Tourmaline
she/her

Tourmaline is a Black trans woman with light brown skin in front of some green bushes. She has blue eye makeup with short brown curly hair. She is wearing a black spaghetti strap dress holding the end of her gold necklace with her left hand. She has a tattoo on her right shoulder that extends onto her chest.

Job title
activist   filmmaker   writer  
Identity categories
Click for help Learn more about these categories
trans   transgender woman   queer   Black  
Places of practice

United States of America

Alternate names

Reina Gossett

Images
Tourmaline is a Black trans woman with light brown skin in front of some green bushes. She has blue eye makeup with short brown curly hair. She is wearing a black spaghetti strap dress holding the end of her gold necklace with her left hand. She has a tattoo on her right shoulder that extends onto her chest.

Tourmaline is a Black trans woman with light brown skin in front of some green bushes. She has blue eye makeup with short brown curly hair. She is wearing a black spaghetti strap dress holding the end of her gold necklace with her left hand. She has a tattoo on her right shoulder that extends onto her chest.

Tourmaline, a brown-skinned person with dark, wet, shoulder-length hair, stands in front of a sunset in a pink ruffled dress, her left foot on the beach and right foot slightly lifted. She holds a bouquet of tulips in her left hand, holding up her dress with her right hand.

Tourmaline, a brown-skinned person with dark, wet, shoulder-length hair, stands in front of a sunset in a pink ruffled dress, her left foot on the beach and right foot slightly lifted. She holds a bouquet of tulips in her left hand, holding up her dress with her right hand.

Metadata
Biography

Tourmaline is an activist, writer, and filmmaker. Along with Sasha Wortzel, Tourmaline wrote, directed and produced Happy Birthday, Marsha! a short film about legendary trans activist Marsha P. Johnson starring Independent Spirit Award winner Mya Taylor. A long-time community organizer, Tourmaline worked as the membership director at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project from 2010 to 2014 to lift the voice and power of trans and gender nonconforming people and helped lead the successful campaign to end healthcare discrimination against low income trans and gender nonconforming New Yorkers. She also worked at Queers for Economic Justice where she directed the Welfare Organizing Projected and produced A Fabulous Attitude, documenting low-income LGBT New Yorkers surviving inequality and thriving despite enormous obstacles. Tourmaline is a 2007 Soros Justice Fellow, a 2009 Stonewall Community Foundation Honoree, and the recipient of the 2016 Ackerman Institute Community Award. Her work has been supported by the Open Society Foundation, Art Matters Foundation, and the Astraea Foundation’s Global Arts Fund. She was a 2012-2013 Queer/Art/Mentorship fellow. Along with Eric Stanley and Johanna Burton, Tourmaline is an editor of the forthcoming New Museum anthology, Trap Door, on trans art and cultural production to be published by MIT Press in 2017.

Queer Art. “Tourmaline.” Accessed August 11, 2023. https://www.queer-art.org/tourmaline-2.
Filmography
References
Hanssens, Catherine, Aisha C. Moodie-Mills, Andrea J. Ritchie, Dean Spade, Urvashi Vaid. “Drivers of Incarceration in A Roadmap for Change:Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminalization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV.” Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, Columbia Law School, May 2014. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/roadmap-change-federal-policy-recommendations-addressing.Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative. “A Fabulous Attitude: Low-Income LGBTGNC People Surviving & Thriving on Love, Shelter & Knowledge,” 2010. https://thevaidgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/afabulousattitudefinalreport.pdf.Hammer, Ida, tourmaline. “Ida Hammer Speaking on Violence Against Trans Women, as Told to Reina Gossett.” In Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement, edited by Patterson, Jennifer. Riverdale Avenue Books, 2016. Strangio, Chase, tourmaline. “Justice for Jane Doe and the Urgency of Survival.” HuffPost, June 15, 2014. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/justice-for-jane-doe-and-_b_5494030.