Daily Fix: Indiana’s In a Hurry to Rebrand and More News Stories

Hey bluebonnets! I really want to text everyone a brown princess emoji but that means I have to update my phone but I have no space for the update. Womp. Does this mean I have to dump all my photos on my computer and delete them from my phone just to make room?

This Police State

+ An audio recording released by The Guardian shows Michael Slager, the South Carolina police officer who killed Walter Scott, laughing with a senior officer shortly after the fatal shooting. Slager, who is being charged with murder, was laughing about his adrenaline pumping.

A senior officer is heard explaining the procedures to Slager after a police officer murders a black man, which he talked about nonchalantly like it happens all the time, just like pesky paperwork: “We’ll get you up to headquarters, we’ll probably once we get you there we’ll take all your equipment, take your crap off, take your vest off, kinda relax for two or three. Once they get here, it’ll be real quick. They’re gonna tell you you’re going to be off for a couple days, and we’ll come back and interview you then. They’re not going to ask you any questions right now. They’re going to take your weapon and we’ll go from there. That’s pretty much it.” The senior officer advises Slager to jot down his thoughts on what happened once he got home and once the “adrenaline quits pumping.” “It’s pumping,” Slager said laughing.

The Guardian couldn’t confirm with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division if it was Slager in the audio. Thom Berry, a spokesman for SLED said, “It appears that way. I have not been able to independently confirm it.”

+ Over at Vox, Anand Katakam created an interactive map using data from Fatal Encounters, a nonprofit trying to create a database with police killings. It shows law enforcement have killed at least 5,600 people since 2000.

“D. Brian Burghart, head of Fatal Encounters, estimates that his organization’s collection of reports from the public, media, and FBI only captures about 35 percent of total police killings.”

+ Eric Harris was killed in Tulsa on April 2 by Reserve Deputy Robert Bates, a 72-year-old donor to the police department who was on a ridealong when Harris was arrested (it appears that Bates’ donor status gave him the role of reserve deputy, a position which gave him many of the same powers as a regular deputy, including carrying a firearm). In a video that since been widely shared, Bates talks about his taser but in fact reaches for his gun and shoots Harris, who was already pinned to the ground by police officers. Harris can be heard saying “He shot me! He shot me, man. Oh, my God. I’m losing my breath,” and another officer responding “Fuck your breath.” Harris died about an hour later in the hospital, and Bates has been charged with manslaughter, although the Tulsa police department maintains that he committed no crime. Bates’ attorney is referring to Harris’s death as an “excusable homicide.”

+ Natasha McKenna was killed in February at Fairfax County jail via the use of stun guns. This week, incident reports revealed that the mentally ill McKenna was already restrained by shackles and several officers when she was tasered with the four 50,000 volt shocks that killed her.

Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid declined to comment on the case but defended the use of a stun gun on a restrained prisoner, saying it was “a means that is often useful to ensure the safety of a person” rather than using physical force to gain compliance. She said stun guns were used “occasionally” on prisoners who are already restrained.

But four law enforcement experts interviewed by The Post questioned why a Taser was used on a restrained woman, how many times she was shocked and whether handling a mentally ill person with such force was the best approach.

Sad News

+ A lesbian couple was involved in a fatal pile-up crash on Interstate 30 in Fort Worth on early Sunday morning. Veronica Gonzalez and Ely Alba-Gonzalez were coming home from their own engagement party when they stopped, along with others, to help someone who had hit the median. Moments after the initial accident, an 18-wheeler struck the parked cars and the good samaritans. Veronica was one of the five people who died as a result of the accidents and Ely is in critical condition at the hospital.

Taylor Alesana

+ Taylor Alesana, a 16-year-old trans girl from California, died by suicide on April 2. She faced constant bullying online and in school and reported it to her school counselor but nothing was done about it. She had a Youtube channel where she would post makeup tutorials and talked about trans issues. Alesana’s death is the 7th reported trans youth suicide this year.

A Grab Bag of News

+ For the first time ever, a Wiccan priestess, Deborah Maynard, led the Iowa legislature in prayer last Thursday to many lawmakers’ disdain. Rep. Liz Bennett invited Maynard to lead the prayer in an effort to show Iowa is diverse and inclusive. Unfortunately to Bennett’s disappointment, more than half of the representatives skipped the opening prayer while the ones in attendance were offended by the blessing. Rep. Rob Taylor turned his back to Maynard telling reporters this is what Jesus would’ve done, “Jesus would be in the chamber, from my perspective. He would passively protest.” One paster, who was in the audience, led his own prayer for Maynard’s salvation. I thought Maynard’s prayer was nice, especially this part: “We call this morning to spirit, which is ever present, to help us respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. Be with this legislative body and guide them to seek justice, equity, and compassion in the work that is before them today.”

+ Last year, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against an eye clinic in Florida for discriminating against a transgender employee. Last week, the clinic agreed to pay their former employee $150,000 in backpay and damages and to adopt a new policy that protects transgender employees from harassment and termination based on gender identity and to implement gender identity nondiscrimination trainings for their employees.

+ A lesbian couple in Guam was denied a marriage license because the U.S. territory doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage. Loretta Pangelinan and Kathleen Aguero were the first to same-sex couple to apply and now they plan to take their case to federal court.

