NORTHAMPTON — In a country where trans people have been likened to terrorists, a Florence-based nonprofit is fighting bigotry with community.
At Transhealth’s annual “Freedom to Be Ourselves” benefit last Saturday, 600 trans and gender-diverse individuals and their many allies celebrated the organization’s fifth birthday and raised $50,000 for the life-saving healthcare even states like Massachusetts are under federal pressure to rescind.
On a summerlike evening in downtown Northampton, a visibly sweaty crowd gathered outside the Academy of Music and filtered into the 805-seat theatre. Transhealth’s special guests included local political advocates such as state Reps. Lindsay Sabadosa, Mindy Domb and Samantha Montano; and Mark Antonio Williams and Jesse Lederman, regional directors for Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey.
Credit: TRANSHEALTH
On stage were three armchairs set up for a “fireside chat” with headliner Mercury Stardust, the bestselling author known by 2.6 million TikTok followers as the “Trans Handy Ma’am.” The vibe was as warm as the weather when Mel DeSilva, vice president of development and external affairs at Transhealth, took the podium beside the makeshift living room.
Divisiveness may be a daily reality, said DeSilva, but the evening was an ode to unity. “Truly, it is our joy that is our resistance,” DeSilva said to thunderous applause.
Federal upheaval
Less than two weeks before the event, on May 6, the White House released its 2026 “United States Counterterrorism Strategy,” which begins with a letter from President Donald Trump calling for “a return to common sense and Peace through Strength” and addresses threatening entities in capitalized key words: “We Will Find You and We Will Kill You.” While “Peace through Strength” and “Find and Kill” are seemingly incompatible concepts, the dissonance at the heart of the document — and at the core of federal attacks on trans and gender-diverse people — is best captured by two weaponized pronouns: “We” and “You.”
“In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national [counterterrorism] activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist,” states the unauthored memo, which ProPublica reports was largely written by Sebastian Gorka, a media host named senior director for counterterrorism last year.
Asked to respond to this federal declaration following the benefit, Sen. Markey, who reintroduced a resolution to pass a Transgender Bill of Rights in February, said in a statement: “Whether here in Massachusetts or across the United States, this is about who we are as a country: whether freedom belongs to all of us or only to some of us. We must choose freedom and justice for all.”
“It just all comes back to choice, doesn’t it?” Rep. Sabadosa, D-Northampton, told the Gazette. “There are so many people in this world who just want to take choice away from folks. But history usually finds those people to be the villains.”
Community impact
At the beginning of the benefit, DeSilva welcomed Transhealth CEO Jo Erwin to the stage.
“Here together, we’re in the fight of our life,” said Erwin, referring to the gender-affirming care the organization has provided in an increasingly threatening political environment. When the nonprofit was incorporated in 2021, the need for trans healthcare was clear, they said. Five years later, it is staggering.
Over the last few months, Transhealth — the only independent nonprofit healthcare organization in the country solely devoted to serving trans and gender-diverse communities — has absorbed hundreds of patients from Baystate Health, the largest hospital system in western Massachusetts, which announced in February that it was halting gender-affirming care for minors.
“Transhealth is standing strong and meeting the moment,” said Erwin. “We’re hiring more providers to take on more patients because we believe no trans kids and no trans adults should go without the care they need.”
Pivoting to the hope in community advocacy, Erwin presented four trans advocates with Community Impact Awards: James Shultis of Franklin County, the co-director of Translate Gender; Bentley Munsell of Berkshire County, the clinical nurse manager of ExpressCare at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center; Mercédes Loving-Manley of Hampshire County, the trans engagement coordinator at Safe Passage in Northampton; and Aleyx Bernard of Hampden County, a founding member of Pa’lante Transformative Justice in Holyoke.
“How lucky are we to have so many powerful and talented trans leaders right here in western Massachusetts?” asked Erwin, while the beaming recipients basked in applause.
Haunted house
Next Erwin introduced the keynote speaker, Jack Bruno, a psychotherapist at Transhealth, who shared a deeply personal story about wrestling with his own identity. Bruno likened his experience with his maddening body to inhabiting a haunted house where his spirit wandered unrecognizable rooms — until a trusted medical professional helped him rebuild.
CREDIT: Transhealth Credit: TRANSHEALTH
“A part of me also felt that I was not long for this world,” he admitted. “Like too many people, I could not imagine living past the age of 18.” But he made it to 18, then 25. “Who could imagine planning for a life at 35? At 75!” he continued. “Who could imagine a life beyond feeling so untethered, so haunted by oneself?”
Over time, after seeing trans people represented on television and meeting them in-person, Bruno felt empowered. “I bound my chest, reveling in the shifting architecture of myself,” he said. “New light spilled into my now less haunted house. Rooms once colder and uncared for came alive, echoing with my voice, deepened and finally mine.”
New foundation
Throughout Bruno’s speech, the audience seemed to be collectively holding its breath. The crowd erupted after he finished his remarks, and then DeSilva returned to the podium to introduce two staff members holding hot pink clipboards with questions for Mercury Stardust at the ready.
When Stardust was introduced, she bounded onto the stage in a silver dress that reached the top of her black, high-top Converse sneakers. The “Trans Handy Ma’am” appeared to be over six feet tall, and her outsize energy — and palpable cheer — was embodied in her long, bright blue hair, colorful nails and open-mouthed smile.
Her laugh, which would come soon, and often, was a revelation.
“I grew up in a really small town of 387 people,” said Stardust, a Wisconsinite who spoke with a distinct Midwestern accent and a deep voice. “There were more cows on the family farm than there were people in the town. And frankly, the cows were nicer.”
Then she laughed, a startling succession of staccato peals. As the conversation went on and she got even more comfortable and more amused, she would throw her head back or spread her arms wide, draping them over the chair as though joy was a full-body activity. Every laugh was an invitation — for the audience to come home to themselves.
Stardust, known worldwide for her do-it-yourself (DIY) home maintenance, shared that fixing things herself, and the agency that came with it, became part of her identity before she transitioned. In 2023 she published “Safe & Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair.” For Stardust, who has raised more than $6 million in support of gender-affirming care, fair housing and tenants’ rights go hand-in-hand with trans rights.
Being trans, she said, is a call to action: “To be really trans, to be really connected to our community, is about helping each other because the only way you survive is to link up arms.”
She likened the national state of affairs to a “crack in the foundation,” or a faulty wall, that is at once past the point of no return and, at best, a future tabula rasa.
“We know the foundation’s going to crack, we know that some things are going to fall, and some people will get real hurt,” she said. “But someone’s going to have to rebuild that wall, and I want to be there when we get the chance to rebuild that f—ing wall.”
She got a standing ovation.