Trinity Ordona

Trinity Ordoña
Ordoña at the 2017 Queer and Asian Conference (QACON) at UC Berkeley
Born	San Diego, California
Nationality	Filipina
Occupation(s)	Academic, Grassroots organizer, Reverend
Spouse	Desirée Thompson
Awards	Northern California GLBT Historical Society Award for Individual Historic Achievement 2008 Phoenix Award Honorees from Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community
Academic background
Alma mater	University of California, Santa Cruz
Academic work
Discipline	American Studies, LGBT Studies, Liberal Arts, Community Studies and Politics, History of Asian Americans
Sub-discipline	Queer and Transgender Asian and Pacific Islander Ethnohistory
Institutions	City College of San Francisco
Main interests	Queer women of color health, Social stratification
Notable works	Coming Out Together: An Ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander Queer Women's and Transgendered People's Movement of San Francisco

Rev. Trinity Ordoña is a lesbian Filipino-American college teacher, activist, community organizer, and ordained minister currently residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is notable for her grassroots work on intersectional social justice. Her activism includes issues of voice and visibility for Asian/Pacific gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals and their families,[1] Lesbians of color,[2] and survivors of sexual abuse.[3] Her works include her dissertation Coming Out Together: an ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander queer women's and transgendered people's movement of San Francisco,[4] as well as various interviews and articles published in anthologies like Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity and Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology. She co-founded Asian and Pacific Islander Family Pride (APIFP), which "[sustains] support networks for API families with members who are LGBTQ,"[5] founded Healing for Change, "a CCSF student organization that sponsors campus-community healing events directed to survivors of violence and abuse,"[6] and is currently an instructor in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies Department at City College of San Francisco.[7]

Biography

Ordoña was born in San Diego, California to Filipino immigrants, where she lived until she was eighteen years old. She attended Immaculate Heart College until 1971, where she majored in liberal arts. From there she attended University of California, Santa Cruz and University of California, Berkeley where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Asian American History. Ordoña went on to receive a Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from University of California, Santa Cruz.[8]

Ordoña met Desirée Thompson in Hawaii in July 1985. Thompson moved to San Francisco in 1987, when she and Ordoña began their relationship. On June 25, 1988, Ordoña and Thompson married in Golden Gate Park.[9] 120 people attended the marriage ceremony. They drove down Castro Street on the back of a convertible, and on the next day drove the same convertible in the Gay Pride Parade.[10]

Works

Topics of interest in Ordoña's published works cover the politics of racial triangulation within feminist social justice spaces,[11] internalized racism and the idea that shared oppression is not sufficient grounds for solidarity (similar to June Jordan's ideas in "Report from the Bahamas"[12]), identities of alterity, social inequalities and its relationship to privilege.[13] Her works have been published in anthologies edited by Gloria Anzaldúa,[13] Sharon Lim-Hing,[14] and Maria P. P. Root.[15] She has also been published in the Amerasia Journal, in roundtable discussion with other queer women academics about immigration topics, perceived homophobia in Asian American communities, and the Ameri-centric model of coming out.[16]

In grassroots movements, Ordoña has organized in activism around San Francisco's I-Hotel,[17] the Agbayani Village for Retired Farmworkers Union, and anti-Vietnam War efforts. She is a founding member of the Red Envelope Giving Circle in the San Francisco Bay Area, a group that has "granted over $42,500 to 22 individual and group projects." There is a collection of Ordoña's papers in the Ethnic Studies Library of the University of California, Berkeley.[18]