+ The state of Indiana has a hired a global PR firm to help rebrand their image in the wake of the criticism they received from their new “religious freedom” riff raff anti-gay bill. The plot thickens! The Indiana Economic Development Corporation has hired Porter Novelli to brand the state “as a welcoming place to live, visit and do business.”

+ A married lesbian couple is suing the state of Utah in order to automatically recognize them both as the parents of their newborn child. Angie and Kim Roe gave birth to a baby girl in February; she was conceived via donated sperm. Under Utah laws governing “assisted reproduction,” only husbands of wives are automatically recognized in the child’s birth certificate. The couple wants the state to do the same for them instead of having to go through state courts to obtain a second-parent adoption, which would allow for both the parents to be on the birth certificate.

“A same-sex spouse and a different-sex spouse whose wife conceives through donor insemination are similarly situated in all relevant aspects,” the ACLU argues in court papers. “The purpose of the statutes is to immediately establish parentage for a spouse who has consented to bringing a child into the world, whether or not that spouse shares a genetic relationship with the child.”

+ Here’s Audrey with a news brief about Obama’s executive order protecting LGBT workers:

Last week, an executive order went into effect prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity by the federal government as well as by organizations and companies with federal contracts.

President Barack Obama signed the order on July 21 and didn’t include exemptions for religious employers, despite heavy urging from Evangelical and other leaders.

The administration predicts the order will protect about 1.5 million Americans from discrimination in the workplace, according to an Advocate column by senior adviser Valerie Jerrett.

“The billions of taxpayer dollars that federal contractors and subcontractors receive to supply goods and services for government agencies will not be used to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity,” Jerrett said. “This will effectively prevent any company that does business with the government from firing an employee based on who they are or who they love.”

Discovery Life’s Trans Docuseries “New Girls On The Block” is Flawed, But Not Beyond Redemption

feature image via Discovery Life

When I first received the press package for the new Discovery Life documentary series New Girls On The Block, I was both excited and optimistic. Even as trans people reach new heights of visibility in documentaries and narrative shows alike, those portrayals have often suffered from the same flaw — the tendency to depict trans people in isolation, as the only trans person in their social circle. So when I saw that someone had produced a documentary about a diverse group of trans women friends supporting each other through their complex lives, I came in with high hopes. I went in with my fingers crossed and my expectations high, wanting to like it. While the show has some definite strong points, and the women featured are compelling, it unfortunately suffers from many of the tired tropes used time and again in documentaries about trans women.

New Girls On The Block follows six transgender women from Kansas City who formed a tightly-knit social circle during transition. They range in age from 25 to 50, and come from a variety of social backgrounds. The first episode breaks the women’s stories into four smaller vignettes, each focusing on a subset of the cast. Robyn is trans woman dating her best friend of 10 years, Andrew. AiYanna and Jaime are a lovely queer trans couple trying to make things work despite challenging economic difficulties. Macy is a woman who transitioned after getting married, and is currently negotiating the evolving relationship with her straight cisgender wife, Sharon. Kassidy and Chloe are best friends who are learning to navigate post-transition dating together. The vignettes are woven back together through the interactions of the six women at their weekly Girls Night Out.

I loved the cast from the opening scene, where they all share a meal together. It’s from their banter that they’re actually bonded in a supportive circle. They’re interesting and dynamic women, and I was excited to learn more about their stories. While I’m generally not super-interested in hetero relationships, the dynamic between Robyn and Andrew is endearing, with exposition that actually manages to avoid much of the gross “isn’t-this-weird” narrative that often plagues depictions of a cis-trans couple. Unfortunately, the show then takes it’s first ugly slide into cliche, and we’re also very quickly (and, IMO unnecessarily) presented with pre-transition pictures of Robyn juxtaposed with interview. Given that the premise of the show appears to be highlighting the post-transition lives of trans women, this ends up feeling like a cave to the voyeuristic fascination with transition and transformation that’s been so depressingly dominant in transgender documentary, especially those produced by cis people.

Marcy and Sharon (image via Discovery Life)

We next move to Macy and her wife Sharon, who are out shopping for a dress for Macy’s “Stepping Out Party” that’s being organized by the rest of the women on the show. Macy isn’t even given the benefit of an endearing exposition before we’re confronted with not only her pre-transition photos, but also her dead name and repeated wrong pronoun usage from her wife. While it’s clear that Macy’s storyline will be focused on her evolving relationship with her wife (who didn’t know Macy was trans when they married), it’s still pretty jarring to suddenly see pre-transition wedding photos interspersed with the footage of a very happy, radiant trans woman of color. Macy pretty quickly became my favorite character on the show because she’s just so darn positive and it flows from her smile to her body language, and she’s just a delight to see on screen. Sadly, what we see throughout the first episode is mostly a focus on how her transition is affecting those around her, and we don’t find out nearly as much about Macy as we do the other five cast members (who are all white). With Macy being the only trans woman of color, and the only one over 40 on the show, she feels a little tokenized, which is kind of heartbreaking, because you can’t help but adore her.

