TGNC and Working for An Abortion Fund
Hi, I help run an Abortion Fund’s social media and I’m not a woman. My name is Justin Hartley, and I use they/them pronouns. As an intern through the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College Institute’s Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Health Internship program I help produce content for the New Orleans Abortion Fund’s Instagram, as well as its youth focused page, called NOAF Youth Action. At NOAF we believe that abortion care should be accessible to everyone as an intersectional organization—to trans and gender nonconforming people to women, to people of color, to people in the most rural parts of Louisiana, to people of low-incomes, to anyone who needs one. That is a mission I am proud to support, but where does a person who is cis-assumed (someone who is assumed to be cisgender, or the gender assigned at their birth based on genitalia) male who doesn’t identify with the gender binary, let alone a gender at all, fit into this equation?
I’m an accomplice to women. I’m an accomplice to the trans and gender non-conforming people that do not have the privileges I have because I appear in a gender-normative way to the outside world. As someone who currently works in a field that is dominated by women, femmes, and assigned female at birth non-binary people, it is essential that I am committed to one, putting in the work to unlearn all the biases and harm of growing us a boy in America, and two, remain committed to working for the liberation of all people, including women.
As an organizer, I go where I feel I can make the most impact and do the most good for those who are marginalized. For the last two years, Louisiana has ranked the worst state to be a woman by multiple studies. The worst state in the country. I came across The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security study while scrolling through my twitter feed during my first year at Tulane. I found it shocking and sobering all at once—it made me question myself—what was I doing to support women?
Immediately, I started looking for ways to help, and found a posting from the Feminist Majority Foundation looking for Digital Campus Organizers for the fight against the anti-choice Constitutional Amendment being put on the November, 2020 Louisiana ballot. I wanted to be in the thick of it, so I applied. I worked with Feminist Campus, Feminist Majority’s student arm, for four months. There were wins, losses, and more, but I would do it all again in a heartbeat. I met some of the most inspirational organizers I’ve ever met. I learned more in those 4 months than ever before. As the campaign came to an end, I needed to find another avenue for activism, and that brought me to my new family at NOAF. I do their social media and engage with people from all over Louisiana, the country, and, sometimes even, the world, on the daily.
One thing hasn’t changed through it all, my activism and professional experiences are still rooted in feminist principles of intersectionality as derived from my Black, queer, and first-generation identities and I still gladly weaponize my privileges as a male–bodied person to support the liberation of women, people who have abortions, and the rainbow of clients we have. If these identities apply to you, I hope you join me too.