Awards and achievements

• APIQWTC's Phoenix Award 2008 with partner Desiree Thompson[19]
• UCSF Chancellor's Award for Public Service (1999)[20]
  • Noted for her activism on the International Hotel, United Farm Workers, Fight Back Campaign against the KKK
• Northern California GLBT Historical Society Award for Individual Historic Achievement[21]
• BACW Lesbian of Achievement, Vision and Action Award[21]
• Co-host of Bay Area Lesbian Health Conference (2002)[2]
• Presenter in Mumbai conference of international gay and lesbian organizations (2002)[22]
• Co-founder of APIFP, previously the San Francisco chapter of PFLAG[23]
• Associate Director of the UCSF Lesbian Health Research Center (2002–04)[6]
• "20 Most Influential Lesbian Professors" (2008) by Curve[6]

See also

• Intersectionality
• List of Filipino Americans
• Racism in the LGBT community
• Homophobia in ethnic minority communities

Notes

1. Fern, Elizabeth (26 June 1996). "TRINITY ORDONA". SFGate. Retrieved 25 Feb 2017.
2. McInaney, Maureen (26 June 2002). "UC San Francisco Hosts Bay Area Lesbian Health Conference". Ascribe News. Factiva.
3. Nakano, Mia (10 November 2012). "Trinity Ordona 05". Mia Nakano & The Visibility Project. Vimeo. Retrieved 25 February 2017.
4. Ordona, Trinity (2000). Coming out together: an ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander queer women's and transgendered people's movement of San Francisco. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415978088.
5. Rhee, Margaret. Chen, Edith Wen-Chu; Yoo, Grace J. (eds.). "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Identity" (PDF). Encyclopedia of Asian American Issues Today. 1: 427.
6. "Trinity Ordona: Biography". Women's Spirituality Program. California Institute of Integral Studies. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
7. "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies Department Employee Directory". City College of San Francisco. Retrieved April 27, 2017.
8. "CCSF Faculty in Review".
9. Filipino American National Historical Society (2011). Filipinos in San Francisco (Images of America series). Arcadia Publishing. p. 59. ISBN 978-0738581316.
10. Butler, Becky (1990). Ceremonies of the Heart: Celebrating Lesbian Unions. Seal Pr.
11. Ordoña, Trinity. Lim-Hing, Sharon (ed.). "Cross-Racial Hostility and Inter-Racial Conflict: Stories to Tell, Lessons to Learn". The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writing by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women: 391–397.
12. Jordan, June (2003-01-01). "Report from the Bahamas, 1982". Meridians. 3 (2): 6–16. doi:10.1215/15366936-3.2.6. JSTOR 40338566. S2CID 141773974.
13. Ordoña, Trinity. Anzaldúa, Gloria (ed.). "Developing Unity Among Women of Color: Crossing the Barriers of Internalized Racism and Cross-Racial Hostility". Making Face, Making Soul = Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color: 304–316.
14. Lim-Hing, Sharon (1998-08-26). The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writings by Asian & Pacific Islander Lesbians. Sister Vision. ISBN 9780920813973.
15. Root, Maria (1997). Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity. Thousand Oak: SAGE Publication. pp. 230–246.
16. Chung, Cristy; Kim, Aly; Nguyen, Zoon; Ordona, Trinity; Stein, Arlene (2008-02-05). "In Our Own Way". Amerasia Journal. 20 (1): 137–147. doi:10.17953/amer.20.1.b6303611u06ur125.
17. Habal, Estella (2007). San Francisco's International Hotel: mobilizing the Filipino American community in the anti-eviction movement. Temple University Press. pp. 168. ISBN 9781592134465. OCLC 191891515.
18. "Ordona, Trinity Papers". LGBTQ Religious Archives Network. Retrieved 2024-06-20.
19. "Desiree Thompson & Trinity Ordoña". January 2008.
20. "UCSF Faculty and Staff Members Honored for Public Service". Business Wire.
21. "SPIRIT: A HUNDRED YEARS OF QUEER ASIAN ACTIVISM".
22. "Laws on homosexuality archaic - Gay associations". The Times of India.
23. Cianciotto, Jason; Cahill, Sean (19 April 2012). LGBT Youth in America's Schools. University of Michigan Press. p. 22.