Cecilia Gentili’s powerful legacy lives on

LGBTQ advocate, artist, and author Cecilia Gentili—who died in February, a week after her 52nd birthday—was a revolutionary figure for the trans community.

While her résumé rejected easy categorization, many of her accomplishments tangibly improved the lives of others. When working at the Apicha Community Health Center in New York, Gentili expanded the center’s transgender health services program. A former sex worker, Gentili also created Cecilia’s Occupational Inclusion Network at Callen-Lorde in New York, which offers free healthcare services for sex workers. And as the director of policy at GMHC (the nonprofit organization originally known as Gay Men’s Health Crisis), she advocated tirelessly for people living with HIV/AIDS.

In 2018, Gentili founded Trans Equity Consulting, an organization that works with companies and nonprofits and is dedicated to “developing LGBTQ affirming services, establishing genuine equity in the workplace, and shepherding in new generations of changemakers.”

A talented legislative lobbyist, in 2019 Gentili pushed for the passage of New York’s Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which provided new protections from discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression. She also helped repeal policing policies that disproportionately criminalized trans women and women of color for loitering, often referred to as the “Walking While Trans Ban.” And in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign, Gentili successfully sued the Trump Administration when it attempted to eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s protections for trans people.

Gentili wrote many articles for publications such as The New York Times. “I have spent the last decade of my life fighting for the decriminalization of sex work for adults, to heal all of those times I have been harassed, beaten and raped—not by clients but by law enforcement officials,” she wrote in 2021.

That same year, Gentili wrote passionately about the importance of the Equality Act. “A life built on respect and compassion for all is one of joy and sustenance,” she argued. “Some people believe that in respecting my rights, they will lose some of their own. But equality is an endless cake. The more who eat from it, the more there is to share.”

And in her 2022 memoir, Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist, Gentili wrote bravely about her difficult experiences with sexual abuse, drug addition, and being an undocumented immigrant from Argentina. Still, she managed to simultaneously capture complicated themes of forgiveness, resilience, and happiness.

“I don’t want to be perceived as a ball of trauma, and I don’t want to be perceived as a ball of joy,” Gentili told Them about her book. “Those two things live at the same time.”

This joy could clearly be seen in her memorial service at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Vogue called the service “the fashion event of the year” as more than 1,400 members of Gentili’s chosen family celebrated her iconic life. During the service, Gentili’s husband, Peter Scotto, said that the audience, full of mourners from New York’s LGBTQ community, “was a testament to how awesome this woman was.”