Jaime and AiYanna’s relationship and storyline were definitely the highlight of the show for me, but I could be a little biased towards the super-cute queer trans girl couple. Jaime is a somewhat serious ex-military triathlete and nursing student. AiYanna is total goofball from a Mormon family who delivers pizzas. Watching them interact, even through Jaime’s occasional annoyance with AiYanna’s silliness, is painfully cute. (Seriously, the glee on AiYanna’s face when she says “Can we get some pudding?” is priceless.) Plus, Jaime paid for AiYanna’s bottom surgery out of love, which just makes my heart burst with happy feels. The two of them live together with Jaime’s mom, who is one of the most awesomely supportive parents of a trans person I’ve seen on TV. She’s not only completely accepting of Jaime’s transition, but she’s also totally willing to go for bat for her. It’s revealed that she helped push for Jaime to be discharged from the military, and watching her console her very emotional daughter when she gets pushback on her desire to complete in the women’s division of a triathlon is cry-worthy. Unfortunately, just as with Macy and Robyn, we’re presented with pre-transition photos of Jaime that do absolutely nothing to advance her story, though we’re at least spared hearing her dead-named or misgendered.

Jamie and AiYanna (image via Discovery Life)

There are also just some other misses in the show that really drag down the enjoyability. While I understand that finding a naturally diverse organic group of trans women willing to be the subjects of a documentary isn’t exactly easy, the cast skews disappointingly white, thin, cis-normative-appearing, and attractive — like they were selected for their ability to be acceptable for a cisgender audience, not to really represent the trans community. Adding even a little more diversity, whether perhaps through a fat person, or another trans woman of color, would have gone a long way. Secondly, the writing of the show also uses a lot of the “used to be a man” and worse “born a man” language that so many trans women find objectionable. This is much less of a problem if these women actually identify that way, but those statements come off as a bit scripted, which makes me skeptical.

In the end, the missteps of NGOTB aren’t enough to make it completely unwatchable, but they are disappointing. With the two amazing documentary projects that were helmed by trans people this year — True Trans and The T Word — setting the bar so high, New Girls On The Block does feel like a bit of slide backwards . However, the likable and dynamic cast members save the show, and it’s their personalities that will have me watching all five episodes that Discovery Life has produced. Given that we have two cast members (Kassidy and Chloe) who have not yet received much exposition, it seems likely that we’ll see some more of the pre-transition photos and perhaps hear a little more dead-naming in episode two. But, I’m hoping (perhaps a little foolishly) that, once the show moves past the cis-indulgent fascination with transition before-and-afters, NGOTB will actually break a little ground by portraying trans people in a state we seem to rarely see: together in community.

New Girls On the Block premieres on Saturday, April 11th at 10 pm ET on Discovery Life.

Daily Fix: The Tale of the Indiana Wedding Pizza and Other News Stories

feature image Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Turner

Hey Sailor Scouts! Have you ever seen a baby elephant video? I watched one today and it made my day 100% brighter.

Here’s some news for you!

When Will the Saints Go Marching in for LGBT Equality

+ Louisiana State Rep. Mike Johnson filed a “religious freedom” bill on Friday to be considered when the state’s legislative session begins April 13. The bill, HB 707, would shield businesses from penalties if they turned away LGBT people.

+ And Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal supports that “religious freedom” bill. In a Meet the Press interview on Sunday, he said he doesn’t believe anyone should discriminate against anyone but he’s uncomfortable with creating “special legal protections” for LGBT folks.

+ Here’s another anti-gay prom story for you. (I don’t know why everyone is so serious about prom, it’s not that cool you guys! Stay home with your friends, eat pizza and watch Netflix! I promise it will be 150 times better than wasting tons of money on formal wear, hair & makeup, dinner, tickets and photos for one very overrated night. (If you do go, don’t over think it — just have fun!))

Claudetteia Love

Gay honor student Claudetteia Love has decided she won’t be attending her senior prom because her school won’t allow her to wear a tuxedo to the event. The Louisiana high school says it’s in violation of school dress code but Love says she’s being discriminated against because she’s gay. Geraldine Jackson, Love’s mom, talked to her principal:

“He said that the faculty that is working the prom told him they weren’t going to work the prom if (girls) were going to wear tuxes,” she said. “That’s his exact words. ‘Girls wear dresses and boys wear tuxes, and that’s the way it is.’ “

A school board president said he would take the issue to the superintendent on Love’s behalf.

If you say “religious freedom bill” one more time…

+ Rihanna spoke out against Indiana‘s g*ddamn “religious freedom” laws at a concert in Indianapolis as part of the NCAA March Madness Music Fest. Pink News reports:

Referring to the state’s new RFRA inbetween songs, Rihanna said: “Who’s feeling these new bulls**t laws that they’re trying to pass over here?
“I say f**k that s**t… we’re just living our motherf***ing lives, Indiana!”
The singer also got the crowd to chant: “f**k that s**t”.

+ I’m sure y’all heard by now about that one pizza place in Indiana who said they wouldn’t cater a gay wedding and then got a lot a shit about it and were on the verge of closing but then they launched a f*cking GoFundMe campaign that raised over $840,000 (which included a gay woman’s $20 donation!) Well if it’s any consolation, Zach Braff and Donald Faiser will make pizza for your gay wedding in Indiana, if you want.

https://twitter.com/zachbraff/status/584075456221093888/

Law & Order

+ Revenge porn website operator Kevin Bollaert was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Friday. He was convicted in February of 21 counts of identity theft and six counts of extortion. The San Diego man ran the now-defunct website yougotposted.com, which allowed users to anonymously upload nude photos and personal information of other people, mostly women, without their consent. He also ran changemyreputation.com, where people who sought to take down the images and info were asked to cough up $250-$350 if they wanted the content removed.

