Having experienced housing instability as both a child and an adult, Mattie Mooney, 38, understands the importance of “being part of a village instead of an island.” As a kid, they had a “village” that pitched in with meals and rides, and as an adult, Mooney—who is transgender and nonbinary—cofounded the Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network to offer similar aid to their community.
Since 2018, the network has grown from a self-funded collective into an organization that has provided more than $1 million in donations to trans women of color in Washington State and will offer housing on Seattle’s Capitol Hill in a building it just acquired, according to Mooney. Through the network, Mooney in May 2020 cofounded Taking B(l)ack Pride, an event centering Black and brown trans voices often silenced in conversations about police violence and LGBTQ Pride. Taking B(l)ack Pride grew to fill Seattle Center’s Mural Amphitheatre last year.
This article appears in Issue 24 of Alta Journal.
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Prioritizing trans experiences also fuels Mooney’s healthcare career. They helped build the Ingersoll Gender Center’s healthcare access program—“from the ground up,” they say—and now serve as the senior program coordinator of transgender health at the nonprofit provider Swedish. Their own gender-affirming journey offers invaluable insights into the often-discriminatory industry—for example, that it’s especially difficult for trans folks with BMIs of more than 35 to access top surgeries.
After helping create Washington State’s Gender Affirming Treatment Act, which passed in 2021, Mooney is working on legislation to ensure that “all trans folks get access to lifesaving care, not just the skinny ones”—as well as a new degree. “Trans folks are having to teach their doctors how to care for them,” says Mooney, who plans on getting their doctor of nursing practice degree. “To be effective [as a] community organizer, I’m going to need to also be a doctor.”•
Jessica Klein is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Guardian. She is currently a contributing reporter at the Fuller Project, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to reporting on issues that affect women.
