Portrait of a trans community in New York

Transgender rights made significant gains in 2014, with President Obama signing Executive Order 13672 in July prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity in the civilian federal workforce and in hiring by federal contractors; as well as a ruling in May by the review board of the U.S. Department of Health and Services that trans patients cannot be denied Medicare funds for medical care deemed necessary by doctors and mental health professionals.

Not only politically, but also across popular culture platforms, trans issues have gained prominence. Laverne Cox, the acclaimed actress from the Netflix series, “Orange is the New Black,” graced the cover of TIME this year with the headline “The Transgender Tipping Point;” R&B singer R. Kelly’s son came out as a young trans man; and Facebook added over 50 gender options from which users can choose.

But as trans people gain visibility and understanding as people who identify as male or female despite being assigned a different gender at birth, a greater gap in understanding exists for gender non-conforming (GNC) and non-binary trans individuals.

“Not content with identifying or expressing themselves as only either men or women, we feel and show genders that mix, vary, and/or go beyond these categories and may identify as genderqueer, agender, two spirit, neutrois, gender fluid, and third gender, among many others,” explains Julián Padilla, LGBTQ Justice Organizer for GLOBE, the Brooklyn LGBTQ Committee of Make the Road NY (MRNY). A predominantly immigrant, grassroots organization with offices in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island, MRNY’s mission is to “build the power of Latino and working class communities to achieve dignity and justice through organizing, policy innovation, transformative educations, and survival services”.

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