Dr. Emma Denney (she/they) is the community resource navigator at the LGBTQ Iowa Archives & Library in Iowa City. She regularly tracks anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the state legislature, traveling to Des Moines to speak against them. She holds a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Iowa and makes music under the name .em.
V Fixmer-Oraiz (they/them) was elected to the Johnson County Board of Supervisors in 2022, becoming the first trans, queer and biracial county supervisor in the state. They helped establish the county’s Trans Advisory Committee, often working with Denney on local issues. They hold a Master’s degree in urban and regional planning from UI.
S. Elliot Steuer (she/they) co-founded DBQ Pride last year and serves on its board. The nonprofit plans the Dubuque Pride Festival (taking place Saturday, June 7), know-your-rights workshops and other community events. Steuer, who is genderfluid, is also a freelance visual artist and writer.
Little Village: How do you view the role of Pride in 2025?
Steuer: I think my first Pride was Chicago Pride in 2018, ’17. I got what I was expecting, quite honestly: a really crazy, free-for-all party. We were in [the historic queer neighborhood] Boystown. It was insane. There were people wearing absolutely nothing. It felt really great and freeing. But I guess, knowing the LGBTQ+ history that I did, it felt incongruent for me. I think we we deserve a wild party. But I have some weird feelings towards it.
I plan it here, and I want people to have a safe place. But I think it should be more than a party. I think it should be a recognition of a lot of hard work and, unfortunately, a lot of things that have been taken away that now we have to fight for. Like, how can we do that without making it a total drag?
Fixmer-Oraiz: I can deeply understand that, Eliot. I feel really old all of a sudden, because I realized I’ve been going to Pride since I was teenager, which was in the ’90s, [including] the Dyke March in San Francisco.
I was asked to give the keynote address for the Rainbow Graduation at the University of Iowa this afternoon, and in it, I plan to talk about how we stand on the shoulders, and I specifically cite Stonewall as a riot that now has turned into Pride. And I cite other things like the Compton’s Cafeteria riot. A lot of this comes out of not only trans women, but trans women of color standing up for themselves against violence, state violence, pushing back against police brutality and extortion and all of those things.
It’s a pretty stark reality. I’m not surprised that you feel so disconnected. It has gone commercial. I mean, that’s what you’re feeling. Yes, we do need celebration — and the Michelob Light parade float, I guess. But when it comes down to it, what are we doing in addition?
Denney: “The first Pride was a riot” is a thing that people say all the time. It’s like, cool. So why are we inviting cops now? Like, why is this how this runs? Pride is this big, like, hey, we are here. There are people like you in the world — come out! Or a big provocation: we are here, and we’re not going anywhere.
Fixmer-Oraiz: I really love what you said about that, because I think about the first Pride I went to as a teenager. Or living in North Carolina and having rural folks come — I was a drag performer as well — and people just being like, “this show saved my life.” There is that sense of, you’re not alone, it’s not always going to be like this, that community is out there — you’re absolutely right. There’s 100 percent reason why we should be out there, and it also puts a target on our back.
The thing that has changed for me in the last three years has been the increasing fear that I have stepping on the stage. I’ve had the horrible conversation with my wife. We have two young children, and before I was getting ready to speak at another rally, she said to me, “Well, what do I do if somebody shoots you? Do I help you, or do I help our kids?” Like, that’s where we’re at.
Steuer: Legally in Dubuque, and I’m sure everywhere, we have to have police. Now, that’s obviously a sore spot, but it’s legally required.
Denney: I think it’s part of why you’ve had this big movement toward the People’s Pride and events like that are very community directed, and resistant to these structures — they’re saying, “No, we don’t have to have cops. We are an organized enough community that we can keep ourselves safe.” We can be a bit utopian about it, we can show a better way of doing this, right?
If we look at our historical frameworks for organizing, did the cops support STAR [Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson’s shelter for homeless LGBTQ+ youth in the 1970s]? No. Did the cops support the [Black] Panthers? No, right? The cops are who I worry about at Pride. If some rando hassled me, the police getting involved is only going to make that situation worse and more dangerous.
Fixmer-Oraiz: I really appreciate you bringing that up. Now that I’m in government, I realize how much of this we just make up. Who wrote the laws? It’s really good to compute that and to say, especially for our community, what makes you feel safe? What we experience in the Trans Advisory Committee is that you’re going to get a lot of different perspectives, because we’re not ubiquitous. I think that some people will feel safer with police, and some people won’t. But what I do want to emphasize is that we should still continually be asking ourselves that. The day that we stop asking, that is the day that we stop being vigilant around protecting ourselves and keeping each other safe.