Michelle-Lael Norsworthy

+ Last Thursday, U.S. District Judge S. Tigar ordered California’s Department of Corrections to grant trans inmate Michelle-Lael Norsworthy access to gender-affirming surgery. Tigar ruled Norsworthy’s constitutional rights were violated when a state prison denied her access to surgery in 2012. Norsworthy is serving a life sentence for a 1987 second-degree murder.

+ The National Union of Teachers, UK’s largest teacher’s union, passed a resolution calling on the next government to make it mandatory to create a positive climate for them to discuss sexuality and gender.

Christine Blower, General Secretary of the NUT, said after the debate: “The NUT calls for all parties standing in the 2015 General Election to show their commitment to tackling the discrimination faced by both LGBT students and teachers in schools by following the ten point action plan outlined in the Motion.

“This includes making it compulsory for all schools’ sex education policies to include a positive portrayal of same sex relationships, promoting LGBT History Month in all schools, and encouraging schools to develop a curriculum that is inclusive of LGBT issues.”

+ An Ontario lesbian couple is suing a Georgia sperm bank after they found out their sperm donor wasn’t who he claimed to be. They thought he was healthy, had bachelor’s and master’s degrees in science, and was working on his PhD in neuroscience engineering. When the company they worked with inadvertently sent the couple six (six!!) emails that included the donor’s name, they researched him and found that he was in fact a college dropout with a criminal record and a hereditary mental illness, and that his donor photo had even been edited. The couple gave birth to a son and is now suing the sperm bank for fraud, negligent misrepresentation, breach of warranty, battery and unfair business practices.

Ashley Diamond before she went to prison.

+ The Justice Department regards policies that prohibits hormone treatment for trans inmates to be unconstitutional. On Friday, the Justice Department backed a lawsuit brought by trans woman Ashley Diamond, who says the state of Georgia illegally cut off the hormone treatment she’d been taking for 17 years. Diamond, a first-time inmate charged with burglary, is being held at the Georgia State Prison men’s facility. She sued the Georgia Department of Corrections in February, citing the fact that she was raped multiple times, abused and has undergone drastic physical changes without hormones which has led her to attempt suicide several times.

International News

+ On Thursday, masked al-Shabab gunmen killed 150 at Garissa University College in Kenya’s deadliest attack since the 1998 US Embassy bombing.

7 TV Shows About Trans Women Coming Soon to Your TV

Just a few short years ago there were exactly zero shows on TV that I could watch to see transgender women like me, played by transgender women like me, on a weekly basis. Now, thanks in large part to Laverne Cox’s brilliant breakout Emmy-nominated role in Orange is the New Black, and the success of Jill Soloway’s Golden Globe winning Transparent, it seems like networks are scrambling to jump on the trans bandwagon.

For some reason, trans-based reality shows seem to be much more popular than scripted shows about trans people. Actually, there are lots of obvious reasons. The film and television industry’s reluctance to cast trans actors, especially in starring roles, the very palpable fascination that the public has with real-life trans people (and especially trans women) and the lack of creativity most writers have historically shown for telling stories with trans characters have all probably affected the amount of fictional trans characters we see on TV. Still, things are definitely getting better and according to casting directors, trans actors are in higher demand than they’ve ever been before. It would be nicer to see some more diversity, though. Seeing a teenage trans girl on a scripted show, non-binary trans people, more trans people of color (I personally, as a trans Latina, would love to see some trans Latinas on TV), and trans guys would be wonderful.

We don’t know how long this very welcome trend will last (especially since the scripted shows are just pilots and might not even get picked up), so while we’ve got options, we thought we’d look at the slate of upcoming shows and gauge our excitement for them. To be honest, I’ll probably check out all of these that are on channels that I get because I’m starved for representation and I have almost no willpower when it comes to things like this.

Some of the cast and producers of New Girls on the Block via Variety

1. New Girls on the Block

Discovery Life

This show, premiering April 11, is about six trans women who are all friends in Kansas City, Missouri. According to the Discovery Life Channel, “after years struggling with their gender identities, they are finally finding themselves and learning what it means to be the women they always knew that they were.” It will follow their love lives (some came out after getting married, others are exploring the dating world as trans women), how transitioning affects their work lives and their efforts to be seen as human beings as and women.

While the actual trans women that star in this show seem cool and interesting, the way Discovery Life is presenting it makes me more than a little worried. It seems like the show is kind of preoccupied with their transition and the struggles they face because of it, which, if you’ve been reading and watching trans books, documentaries and stories for years (like I have), is getting kind of really old at this point. Even if you haven’t been watching a ton of trans stories, I’m sure it’s getting repetitive. Executive Producer Jay James’ comment that “to be perfectly honest, there’s a natural curiosity to see what transgender people are all about” makes me even more nervous. Mari will have a more in-depth article on this show soon, so keep an eye out for that.
Excitement level: I’d rather meet these people in real life than watch them on TV. 2/5 Sophia Bursets

Jazz and her family via aceshowbiz.com

2. All That Jazz

TLC

Despite only being 14, Jazz Jennings has been in the national spotlight for years as a trans advocate, someone who speaks up for trans kids’ rights and encourages acceptance of transgender children. Now she’s taking the next step and this summer will be starring in a TLC reality show about her and her parents, twin brothers and older sister.

