The Golden Psychology Advocacy Team creates change by engaging at the city and state level to support legislation that advances rights, dignity, and humanity of Transgender, Nonbinary, and Gender Expansive individuals.

We collaborate on several city and state initiatives with partner organizations, to advocate for Medicaid coverage of gender affirming care, safety of people receiving gender affirming care in the State of New York, and the rights of Transgender and Nonbinary individuals incarcerated in New York jails and prisons.

Trans and Nonbinary Adolescents face overwhelming attacks on their rights and freedoms. Our Advocacy fellowship is a program in development- aiming to start in April of 2025.

We will select 10 adolescent fellows and support them in learning about choosing policies to work on, advancing legislation at city and state levels, building community, working collaboratively and sustaining strength in the face of adversity.

We are currently seeking funding support for this program.

The United States currently holds over 2 million people in its jails, prisons, and other carceral facilities. This includes approximately 5,000 known transgender people, who are at up to a 20% overall risk of being incarcerated in their lifetime. This can increase to nearly 50% for Transgender Women of Color. These Transgender and Gender-Expansive incarcerated individuals are disproportionately BIPOC Transgender Women. In prison, Transgender people are at exceedingly high risk for violence, victimization, and abuse. 78% of transgender individuals reported emotional pain from hiding their gender identity during incarceration. 47% of transgender women who had been incarcerated reported being victimized while being held. 59% of transgender women reported being sexually assaulted -- this is compared to 4% of men held in male facilities who report sexual assault.

Transgender and Gender Expansive detainees are typically not permitted access to affirming doctors or supportive community or affinity groups in which to process their lived experience. These individuals rarely receive acknowledgment about the abuses they have experienced in carceral settings, and often their traumas go unrecognized, and unaddressed. Meanwhile, providers within the system who wish to advocate for gender-affirming care are met with barriers to the provision of gender-affirming care to their patients.   

These issues are urgent, and in developing this program we hope to equip Transgender and Gender Expansive detainees with skills to support their survival in prisons and jails.  

Transgender and Gender-Expansive people who are incarcerated are not provided tailored education about gender, gender affirming self-care, and harm reduction while they are incarcerated. With this program, we will implement a weekly workshop for Gender-Expansive individuals in the Rose M. Singer Center (RMSC) at Rikers Island.   

Each UPLIFT workshop consists of 4 parts: introductions and grounding, collaborative and engaging creative activities, community supported exploration of relevant questions by participants, and emotion regulation skills training.   

We have built the UPLIFT workshops based on direct feedback that was provided by Gender-Expansive people in detention to DOC employees regarding their educational needs.