Cecilia Gentili, the pioneering trans activist, actress, writer and sex workers advocate, died last week at the age of 52. Her funeral was a 1,400-person affair that brought together some of New York City s best-known LGBTQ+ writers, actors, activists and artists of all kinds; the writer Grace Byron, who knew Gentili personally, reports from the scene below.
Everyone has a story about the great Cecilia Gentili, who passed away at the age of 52 on February 6th—shortly after a massive birthday party in her honor. Her funeral, the day after Valentine’s Day, was the fashion event of the year. Mourners dressed to the nines turned out to pay tribute and bring red flowers to the writer, actress, performer, sex worker advocate, trans rights pioneer, and mother who was, and is, one of the greats. In recent years, she’d finally begun to get her flowers; her book Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn t My Rapist debuted in 2022 from Little Puss Press, and just this past year, her solo show Red Ink ran Off-Broadway to rave reviews. Her storytelling knew no bounds, running the gamut from touching reflections on trauma to some of the most bawdy stories about airport security I’ve ever heard. Every room she entered fell under her spell because Gentili was a born performer.
It’s fitting, then, that her funeral kicked off with a song by her Pose co-star Billy Porter. “We’re going to think of her in another realm,” said the ceremony organizer, Ceyenne Doroshow, her dear friend and the founder of the trans-led service organization G.L.I.T.S: “In a place where everything is beautiful and shiny.”
“Cecilia,” the crowd chanted back.
“Now give Cecilia a standing ovation,” Doroshow prompted. The crowd went wild during the ceremony when Gentili was crowned “Santa Cecilia, Madre de la Putas.”
As the crowd assembled around St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where legends such as Andy Warhol were interred, photographers lined the street to capture the beautiful veils, showy lace dresses, and gowns. “It’s Cecilia day,” artist and organizer Rio Sofia said. “She’s an immigrant, so it’s international. It’s a day to celebrate the fact that we flooded St. Patrick’s Cathedral with trans people. That was nothing less than historic.” Calling someone a whore, writer and organizer Fran Tirado noted, was one of the highest compliments Gentili could give. “Cecilia was never a victim,” Rio Sofia recently wrote online. Sex work, to Gentili, was work just like any other.
Mourners including Sara Ramirez, Raquel Willis, Jari Jones, Indya Moore, Chase Strangio, Peppermint, Kay Gabriel, Casey Plett, Cat Fitzpatrick, and many more came together at Gentili s funeral to honor immigrants, the undocumented, sex workers, and trans women alike. The audience, Gentili’s husband Peter Scotto said, “was a testament to how awesome this woman was.”
The legends that surround the Argentinian-born Gentili are endless. She was banned from Brazil but never said publicly why. She worked at Apicha Community Health Center for many years before founding Trans Equity Consulting in 2019, helping countless trans women start hormones–including many of the women who would become her children. “Cecilia redefined what motherhood is,” her daughter and professional collaborator Oscar Diaz said at her memorial last week.
And make no mistake—she was a mother. No quotes. Her children included the legendary designer Gogo Graham, who designed the clothes she was laid to rest in, Rio Sofia, Cyd Nova, Maya Margarita, Qween Jean, Gia Love, Liaam Winslet, Chiquitita, Joshua Allen, and so many others. She was many things to many people including an incredible care giver.
“When I was planning to get married to my partner, who’s also trans, I asked [Gentili] to be my wedding mom,” Sofia shared, adding: “Something she really modeled for me was that a wedding was something I and this trans community deserved.” Sofia and Cyd Nova’s ceremony was the T4T wedding event of the year, and of course, Cecilia was on the scene. “She linked up with my biological mom on FaceTime helping each other coordinate their dresses,” recalls Sofia: “A lot of people see Cecilia as this incredibly glamorous diva but they don’t witness her humility. She insisted on not being as well dressed as my mom. People don’t understand how trans family structures work. She was a mother. Period.”
The painter Cielo Felix-Hernandez also confided in Cecilia Gentili. While they worked together on planning Rio and Cyd’s wedding, Gentili helped Felix-Hernandez pick her middle name: Maria. “We shared a lot of similarities with our origin. I shared a lot with her about what it was like to grow up a Puerto Rican and a trans woman. I found a matriarch in her. I never assigned that to her, I felt like she was a close friend. She always reminded me how beautiful I was,” recalls Felix-Hernandez, one of whose paintings hangs in Cecilia’s partner Peter s house.
Gentili s sister LaLa Zannell originally met Gentili in 2012 and soon became family, recalling that the two “did everything together.” Gentili cared for Zannell during her gender-affirming care surgeries, an experience about which Zannell says: “I’ve never had anybody take care of me like that before. I’ll never forget that.”
“I had the privilege of being her daughter, working on both creative projects and organizing work and we got to travel a lot together,” Diaz recalled, adding: “Anywhere Cecilia went, she went with a smile and a bounce in her step and she received that energy right back. She was always embraced. What I remember is how many in our community she mothered and gave the gift of gender-affirming healthcare, hormones, insurance, a smile, and an embrace.”
When I interviewed Gentili in 2022, she spoke lovingly of Scotto and the life they’d built together. Like many, I was struck by the example Scotto set of how to love a trans woman; loving us can often seem like an uphill battle, even though it should feel as easy as taking a breath, like coming home. For many of us, meeting Cecilia was just like that: coming home. She built a house big enough for everyone, offering a vision of the future where trans women are empowered to help one another, build coalitions, and fight back against racism and discrimination. Just last fall, she was arrested in Grand Central Station alongside Indya Moore during a pro-Palestine protest. “When we talk about legacy, there’s very clear things that means,” Diaz said at last week’s memorial, adding: “That means decriminalize sex work.” “You need to be the Cecilia in someone else’s life,” Zanell told me.
“There’s no one better than the trannies, y’all, we are f****** everything!” Cecilia once screamed at a party. Her mottos were simple, full of expletives and joy: “I’m asking all my trans people in the room, please, always, always terrorize cisgender people. Sometimes it doesn’t take much, you just have to show up!” Showing up was crucial. She was open to everyone. “I want all the faggotry. I want all the tranny behavior,” Gentili said during Transmission, an all-trans music festival at Marsha P. Johnson Park. She was always honoring someone, calling someone up, calling someone into the fold. Like Diaz said, she redefined what it meant to be a matriarch—to be a woman in a world hellbent on terrorizing trans people. When we spoke shortly before the publication of Faltas, she told me “I’ve always been humble. But fuck it—I’ve done some good things in life.” So much good.