Pride Is Disappearing Because the US Is Genociding Trans People
In Gaza, we learned early how absence acts as violence. But sometimes, before the absence, there is a quiet presence the world never bothered to see.
I first heard about two trans women in Ezbet Abed Rabo, in the northern Gaza Strip, from my mother. She was speaking softly to my aunt, a heavy sorrow in her voice. They had lived for years presenting as men, working hard physical jobs and earning respect for their labor. They helped with the family bayara, where the citrus and olive groves grew near our home. They dressed in long Jalabya and scarfs covering their faces, my mom said they wanted nothing but a quiet life.
I thought that story had vanished into the past. Then, in early 2009, I was walking through the destruction left by the Israeli occupation army. My colleague Yassir pointed to a patch of rubble, “That was their house,” he said. The residents told us the soldiers targeted it first. The two trans sisters were dragged out, taunted, their hijabs ripped from their heads. Their queerness did not protect them. It only made them easier prey. They were left with broken bones and shattered spirits.
I remember the complex grief that followed. Yes, homophobic views existed in parts of our community, as they do everywhere. But when the occupation brutalized them, denying medical care, blocking hormones, and persecuting them for who they were, a protective sympathy moved through the neighborhood. Their humanity was laid bare by the cruelty of the system meant to erase them.
That is how genocide works, It starts by making people doubt their right to exist, while withdrawing protection and turning a blind eye.
Now, across the ocean, I watch another kind of erasure happen.
This June, Pride did not fill the streets in Tampa, Arlington, or small town Ashtabula, Ohio. The celebrations were paused, and not because the hearts behind them grew cold, but because the ground shifted. Funding dried like water in the sun, while the toxic fear made simply showing up feel like stepping into danger. I recognize this pattern so well, I know disappearance rarely starts with fire. It starts with small rights taken away, spaces quietly locked, and familiar faces made invisible.
In Tampa, new laws empower the governor to remove elected officials who stand with queer organizations. The celebration that once secured over $100,000 in grants received nothing this year. While leadership contracts ended and boards cited the brutal political climate. Tampa Pride is gone for the first time in its history, blocked by measures that penalize local governments for supporting it.
In Arlington, the city suspended LGBTQIA+ protections in its discrimination laws. Organizers could not invite people into a place that refused to protect them. In Ashtabula, a town of fewer than 18,000, Pride once drew thousands and funded scholarships for youth. However this year, volunteers became afraid, sponsors stepped back as corporate DEI programs shuttered and a culture that celebrates hate took control. Tucson dissolved its organization after nearly 50 years. Long Beach canceled at the last minute over so called “safety issues.”
This is the slow making of a community less seen, less safe, and less possible in public view.
As a Palestinian who has seen this kind of disappearance, the pattern brings a familiar, bone-deep ache. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention recently warned that the United States is in the early stages of a genocidal process against trans people. It does not always look like mass killing, sometimes it looks like deliberate erosion, when laws denying care, rhetoric painting trans people as a threat, and policies making ordinary life impossible. The goal is to remove trans people not just from parades, but from public life, and eventually from existence itself.
These canceled Prides are visible absences in that wider pattern of early-stage genocide.
The echoes reach elsewhere too. In parts of Britain, councils have cut Pride funding, calling such events unfit for public money. Britain’s Black Pride paused its large-scale festival this year. In countries with harsh criminalization, open gatherings have long been driven underground. These are symptoms of the same machinery.
Do not grow comfortable in the shrinking spaces that remain. We know very well that the comfort of past years has already faded.
As someone who has rebuilt cameras from broken parts and documented life between explosions, I believe in endurance. Erasure works by making people doubt their right to exist publicly. But those pushed to the margins carry memory in their bodies. We document. We gather in smaller circles. We teach the young ones their names and their stories.
We are seeing the same system that enabled Gaza’s genocide, testing how much absence societies will accept before it becomes irreversible. The parades and festivals that do not happen leave a silence, listen to it.