Jazz already has a few years of being in the spotlight and being on camera talking about trans issues and how they relate to her own life, and from what I’ve seen, her family is super supportive, so those are good signs. On the other hand, though, TLC is kind of famous for its exploitative reality TV shows, like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and My 600-lb Life. So, hopefully this won’t turn into one of those.

Excitement Level: If it helps one set of parents learn to accept their trans kid I’ll be happy. 3.5/5 Sophia Bursets

Carly reading a letter to her family via Think Progress

3. Becoming Us

ABC Family

Also coming out this summer, this time from ABC Family, is Becoming Us, which is actually about a cis person, 17-year-old Ben Lehwald, and his parent, Carly, who came out as a trans woman during Ben’s first year of high school and is transitioning. He’s also dating a girl who has a transgender parent. This show seems to be focusing on how Ben, his older sister and the rest of the family process Carly’s transition and transness. ABC Family had previously featured a trans guy character named Cole on the show The Fosters and had a trans actor, Tom Phelan, play the character.

Back when Transparent was first coming out, Mari and I talked about our mixed feelings regarding the show, and one of our issues was that it was re-hashing the tale as old as time: a Well-Off White Trans Woman With Kids who comes out later in life. This seems like it might be basically a reality TV version of that show, but hopefully Carly’s family isn’t full of absolutely horrible people like Maura’s is.

Excitement Level: I’ll just stick to watching Transparent (but will probably watch at least one episode of this). 1.5/5 Sophia Bursets

via Shutterstock

4. Transcendent

Fuse

There’s not a ton of information about this upcoming series that was just announced today, but it does seem kind of interesting. Fuse already has Big Freedia, which stars the gender non-comforming (but not trans) Queen of Bounce, and this fall they’ll be adding this show which is about “the triumphs and struggles of a group of transgender San Francisco cabaret performers.”

I don’t get Fuse, but I do enjoy the episodes of Big Freedia that I’ve seen. And this show seems to have a different spin on it than all the others, so this show does have my attention.

Excitement Level: If I had Fuse I’d watch it. 4/5 Sophia Bursets

5. TransAmerica

VH1

There actually hasn’t been any news about this show in a while, so I’m not 100% sure if it’s still coming out, but there was a lot of excitement for it when it was first announced. TransAmerica is going to feature of group of trans women living in Chicago named Giselle, Natalia, Sidney and Victory with transgender model Carmen Carrera acting as a sort of mentor for them and host for the show.

When this show was announced, Carrera was fresh off of flawlessly reacting to Katie Couric’s extremely uncomfortable questions to both her and Laverne Cox, and Tyra Banks has been a reality TV queen ever since the first season of America’s Next Top Model. However, despite getting an eight episode order, and having a pretty detailed description about the show and the trans women who were starring in it, a premiere date still hasn’t been announced. Since then, Carrera has also made more than a few missteps when it comes to policing other trans women’s bodies and lives, so that makes me a little worried about her role in the show. There are a bunch of news stories about this show being announced last May, but nothing since then, so really, the future of this show is up in the air at this point.

Excitement Level: Is it still going to happen? Who knows! 3/5 Sophia Bursets

Cox in her recent appearance on The Mindy Project via Variety

6. Doubt

CBS

I was extremely excited when I first heard that Laverne Cox had been cast in this show. Her performance on Orange is the New Black (as well as just her talent as an actress) had earned her a few guest spots on shows like Faking It and The Mindy Project, but this will be her first regular role on another TV show. Created by Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, two long-time Grey’s Anatomy executive producers (which I think is a good sign), Doubt is about a defense lawyer (played by KaDee Strickland) who gets involved with one of her clients (Teddy Sears, who played Zachary Quinto’s boyfriend in the first season of American Horror Story) who may or may not have murdered a 15-year-old girl. Cox plays Cameron Wirth, a “fierce and funny, competitive and compassionate transgender Ivy League-educated attorney. The fact that she’s experienced injustice first hand makes her fight all the harder for her clients.”

Now this is what I’m talking about. Cox’s role seems to be a substantial one, it also seems to not be overly stereotypical and the producers said that they sought a trans actress to play the role from the beginning, so all of that looks really good. Plus, I like the fact that, from the get-go, this is a scripted series that is committing to a trans character who has defined characteristics that have nothing to do with her gender or her transition. And it costars Dreama Walker, from the amazing and canceled-too-soon Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, so it’s got that going for it.

Excitement Level: I can’t wait for the Doubt/Elementary crossover event so that I can see Laverne Cox’s Cameron Wirth and Lucy Liu’s Joan Watson team up. 5/5 Sophia Bursets

via Digital Spy

7. The Curse of the Fuentes Women

NBC

Are there really two trans women being cast as series regulars in upcoming network pilots? Yes, there are! Transparent‘s Trace Lysette is joining this show about three generations of Latinas who are unlucky in love and in life until a mysterious man emerges from the ocean and comes into their lives. This magical realism drama comes from Silvio Horta, who adapted Ugly Betty for American TV and served as a head writer and executive producer for that show. Lysette plays Gloria, a “brash transgender hostess at Café Fuentes” who “is never shy about voicing her opinions, often to her own detriment.”

