Astraea Lesbian Foundation: A Trajectory From Grassroots Support to Institutional Cabal
Astraea Lesbian Foundation, a historical women’s organization has, inadvertently or not, become a member of a global cabal that is undermining reproductive sex, by promoting a fetish of adult men.
In 1977, ten visionary women gathered around a tiny kitchen table and resolved to create what would become one of the world’s first women’s foundations dedicated specifically to lesbians and women of color in New York City. These founding members came from diverse racial, economic, and professional backgrounds, united by a common goal: to uplift voices that had been historically sidelined, even within feminist communities, and the LGB movement. Soon after, the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice (ALFJ) was born.
Reporting for them, journalist Elyssa Goodman noted that the organization initially struggled to gain financial support. As a former director recounted, “no one wanted to fund them because they were an organization focused on the needs of lesbians and people of color.”
Undeterred, ALFJ founders developed a grant-making model centered on grassroots groups led by lesbians and women of color. The causes they supported included gay liberation, workers’ rights, anti-war activism, civil rights, environmental justice, and more. At the time, ALFJ was among the first philanthropic funds created entirely by and for women. From the start, the organization committed to ensuring that at least 50% of its leadership would always be women of color.
By 1980, ALFJ began awarding its first small grants between $100 and $1,000, to women organizers and artists across the Northeastern United States. These early funds supported initiatives such as the rights of incarcerated women, lesbian mothers fighting for child custody, and the development of women-centered art spaces—including a lesbian choir. ALFJ became a national organization by 1990.
In 1991, the foundation launched its Lesbian Writers Fund, with the first cohort of winners including Melinda Goodman, Yasmin V. Tambiah, Mariana Romo-Carmona, Magdalena Zscokke, and Ana Maria Simo. Esteemed writers Audre Lorde, Jewelle Gomez, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Sarah Schulman served as judges. That same year, ALFJ honored Audre Lorde with its inaugural Sappho Award of Distinction.
Today, ALFJ has become a global juggernaut of funding for LGBT+ causes, funneling over $31 million dollars to grow LGBT+ advocacy. Since 2013, they have worked with the U.S. (under Obama) and international governments, NGOs, and the United Nations to fund international advocacy for what amounts to the deconstruction of the sex binary, under guise of human rights for the marginalized.
The Philanthropic Shift in LGBT+ Funding
In 1993 tech entrepreneur and lawyer, Martine (formerly Martin) Rothblatt created the first legal rights structure for individuals seeking to technologically alter their reproductive anatomy, which was to change the field of LGB philanthropic funding, along with the acronym representing their rights, forever.
By the mid-1990s, major donors entered the arena. In 1994, billionaire tech entrepreneur Tim Gill founded the LGB NGO, Gill Foundation, which brought corporate-style strategies to social justice philanthropy. Gill, whose wealth was rooted in the tech-driven “new economy,” advocated for systemic change using the tools of big business: large donations, structured programs, and results-oriented funding.
Martine Rothblatt went on to write The Apartheid of Sex, published in 1995 (Republished and retitled in 2011 to From Transsexual To Transhuman: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Form.) The book frames a fetish of dissociation from sexed reality (transsexualism/transgenderism) as a human rights issue, claiming that the binary of reproductive sex, is tantamount to South African Apartheid. Rothblatt has also written about the future of technological reproduction. His ideas seek to reshape human perception about reproductive sex, to accept the developing technologies used to create our species.
In 2013, Global Action for Trans Equality (GATE) gathered a group of activists and funders together in Berlin, to explore new ways to bring resources to “trans” communities. At a subsequent meeting two years later in Istanbul, the International Trans Fund (ITF) was born, fiscally hosted by, and partnered with, the ALFJ. Through this partnership, the ITF has been able to disburse $3.867M to 133 “trans-led” groups in 80 countries. ITF was able to branch out as a separate organization, from ALFJ in January 2022.
