I love this speech. Its simple, its short, but it means a lot. I had first learned about miss major through her book, Miss major speaks: Conversations with a black trans revolutionary (2023), and quickly fell in love with her wit and defiance, which I’m sure you can see in this speech. I was devastated to learn she had passed this year, and it led me down a frenzy of her speeches. Many of them are in podcasts, or video essay formats, but this one is a raw example of her publicly speaking at the opening for the first ever transgender pride in new England, held in Northampton, Massachusetts in the USA.

This speech stands out to me for many reasons. Obviously this speech is impactful because of Ethos, simply having a living legend open for the event is enough to get people excited. But she starts off her speech enthusiastically, celebrating the people who are there, and being excited for the event itself. This is immediately contagious, which makes her following statement easy to process, she encourages the audience that no matter what they believe in “Adam and Eve or two amoeba” people are diverse, so it’s important to embrace the people who show up for you. That everyone came from “two whatever have you’s”, this lighthearted humor and sincerity in her speech connects with the audience as she encourages people to share their own stories. To not be ashamed of being out of the closet because, and I quote “They are not pushing us back in that bitch anymore.”

She follows up, by relating it to her own experience once again using Ethos, but also logos, because if she can do it, so can you. So she lists her age, 65 at the time, and says that she has seen some things that the audience could not believe, her tone, dry and a little sarcastic, makes the statement, not condescending but easy to accept as the truth. The audience is immediately receptive, whooping and humming to what she says.

However, she goes on to explain that now nobody has to put up with anything, because times are different. “We don’t have to take this crap, of anybody, at fucking time” This quick, concise statement, is characteristic of her, she doesn’t waste anytime and says it how it is, her charisma in this speech is undeniable as she maintains eye contact with the crowd, stands tall and emphasizes her words with hands that are precise and not distracting. She then goes back to emphasizing how important it is that everyone sticks together and works together in order to make change, in the laws and public perception.

A quote that I absolutely love from this speech is “Whether you want to know or admit it, your voice is worth listening to, I want to listen to it! you need to listen to somebody else’s voice” She encourages you to speak up and also listen to someone, which is an important skill in building community. This makes her statement that follows even more impactful “we need to stand together, we need to fight together, we need to love and appreciate one another” her natural use of anaphora compels you further and makes you really want to do what she tells you to, when she phases it like this, it makes it real and plausible. A near future. That’s what i’d say to describe this speech.

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy was an incredible black transwoman. She was an author, activist and community organizer for transgender rights. She was a prison abolitionist as she had experienced the mistreatment of cops and prisons first handedly and fought her entire life, from oct 25, 1946 to Oct 13, of this year, for the liberation of transgender, gender non conforming and black and brown queer people, non-stop. She was at the stonewall riots in New York and talked at large about her experience both before and after the riots.

The first New England Transgender Pride Event