No joke, despite how hetero this show sounds, it also sounds like it’s right up my alley. Magic, Latinas, trans women are pretty much my Holy Trinity. Also, Lysette was always completely charming in her limited screen time on Transparent, so I’m excited to see her in a bigger role.

Excitement Level: I know one Bruja Femme who’ll be watching this show (it’s me). 4.5/5 Sophia Bursets

Which of these shows (or another one featuring trans women that I didn’t’ mention) are you most excited for?

The Women of the 2015 Trans 100 Speak Up About Supporting Trans Women

This past Sunday, the Third annual Trans 100 list was released at a live ceremony in Chicago, Illinois. The Trans 100, created by Jen Richards and Antonia D’Orsay, is a list of trans people who make an impact in the trans community and in the overall world. It highlights trans people from many different areas, including activists, writers, artists, mentors and educators. One of the great things about this list is that it includes trans community leaders from so many different places and so it’s a great tool to find people working in local trans communities, not just those who have a national spotlight.

Just a sampling of the people on this year’s list. Via thetrans100.com

This being a women’s website, I’m going to be focusing on honorees who ID as women, but there are plenty of others on the list that people should check out. The people on this list are all making a big difference in their communities and are definitely making things better for other trans people. Since they obviously have a good idea of how to help other trans people, just like I did last year, I wanted to ask them how Autostraddle readers can best do just that.

All of this information comes from the 2015 Trans 100 booklet unless otherwise stated. More information about each honoree is available there. I definitely recommend going to the Trans 100 website and checking the booklet out to find out more about these amazing women and the other trans people on this year’s list.

via Linkedin

1. Maddie Adams

Adams was the first trans woman to work for the Democratic Party in Michigan where she worked as a Field Organizer and Volunteer Coordinator during the 2014 election cycle. During that year she also worked with Freedom Michigan in Wayne Country trying to pass an LGBT inclusive Civil Rights Act.

via GLAAD

2. Andrea Bowen

Andrea Bowen has spent years making things better for trans people by changing laws and winning legal victories. She led advocacy efforts in Washington, DC to reform birth certificate and name change legislation and trans peoples’ right to insurance coverage for transition-related care. She also helped to win a legal victory against a women’s shelter that was denying access to trans women. Currently, she’s the Executive Director of Garden State Equality where she keeps on fighting to secure rights for LGBT people.

via Linkedin

3. Meghan Buell

Since 2003, Buell has been active in the trans community in Indiana. She’s also currently the Executive Director of the GLBT Resource Center of Michiana and has served on the Transgender Advisory Committee for the Out & Equal Workplace Advocates. Recently she founded a nonprofit called TREES, Inc. (Transgender Resource, Education and Enrichment Services), that works to bring trans education and resources to underserved rural populations in the Midwest. She told me that, “to be included in the Trans 100 for 2015 is a unexpected recognition and I am humbled to join such an awesome group of trans advocates from around the country. The event will be something I will be proud of for years to come. I would like to thank those who sponsored me, especially Kelly and Emily. I do not do what I do for recognition but because it is the right thing to do.”

via Facebook

 4. Lexie Cannes

Apart from being an award-winning filmmaker and actress, Cannes is also an activist and writer who writes at her successful blog, Lexie Cannes State of Trans, Huffington Post and other publications. Her trans-centered and starring feature film Lexie Cannes wond multiple awards on the festival circuit. She suggested a simple way to support trans women, telling me “this is an easy question: Show up to vote on election day and vote for the Democrat!”

via GLAAD

5. Daniella Carter

You may be familiar with Carter from her appearance in the Emmy nominated MTV and Logo documentary Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word. She also advocates for LGBT youth and speaks and appears on panels on local, national and international levels, working with people like Cyndi Lauper and 50 Cent as well as Miss Universe. She recently started a project to bring visibility to trans youth issues and often talks about LGBTQIA homelessness and the intersection of identities. She said that in order to support trans women we should, “look beyond race, class and gender. Equality is not race specific, it’s universal.”

via The Washington Blade

6. Joanna Cifredo

The founder of firebreathingtgirl.com, Cifredo is a writer, youth health educator and Brand Ambassador to the DC Rape Crisis Center. Since moving to Washington, DC, she has started working with the Latin@ LGBTQ community center Empoderate and serves on the Board of Directors to Whitman Walker Health. She also received the 2015 Visionary Voice Award from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center for her work on trans-inclusive healthcare and, with the DCRCC is launching a city-wide converstion between cis and trans women of color called “SIS to Cis.”

via Gay Desert Guide

7. Thomi Clinton

Clinton’s influence and work can be seen in many areas, including facilitating the opening of her county’s trans medical and mental health clinic, working with the DOJ on preventing rape and assault of incarcerated trans people, improving access to gender neutral bathrooms, education and homeless shelters and raising close to $10,000 dollars for the first known TDoR Vigil Statue.  “Always remember there is no certain way to accomplish change,” she told me, “the point is, we try to put our differences aside and accomplish that change. Remember, 3+2=5 and so does 4+1. Both equal the end and a perfect number.”

