POLITICS
Transphobia from Key Advisor to Donovan Richards
Tyquana Henderson-Rivers has also worked on behalf of Melinda Katz, Bill de Blasio
BY MATT TRACY
A New York City-based
political consultant
who has worked on behalf
of numerous local
elected offi cials has voiced infl ammatory
rhetoric on social media
about transgender and non-binary
individuals, engaged in testy exchanges
with trans political fi gures,
and criticized gender fl uidity
among children.
Tyquana Henderson-Rivers,
who is president of Connective
Strategies and has recently been
working on behalf of Queens City
Councilmember Donovan Richards’
campaign for borough president,
has voiced such sentiments
in posts and comments on Facebook,
where she has on multiple
occasions engaged in contentious
back-and-forth discussions about
transgender individuals.
In a series of Facebook posts and
comments in October, Henderson-
Rivers appeared to reject transgender
individuals as she veered off
into tangents comparing different
animal species to explain why she
won’t respect trans individuals’
identities.
“I’m not going to say pregnant
people. Why? Because ONLY women
can get pregnant,” she wrote.
“I’m not going to call a cat a dog
and a dog a cat even if the cat
barks and the dog meows.”
She also wrote, “And trans men
can’t impregnate a woman so they
are not men.”
It should be noted, contrary to
Henderson-Rivers’ comments, that
there are indeed non-binary individuals
and transgender men who
are able to get pregnant.
Henderson-Rivers continued, “If
you have or have had female reproductive
organs you are a woman.”
In that comment, the wording of
“have had” appears to falsely imply
that as long as someone has
a vagina, that person cannot be a
transgender men or a non-binary
person.
In yet another example of Henderson
Rivers dismissing the identities
of trans women, she wrote
The infl ammatory language that political consultant Tyquana Henderson-Rivers has used about and
toward transgender people could create problems for her clients, such as Queens borough president
hopeful Donovan Richards, a member of the City Council.
that part of the magic of a woman
“is not only in our heads and our
hearts but in between our legs…
The gift was given to us. No matter
how hard you try, you can’t change
it or duplicate it, you can only imitate
it.”
Months later, in January, Henderson
Rivers again aggressively
resisted respecting gender identities.
She disputed the use of
“womxn” — a term that is used
to be inclusive of non-cinsgender
women — when she wrote, “Again,
I’m very clear on who I am and how
I identify. In fact, until folks stop
trying to relabel and rebrand who
we are, we will also continue to be
divided.”
“The X inclusion is actually an
exclusion and I don’t understand
why that is a hard concept for people
to embrace,” Henderson-Rivers
wrote. “You can’t create a new term
to be inclusive of others who don’t
identify with that. It does the opposite
and we feel excluded. As a
black woman, who travels in older
and more conservative circles, this
is off putting.”
Emilia Decaudin, an out transgender
member of the New York
State Democratic committee and
currently a candidate for both district
leader and state committee
in Queens’ 37th State Assembly
District, opted to chime into that
thread to explain the origin of the
CONNECTIVESTRATEGIES.COM
term “womxn.”
“Using the term womxn allows
those non-binary people to be included
in spaces that they ‘obviously’
deserve to be in without invalidating
their gender or forcing
them to identify as something they
are not,” Decaudin wrote.
Henderson-Rivers proceeded to
fi re back to Decaudin in response,
saying, “Emilia Decaudin you can’t
possibly step in and tell ME about
the struggles of being a woman.
That right there is misogyny and
privilege. How is woman subset of
something that came after??? That
makes ZERO sense when clearly
‘womxn’ was something created in
the past couple of years and ‘woman’
has existed since the beginning
of time.”
That infl ammatory rhetoric seen
on Henderson-Rivers’ Facebook
page also extended to gender expression.
In a Facebook post from
October, Henderson-Rivers wrote,
“Why is there something wrong
with teaching little boys and little
girls to be little boys and little
girls?”
In an interview with Gay City
News, Decaudin argued that Henderson
Rivers’ rhetoric falls into
the same category as homophobia,
sexism, xenopohobia, and racism
because although Henderson-
Rivers said she does not hate, the
language was voiced in a way that
could be deemed dehumanizing
and invalidating of peoples’ identities.
Noting Henderson-Rivers’ role
in Richards’ campaign, Decaudin
said that candidates for borough
president should be mindful of
the inclusive policies and practices
that will be expected of them
should they be elected.
“I don’t see why people who are
trans, like me, or otherwise allies
should put their faith in someone
who seems to be complacent with
that kind of behavior,” said Decaudin,
who stressed that although
borough presidents do not wield
as much power as other elected offi
cials, they still boast large staffs
and play a role in community
board appointments and other infl
uential leadership capacities in
their respective boroughs.
Among her other projects, Henderson
Rivers recently worked on
behalf of then-Borough President
Melinda Katz during her successful
run for Queens district attorney.
According to Connective Strategies’
website, Henderson-Rivers
also worked on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s
past political campaigns.
One day after this story was
posted online, Henderson-Rivers
forwarded the following response:
“My comments expressed on Facebook
were hurtful and deeply
offensive. I apologize. In the midst
of a heated online debate last October,
I responded poorly. I recognize
that every person has the
right to their own gender identity.
As a Christian minister and
a black woman, I have welcomed
LGBTQAI people in my family with
love; raised LGBTQAI family members
in my home whom I love dearly;
and, I employ LGBTQAI people
and always foster an environment
of inclusion. Sometimes, when
someone says something hurtful
to you, you look to say something
hurtful in response, and that was
wrong on my part because that it
is not what my religion teaches me
to do. I should have turned the other
cheek. In the rough and tumble
world of politics, I need to fi nd a
better way to respond.
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