Autonomy is My Joy: Resistance

In a time when gender justice is under attack--be it from state violence or cultural erasure--we return to the wisdom of our ancestors and the clarity of our joy. Autonomy is My Joy: Resistance is our 2025 campaign, a continuation of The Center for Cultural Power’s series on bodily and gender autonomy. This year, we focus on collective resistance and joy as powerful acts of defiance.

This campaign isn’t just about naming the harms. It’s about reclaiming the narratives. It’s about honoring joy as strategy, care as resistance, and art as a portal to new futures.

Together with our movement partners, artists, and cultural workers across the country, we are creating and sharing stories that reject control and scarcity and uplift abundance, belonging, and freedom.

What the Campaign is About

In collaboration with trans, queer, BIPOC, and gender expansive artists and movement leaders, Autonomy is My Joy: Resistance seeks to:

• Reframe gender justice as a celebration of collective safety and autonomy, not just a fight.
• Amplify art, stories, and voices rooted in interdependence, care, and joy.
• Mobilize digital and in-person actions that spark cultural and legislative change.
   

Our visual and narrative work is grounded in a deep intersectional lens that includes:

• Reproductive health & bodily autonomy,
• Trans liberation & the dismantling of the gender binary,
• Ending gender-based violence & advancing collective safety, and
• Confronting fatphobia, racism, sex work stigma, and climate injustice as gender justice issues.
   

The Narrative Arc of the Campaign

We are shifting harmful narratives by highlighting truths our communities have always known. Each story, each work of art, is rooted in one or more of our core narrative values:

• Autonomy is a fundamental right
• Abundance is possible for all
• Community care is safety
• We are interdependent and interconnected
• Joy is resistance and resilience
• Cultural power shapes liberatory futures

This is how we resist. This is how we reclaim joy.

The Stories We’re Telling

We’re commissioning digital illustrations and a limited series of videos that explore:

• Joyful visions of autonomy and care,
• Intersectional stories of trans liberation, abortion access, racial justice, sex work, and climate justice,
• Resistance narratives rooted in Southern communities like Georgia and North Carolina, along with California & New York, and
• Multigenerational voices of ancestral memory and visionary futures.
   

This work is deeply informed by cultural wisdom and advocacy experience of our movement partners, who are shaping change from the grassroots to the global.

Movement Partners & Artist Disruptors

Our campaign is powered by the brilliance of our growing list of movement partners and commissioned artists, working at the intersection of culture and justice.

Movement Partners

• Ancient Song
  • is a national birth justice organization working to eliminate maternal and infant mortality and morbidity among Black and Latinx people. We provide doula training and services, offer community education, and advocate for policy change to support reproductive and birth justice.
• Black Mamas Matter Alliance (BMMA)
  • is a Black women-led cross-sectoral alliance that centers Black mamas and birthing people to advocate, drive research, build power, and shift culture for Black maternal health, rights, and justice.
• BlaQueer Art Market
  • An Atlanta-based creative ecosystem & art market centering southern Black Queer and Trans artists.
• TransLatin@ Coalition
  • A nationally recognized organization with representation in 10 states across the U.S, empowering Trans, Gender Expansive, and Intersex (TGI) Communities. Through comprehensive support, fearless advocacy, and dynamic leadership programs, they’re building a future where our community not only survives, but thrives.
• We Testify
  • is an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions, increasing the spectrum of abortion storytellers in the public sphere, and shifting the way the media understands the context and complexity of accessing abortion care.

We are actively finalizing collaborations. Check back often to see new additions and highlights from across the field.

Artists Disruptors

We are actively finalizing collaborations. Check back often to see new additions and highlights from across the field

Explore. Share. Get Involved.

Throughout the year, you’ll find campaign art, explainer videos, digital activations, and stories that invite you to reflect, take action, and imagine boldly.

This is more than a campaign. It’s a cultural strategy.
It’s a collective refusal.
And it’s an invitation:
To choose joy. To resist.
To declare: Autonomy is my joy