via Wikipedia

8. Lynn Conway

Conway has been responsible for groundbreaking innovations in the world of computer engineering ever since the 1960s when she worked for IBM. While working at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center she pioneered new silicon chip design methods that paved the way for the Silicon Valley microelectronics boom during the 80’s and 90’s. She’s received many awards and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is Professor Emerita of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. Besides from being a legend and pioneer in the computer sciences, she also has a trans support website that helps trans women across the world and fights against the psychiatric patholigization of gender variance.

via Mountain Xpress

9. Yvonne Cook-Riley

Cook-Riley is an Air Force veteran who serves on the Board of Directors of the Transgender American Veterans Association, but that’s just one small part of her long history helping the trans community. She helped to develop the International Foundation for Gender Education and was awarded the 1991 Outreach Medal from the Outreach Institute for her work in the trans movement. She’s also been awarded the IFGE Trinity award, the IFGE Virginia Prince Lifetime Service Award and the Virginia Price Pioneer Award. Currently she’s working as the Executive Director of the Pride Center of the Blue Ridge and the group Kindred Spirit.

via Queer Times

10. Jordan Gwendolyn Davis

Davis has worked tirelessly in Philadelphia to advance trans rights. She worked with the City Council on a resolution that ended a discriminatory gender sticker policy on public transit passes, worked to get the first ever mayoral proclamation for TDoR and helped to get the first ever Philadelphia City Council resolution for Transgender Awareness Week. She also worked with Philadelphia Councilmember Kenney on a landmark TLGB omnibus bill that passed and signed in 2013, state representative Mark Cohen on the first ever trans-specific rights bills in Pennsylvania history and is consulting with trans health access organizations. “I believe that trans women are best supported by allowing them to access women’s spaces no matter what stage of transition they are in,” she told me, “and be mindful of the language of biological essentialism in everyday womanhood and feminism. I proudly identify as a feminist.”

via dallasdenny.com

11. Dallas Denny

Denny told me she’s “excited by the diversity and passion of the other 99 people selected for the 2015 Trans 100 List,” and that she’s “proud to be on the list.” She’s a writer, editor, speaker and community builder who also serves as a board member of the nonprofit Transgender Health & Educational Alliance and Real Life Experiences, a member of the planning committee for Fantasia Fair and a contributor to the recent book Trans Bodies, Trans Selves. You can check out her work on her website. She says that “one thing people can do to support trans* people of all kinds is to stop evaluating us as if we were ‘really’ members of our birth gender.”

via Mother Jones

12. Ashley Diamond

Before she became incarcerated and started working as a trans rights activist, Diamond was a singer and entertainer from Rome, Georgia. However, after her hormone therapy was terminated and pleas for safe housing were ignored, she filed a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s practice of denying trans-related care to inmates and ignoring the sexual assault they face. She also made a series of videos called “Memoirs of a Chain Gang Sissy” that amplifies the voices of fellow LGBTQI inmates and shines a light on the abuse and mistreatment they regularly face.

via theuac.org

13. Reverend Tammy “Jubi” Dutcher

The Rev. Dutcher is a Priest of the Universal Anglican Church and the Diocesan Administrator for the Midwest. She’s also the co-founder of the Ecumenical Order of Jesus Christ Reconciler and has a Master of Divinity and Master of Arts in Spirituality from Loyola University of Chicago. She is the former president of the Illinois Gender Advocates and has participated in the Chicago Trans Coalition. Currently, she is the Trans programming coordinator for Chicago Women’s Health Center.

via Queer of Gender

14.  Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi

Lady Dane is an African, Cuban and Native American performance artist, author of the book Yemaya’s Daughters, teacher, blogger, advocate and life coach. She also volunteers at Casa Ruby, is a member of the TWOCC Leadership Team and a founding member of Force/Collision.

via In My Lifetime

15. Lauryn Farris

Farris currently serves as Assistant Director of the The Thrive Center, the first LGBTQ-specific homeless shelter in the South. She has also served two terms as the President of the San Antonio Gender Association and makes dozens of presentations on trans rights every year.

via tumblr

16. Katrina Goodlett

Goodlett is a Black trans woman of color who serves as the Executive Producer and Host of the Kitty Bella Show on Blog Talk Radio. This show features Goodlett talking with fellow trans people as well as allies on a variety of topics. She’s also the creator of the #tgirlsrock campaign, aimed at emopowering trans people through clothing.

via Facebook

 17. Brooke Cerda Guzmán

Guzmán is a women’s rights activist who came to America in 1989. She co-founded the Trans Women of Color Collective, served a volunteer internship with The Gender Identity Project, was honored by the Anti Violence Project and was awarded the “Legacy of Pride Award” by Harlem Pride. She emphasizes the importance of supporting TWOC: “Fund our own organizations like TWOCC , BLACK TRANS MEDIA, TRANSLATINA NETWORK, TRANS GRIOT, CASA RUBY … If you can’t , we can all definitely tell others about the great work they are doing to inspire others in our community to start their own.”