I also think there’s stock in joy being its own form of resistance, and that that is something that we can’t overlook or undersell.
Denney: I worry about that “joy is a form of resistance” line. Of course, essentially, I agree that living our lives in the face of the horrors is a meaningful thing. But at the same time, resistance is resistance. Resistance is putting your body on the line. Resistance is doing hard work in your community. Resistance is building networks of care. Resistance is doing mutual aid and making sure people have places to sleep and have food. On a fundamental level, resistance is work.
Fixmer-Oraiz: I should also say that I’m a child of immigrants. My mom’s side of the family is Filipino, the other half of my family is Irish, and I really lean into remembering that there are those that came before me that have faced this, whether that is queer ancestors or ancestors of my own lineage. It gives me hope, because famine, war, all of these things have led to me being here in this moment. And so how do I be the best future ancestor I can be? I have to focus on that, because the noise is so loud, the 24-hour news cycle, the anti-existence legislation that is just pummeling our community. There are so few spaces where we can use the bathroom without fear, where we can travel, where we can get our education, where we can go to work, where we can buy our homes or rent houses. Our lives are so restricted that I have to kind of look out into the past, present and future to see that there’s an arc of justice.
In the position that I’m in, I’m just trying to pull people up and push the doors down. As many barriers as I can reduce, as much harm as I can mitigate, I will do my best. And that’s the reason why I say rest and joy are also resistance. Emma, I feel you. I have PTSD from having to sit and hold young humans and their parents and grandparents as they couldn’t run track, or they couldn’t get their name changed, or they couldn’t get access to medical care, and you have adults in the room that are like, “Why can’t my kid have these things?” To hold that level of trauma, day in and day out for years now, I have to take a step back and remember who we are, that they cannot take away our joy.
Denney: One of the things I talk about with community members is that we do, in fact, deserve to be happy and fundamentally, that’s an OK thing to want, and something that you should get. What Pride has become is a party and a place where, like, shit doesn’t matter for a weekend. And I think that that’s not the worst thing in the world, even if it is a little bit naive.
What are some of the most important things people can do to support LGBTQ+ Iowans?
Steuer: Action is the only antidote to hate and to meeting the needs of the community. Saying you stand with trans/gender diverse people is not the same as giving money to mutual aid, or, as sad as this statement makes me to say, being your trans friends’ bathroom buddy, accompanying them so that they aren’t hassled for using the correct restroom. You can attend protests, and rallies, and you need to educate yourself, while obviously using correct pronouns and names.
Fixmer-Oraiz: I think about Dr. Denny, and the work that she’s doing at the statehouse, tracking all these bills — few people are doing that across the nation in the ways that she is, and it is necessary for us to continue doing that kind of work and creating community, like this call and potlucks and things that maybe feel small and minuscule. It’s creating that community.
Denney: You should give money to Iowa Trans Mutual Aid. Iowa Trans Mutual Aid is, like, on a national level, a very special thing that we have in the state. There aren’t a lot of groups that do the kind of work at the scale that ITMAF does it, and the way that ITMAF does it is a model for how we resist this. It is giving funds directly to community members in need, without questioning their need. We can simply choose to do things differently.
How we fight that is by giving money to people who need it and giving resources to people who need them, which include just making sure people can access their medication and their supplies, making sure that people have transportation to medical appointments, making sure that people have transportation if they need to get their kids lifesaving health care the state says they can’t have, and all of that is work that like can be done through this sort of direct mutual aid. It’s also doing things like starting a community garden project or partnering for things like the community fridge. I think realizing just how easy it is to do this kind of work is pretty revolutionary, because it means that everyone can be doing it if they want to.
It’s something like $72 for transportation to get someone across the border to Minnesota, to get gender-affirming care if they’re under 18. It’s that small of an amount of money that can make that much of a difference. With my insurance, my hormones are, depending on what the month is, between $20 and $40. That’s what people need. It’s that little bit to make sure that people can just get through the month. And it does so much good.
There’s this long-running joke in the community that being trans is trading the same $20 around everybody. So if we get a second $20 in that cycle, it becomes easier.
After the Civil Rights bill [SF 418] passed in February, Iowa Starting Line put out an article about, “so what can I do to help trans people,” and the first thing is, unionize. This type of organizing can lead to more meaningful power and let us take more meaningful steps when the state does things like this.
There are all of these different things coming up that, to be blunt, are saying, “Fuck the state of Iowa. We’ll take care of ourselves, whether you want us to or not.”
