We find the week’s top Black queer and trans women stories and more so you don’t have to. Got a news item or commentary to add to our roundup? Post the link in the comments.

President Obama’s State of the Union Speech First to Say Transgender, But So What?

It’s important for President Obama to recognize transgender Americans in his public speeches, but he must go further than that in terms of policy. Being an ally is empty without providing real, sweeping protections for LGTBQ people and particularly, recognizing the unique struggles faced by LGTBQ people of color.

“So what Obama said transgender? It takes no effort at all to say the word transgender. All these fresh ally cookies they baked last night. Where are the works that are going to dismantle structural oppression and end white supremacy. What actions will be taken to end the physical violence we face everyday,” Lourdes Ashley Hunter, Black Lives Matter Leadership Team and National Director, Trans Women of Color Collective told the Black Youth Project.

More from the Black Youth Project.

Violence Against Black Transgender Women Goes Largely Ignored

Elle Hearns was hoping to share in the collective pain other black people were feeling during a Trayvon Martin rally in Columbus, Ohio, in April 2012.

But instead of feeling embraced, she said both men and women around her engaged in very loud, transphobic conversations and encroached on her personal space.

“It made me feel very unsafe because I didn’t know what people were willing to do in that space,” Hearns, a transgender woman, told The Root, specifically pointing out that most of the violent remarks were coming from black men. “There was this macho bravado of cockiness in that space where they were allowed to say and do whatever, when the focus for me was utilizing my voice to stand up for something I believed in, which was honoring Trayvon.”

Continue reading over at The Root.

The Women Behind Black Lives Matter

Last summer’s killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Mo. Police Officer Darren Wilson, followed by the Ferguson Police Department’s decision to allow Brown’s body to lie prone on a hot summer street for four-and-a-half sultry hours, combined with an expanding list of unarmed black people slain by police—Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley—has transformed America into a country where nightly protests against police violence are all but obligatory. While white Americans on conservative news programs may rage about the criminal tendencies of those slaughtered, protests have emerged not just in Ferguson but in Washington, D.C., Oakland, Chicago, Bloomington, Minnesota, Los Angeles, New York, and internationally in London, Paris and even Tokyo. Activists in Palestine have expressed solidarity with the Ferguson protesters. Qui tacet consentire videtur, “silence implies consent,” and many people want it made clear that they do not consent.

What few realize, however, is that a movement often described as “‘leaderless,” and largely framed by the bodies of slain black men and boys, is being propelled by the efforts of women of color.

More from In These Times.

8 Critical Facts About the State of Transgender America​

Though visibility of transgender Americans is rapidly heightening, people in the community still face discrimination from employers, housing agencies, medical providers and the military, [Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality,] said. They endure harassment in every aspect of their lives: at home, school, work and on the streets.

Helping to stop the discrimination, she said, starts with data collection.

Read more at the Washington Post.