OUR APPROACH
Trans Student Educational Resources is a youth-led organization dedicated to transforming the educational environment for trans and gender nonconforming students through advocacy and empowerment. In addition to our focus on creating a more trans-friendly education system, our mission is to educate the public and teach trans activists how to be effective organizers. We believe that justice for trans and gender nonconforming youth is contingent on an intersectional framework of activism. Ending oppression is a long-term process that can only be achieved through collaborative action.
Police
Police profile trans people (particularly trans women of color) for walking while trans, carrying condoms, or having documents that do not “match” their appearance. Ending the violence starts with abolishing the police in favor of resources for all people.
Equality/Justice/Liberation
Every person has different identities, needs, and abilities. Equality means that trans students would just have the same access to the broken education system as their peers, a system that we would rather see restructured and improved as a whole than see ourselves assimilated to. Learn why we removed equality from our name here.
Youth Liberation
We believe that trans youth are not only our future: we are leading social movements today. Our staff and members are all trans youth, reflecting our belief in social movements led by and for young people.
The Asterisk
In the mid 2010's, we removed the asterisk (trans*) from all of our materials. Following this decision, we decided to publish a memo on this decision. While there is nothing wrong with the asterisk on its own, it was deemed unnecessary and typically applied in ways meant to dismissed voices on the margins of our community.
Black Lives Matter
Black trans lives are often left out of the conversation on police violence. Shortly after forming the organization, we updated our mission to center Black trans lives.
Justice
We train our young activists to understand the difference between services, rights, and justice-based organizing. “Rights” are not enough to liberate trans people in a fundamentally broken system.