Fixmer-Ortiz: I see that [hope] now in our young people. I laugh at the fact that I’m a queer elder at 47 but, like, I didn’t think I was going to make it to 20, you know? I have young humans that are 6 years old saying, “Yeah, use I they/them. Today, tomorrow, I’ll use she/her, or whatever.” Thank you. Thank you for being so expansive. Thank you for breaking us free from these binary systems. And then we have college students that are protesting all across the board. I think we have generations coming up that are just like, “we’re not going to stand for it.”
And I think that’s why some things like Pride or potlucks or drag shows, or whatever it is, like, we’re going to keep doing it. It doesn’t matter the law. The crackdowns are going to make us fearful, but we will push back. We will resist. I’m not going to pre-comply. I’m not going to lay down. They’re bringing the fight to us, and they always have, and we’ve always met it with our genius, creativity, with our heart, with our grit, and that’s definitely what gives me hope, is the people in our community.
How would you respond to someone wondering whether trans Iowans are better off moving out of the state?
Denney: If you are an ally, the first question you need to be asking isn’t, “Are you going to move?” but “What can I do to make sure this is a safe place for you to stay?” We’ve talked today about what some of the things you can do: unionize your workplace, work in community aid.
Secondarily, if you’re trans, you need to really ask yourself that question. I don’t think it’s a question you should avoid asking yourself. I know almost everyone has a line. I’ve talked with my partners about like, “OK, if x happens, I wouldn’t feel safe living here.” That’s why I was so fired up about the “drag” law that ended up not getting passed as it was written this session. If police can harass you wherever you are, just for being trans, that starts to be an unsafe enough place for me.
We need to really acknowledge that [moving] isn’t a thing that a lot of people can do. But I think it is powerful to choose to stay and fight. I think you need to be realistic to yourself about whether or not you can do that.
Steuer: I’ve never had the question leveled at me. I admit my privilege. It’s tough to be here as a queer person in any capacity, even if you feel safe in your neighborhood or your city, because what is happening on the greater state level is so disturbing and so disrupting, and it affects your friends and it affects you. It takes a toll on your mental health, even if you’re not actually in physical danger. How long can you sustain that?
Because I acknowledge that I have a level of privilege of “passing,” I have a responsibility to get the keys to the banquet hall, open the door and let everybody in. That is the least that I can do — just locally, keep fighting to unite what community we have here, which is very spread apart and disjointed; to try to unite that into a greater whole, with Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, the different queer communities there. There’s strength in numbers.
Once society is forced to no longer be able to deny the power of our queerness, they have to concede to our power. And we are powerful, or we wouldn’t be getting pushback, because our power scares them.
Q&A with Rep. Aime Wichtendahl
Because Iowa Republicans suddenly decided to end the 2025 Legislative Session with a 21-hour-long marathon, Rep. Wichtendahl — a Democrat from Hiawatha, and Iowa’s first openly trans elected official — had to miss the video call with Denney, Fixmer-Oraiz and Steuer on May 14. She caught up with LV over email a couple days later.
Pride Month arrives in the wake of a devastating legislative session for trans and gender nonconforming Iowans. What thoughts are front of mind for you right now?
Persistence. Having been on the front lines of this session fighting to protect the rights and dignity of trans and queer Iowans, persistence has been my calling. Because I know they’d like nothing more than for me to go away. I don’t intend to give them the pleasure. Keep showing up. Keep being loud. Tell the government that we will not be erased. That Iowa is our home and we will fight for it.
What role should Pride play in 2025 — in political advocacy, mutual aid, as fun catharsis, etc.?
All of the above. It is important we are clear that we are still fighting for rights and for our community. But we should also celebrate each other and be unafraid to live our lives.
How has the experience of growing up trans in small-town Iowa changed since your childhood?
There is an option for community where there was none when I was a child. Granted it may mean traveling and depending on the town still may not be safe to be out in certain places.
What do you say to LGBTQ+, specifically trans, Iowans wondering if they should leave the state?
You always have to do what you feel is best for you and your family. I think with the Trump administration it is possible that nowhere in America is safe. I’d also say the color of the state doesn’t always guarantee safety and acceptance. Discrimination can happen in any state. So can acceptance and community. Personally, it has been hard seeing so many in the community move elsewhere. I’d be sad to see friends move out of my life because of what goes on in Des Moines. I’ve lost my home once in my life. I vowed never again. No one gets to take my home from me. So I choose to stay and fight for those who can’t leave.
What are the most important things allies can and should do for trans Iowans — during Pride Month, if no other time?
Understand that their goal of every anti-trans bill is to erase and criminalize our existence. That is the end game. There is no LGB without the T. Trans rights and gay rights are part of the same coin and when they get done with us, they’ll get back to erasing the rest of our community. So stand in solidarity with the trans community — because together we are mighty.
A shorter version of this article first appeared in Little Village’s June 2025 issue.
