted queers identify. The indomitable Miss Major, who died in October 2025 after a lifetime of riotous abolitionist organizing, stated in a 2023 interview with the The Guardian: “I know the world I would like to live in. It’s in my head, but I try my best to live it now.”

On day one, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” mandating transphobia across........

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