Ymania Brown
# Ymania Brown

Tuisina Ymania Brown-Gabriel, better known as Ymania Brown (born 1962/1963), is a Samoan LGBT rights activist and lawyer based in Brisbane, Australia.

## Life

Brown grew up in Samoa. She began identifying as a girl at age three, which her mother was supportive of, but her father was resistant to. Her mother left the family when she was nine, in response to domestic violence exacerbated by her father's alcoholism. She helped to raise her younger sibling after her mother left. One of her father's cousins moved in with the family, and he sexually abused Brown for multiple years. She left Samoa to join her mother and stepfather in New Zealand.

Brown has worked for the New Zealand government. She later moved to Australia, but struggled to find any other jobs due to discrimination based on her gender identity. She became homeless, and worked as a sex worker in Sydney in order to survive. She was able to save enough money to have gender-affirming surgery in 1989.

After her surgery, Brown moved to Europe and worked as a model. A few years later, she returned to New Zealand to attend college. In the late 1990s she returned to Sydney, where she found a corporate job for a software company through one of her university lecturers. First working in human resources and later becoming in-house legal counsel, Brown continued to work in a corporate setting in Sydney for the next twenty years. She chose to become a full-time activist during the COVID-19 pandemic.

## Activism

Brown currently serves both as co-secretary general of ILGA World (since March 2019), on the advisory board of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, and as technical director of the Samoa Fa’afafine Association. She has also worked with Sydney World Pride through Equality Australia.

In 2014 Brown acted as the co-chair of ILGA Oceania. She later became co-chair of the Global Interfaith Network for People of All Sexes, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (GINSSOGIE) and the International Trans Fund.

Brown was involved with campaigns to have the Samoan government recognize adoption by LGBT individuals and to repeal laws that criminalized “impersonation of a woman”. Her advocacy has primarily focused more on financial equality than marriage equality. She has also encouraged Australia to focus on LGBT rights as part of their foreign policy.

## Personal life

Brown identifies as both a trans woman and as fa’afafine. She has two sons, whom she adopted from a previous partner living in Samoa. She is Catholic.

