RELAY REPORT: UTAH (SALT LAKE CITY) JULY 5TH, 2026
I bet you can picture the scene.
Imagine a group of friends that feel like home, and a space where you can fully be yourself. It’s movie night, and nobody’s in any rush. The jokes flow easily. There are plenty of tangents. You say you’ll start the movie at 2:00 but eventually get to it a couple hours later.
That’s the beauty of Trans Movie Night, a recurring gathering that, for the sake of the relay, transformed itself on July 5th, 2026 into Trans Movie Afternoon. Nothing about the group is complicated or fussy. It grew organically. By some accounts, it’s two and a half years old, depending on who’s counting. It started with a couple of friends, then grew to more. New relationships meant new members. A younger sibling had to wait until they turned 18, but then immediately became part of the crew. It’s a core of good friends, but deliberately open at the periphery.
Or, as organizer Laurel Hiatt puts it…
'There are only two rules to trans movie night– are they trans and are they cool?’
The funniest implication of this rule is that, when movie club is in session, Laurel’s husband Peter serves as Trans Movie Club’s Designated Cis. While in truth he’s welcomed fully into the space, it’s much more fun to say that he’s banished to a different room for a movie’s runtime, summoned only when the group needs more snacks.
And so, on the day after America’s 250th birthday, a tightly bonded group of trans pals gathered in a temporarily Peter-less room of Laurel’s house. The plan was to watch the late 90s queer classic “But I’m A Cheerleader.” And that happened, to be clear, but not right away. Call it “participatory democracy” if you want to be haughty, or just call it a space safe enough for flexibility and requests. Either way, before starting the film, the group watched an episode of the cult dark fantasy show “Black Mirror” (in this case San Junipero, an 80s-set queer love story that stands out in a series not known for its uplift in being actually heartwarming).
After that, there was still no rush. they listened to some music– a track by the asexual rapper Cupcakke, and a few songs produced by group members. And then, naturally, everybody was hungry, so they ordered Rancheritos, a local comfort food Mexican spot famed for their massive portions. It was that kind of scene.
But here’s another thing about a community that knows each other deeply. Most of the time, you’re trading inside jokes and showing each other cult movies and TV shows you love. You’re goading each other to order giant burritos stuffed with flaming hot cheetos (the phrase “get your thing! Live your truth!” was shouted at least once). But because you trust each other implicitly, you’re also talking about life and all of its disappointments. A couple weeks before, one of the movie club friends lost their job as a direct result of transitioning. Tragically, this wasn’t the first time the group had to support members through exactly the same experience. But shared indignities also mean shared support, and by the time the food arrived plans for next steps were being hatched, together.
Eventually, the “official” movie of the night began. The whole crew had seen it plenty of times before, though it’s a bit of an anomaly in their programming schedule. Usually their choices tend more towards body horror and dystopian stories. But I’m a Cheerleader, in contrast, is fully romantic— both in that it is literally a romantic comedy and that it depicts a happy ending for queer characters. It’s technicolor and campy and silly. All the emotions— heartbreak, betrayal, isolation, love, community— are right on the surface.
Put differently, it’s an extremely teenage movie. There’s a fairly common refrain in the trans community, actually, about how fully building your life as a trans adult is a lot like being a teenager again— discovering your voice and identity, coming to terms with a changing body, introducing yourself to the world. And across identity makers, there’s a reason why the spaces that matter most to us at moments like that feel a whole lot like a trans movie club. Silly. A little chaotic, in the best way. But safe. So of course, when the film was over, nobody really wanted to leave. The group’s youngest member requested that everybody watch a surreal cartoon called Mouse Patrol, so that too was added to the agenda.
When Laurel was recounting the story of the event afterwards, they shared a quote from the musician Pat the Bunny. “A punk rock song won’t ever change the world but I can tell you about a couple that changed me.”
On one hand, trans movie night is a tiny thing. A group of friends, usually less than ten people, watching a movie or two and cracking each other up. But in a world where you can still get fired for being who you are, a world where there are so few spaces to truly be safe, it’s clear why a better world just isn’t possible without spaces exactly like this one. A space filled with laughter, not because it ignores the pain of the world, but because that’s when laughter is needed the most.
WHAT COMMITMENTS CAME OUT OF THE SPACE
The group left this particular evening with the same commitment that has always driven them: to be a group of trans adults creating, one step at a time, the space they’ve always wanted and still need.
WHAT WENT IN THE BOX:
A hodge podge of gifts, representative, once again, of a group that is fully created by all its members. One person added a recipe, a couple more pieces of crochet art, still another put in a collage art piece. Nobody needed to be directed to make or procure the official item for the relay. In trans movie club, if you have a great idea, you just do it.
