Fashion
Madonna, Alex Consani Celebrate Trans Community at Fashion Fundraiser
Mar
The fashion show fundraiser Mother, Daughter, Holy Spirit held benefitting the Trans Justice Funding Project was a sweeping success. Hosted in New York City on March 29, the event featured appearances from Madonna and model Alex Consani, who are celebrating International Transgender Day of Visibility with touching reflections on the community-driven night.
“It’s important, now more than ever to remind ourselves how beautiful, powerful, and creative our community is,” Consani wrote on Instagram, where she reposted a photo Madonna shared with her at the show. “We must lead with love and understanding, even when those around us don’t care to do the same. Listen to the trans people around you, give them love and let them know they are heard.”
Madonna snapped photos with Connie Fleming, Julia Fox, fundraiser organizers Bobbi Salvör Menuez and John Mollett, and more. “It breaks my heart to witness the pain of Trans people who are not accepted by a society that fears them because they are different,” Madonna shared earlier this year in the wake of Donald Trump’s return to office. “The excitement people get from watching people go down or be silenced, be blacklisted … is disturbing. The enjoyment we get from other people’s pain is a sin.”
Nearly every corner of the entertainment industry has made a point of standing with the trans community recently. In February, Lady Gaga used her time onstage at the Grammy Awards to declare: “It’s such an honor to sing for all of you. I just want to say tonight that trans people are not invisible. Trans people deserve love. The queer community deserves to be lifted up. Music is love.”
A few days before that, Lucy Dacus pledged $10,000 to GoFundMe campaigns for trans surgeries and encouraged her followers on the social media platform X to donate, too. “The government will never be the source of our validation or protection,” she wrote. “We have to do it ourselves.”
And just weeks later, the actress Hunter Schafer revealed in an eight-minute social media post that her passport gender marker was changed to male by the State Department without her consent or knowledge. “Trans people are beautiful. We are never going to stop existing. I’m never going to stop being trans,” she said at the time. “A letter on a passport can’t change that. Fuck this administration. I don’t really have an answer on what to do about this, but I feel it was important to share. This is real.”