via Twitter

18. Gretchen Rachel Hammond

Hammond is a senior report for the Windy City Times, the Midwest’s largest LGBTQ publication. She says that she thinks one of the most important things the trans community can do right now is to unite: “Looking back on the lessons of history, I note that tyranny has never been defeated by communities that speak in separate voices rather than a a powerful and combined whole. We are so busy fighting with ourselves on terminology or who or who isn’t to be considered transgender that we have not been able to rally together while legislative, media, mental and physical assaults on us continue. We have organizations like the HRC making empty promises. We have no recognition on local, state, federal or worldwide levels meanwhile our people are dying.they are being imprisoned, they have no jobs, no homes, no families. Ironically it was a group of transgender performers who are credited with starting the LGBT movement in 1969. Since then we have been a shadow within it. We have been on our own. Well, we have the talent, the ability, the spokespeople, the strength and the courage within our own ranks to make our own stand and stand we must or else the ‘tipping point’ that has been discussed so much could very well capsize us.”

via Facebook

19. Mary Irons

Irons serves as a board member and facilitator for the Washington Gender Alliance and provides peer support for trans people age 16 and up. She also founded the Shoreline Washington Gender Alliance meeting and Transgender Parents of Washington and received the volunteer of the year award from the North Urban Human Services Alliance for her work. She also is a workshop presenter who presents at workshops all throughout Western Washington.

via Facebook

20. Monica James

James is a Black trans woman from the South Side of Chicago who has fought for years against unfair police targeting that led to her being confined in the maximum security section of Cook County Jail over 100 times. In 2007 she fought trumped up charges that followed a brutal assault by police. She traveled to Geneva, Switzerland in 2014 to testify before the UN about police violence against trans women of color. She’s also a collective member at the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois and a staff member at the Howard Brown Health Center.

via Board Game Geek

21. Jennell Jaquays

Throughout a long career as a game developer and artist, Jaquays has been a pioneer in the fields of table-top role play and video games. She’s used this career to work as an ambassador to gaming communities, partially through the group PressXY.com, and a mentor to fans and peers as they transition. She’s also a trustee on the board of the Transgender Human Rights Institute and a founding partner and Chief Creative Officer for game developer Olde Sküül. Jaquays says that respect is one of the main things trans women need: “The one thing that anyone can do to support transgender women is give respect. Respect for their self-understanding. Respect for their decisions. Respect for not only their accomplishments, but for their potential. Being transgender should be the footnote for our lives, not the definition of them.”

via PGN

22. Samantha Jo Dato

Dato is a dedicated and passionate advocate and activist for trans issues. In 2012 she served on the committee for the Philadelphia Trans March, helped to launch the Mazzoni Center’s Trans Wellness Project and presented workshops at conferences like The National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change and the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference. She’s also seen as a role model, big sister and support system to many people around her. “The most productive way to help support trans women of color is to  let them lead their own narratives and empower them with the support they need to be successful personally and professionally,” she told me.

via Planetransgender

23. Monica Jones

Last year Monica Jones, who is a sex work activist, made headlines when she was arrested for “manifesting prostitution” and had to fight to not be kept in a men’s prison. She’s currently a student at the Arizona State University school of social work and she also educates people on the issues that affect trans women and sex workers. One recent trip was to Geneva to speak about these issues.

via brynkelly.com

24. Bryn Kelly

Kelly is a writer and performer who has written for Showtime Network’s OurChart.com, Original Plumbing magazine, Prettyqueer.com and the anthology Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love and Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary as well as fiction for the journals Time is Not A Line: Reflections on HIV/AIDS Now and EOAGH. She also co-created and wa a cast of the touring roadshow The Fully Functional Cabaret and co-founded Theater Transgression. She wanted to give some advice on how men can support trans women. “I know this is not exactly your audience, this being Autostraddle and all, but I think it’s of vital importance: the men in our lives need to do a better job of stepping up,” she told me, “this goes for gay (cis and trans) men who feel the need to argue endlessly over the T-word, to our romantic partners who are men (cis and trans) who often have access to all-male spaces where trans women are often denigrated, the butt of a joke. Sex worker activists have been saying this for years: if men gave as much money to trans women-fronted political projects as they spent on trans women’s sexual labor, we could solve most of our problems in about two weeks.”

via miracharlotte.com

25. Mira Krishnan

Krishnan, a neuropsychologist, leads the Center for Autism at Hope Network in Michigan. She also serves a board advisory role with the American Association of Children’s Residential Centers and co-chairs the American Psychological Association’s Division 44 Committee for Transgender People and Gender Diversity. She also has a blog where she writes about LGBTQIA+ and feminist issues. She emphasizes the importance of community, telling me, “I hope that people understand that we are building a community where there was none. We don’t have all the answers. As we get where we’re going, trans community has the opportunity to be a beacon that drives all communities towards the very best in them. I hope people support us in finding us, and that you all get to share in the joy, love, and hope, that emanates from us when we are community.”

via save.lgbt

26. Aryah Lester

Lester is the founder of Miami-Dade’s first ever transgender organization, Trans-Miami, and also serves as the current chair for the Florida Health Department’s Transgender Work Group. She works as a nationally certified suicide crisis hotline counselor and speaks nationally about trans equality. She’s also instituted a monthly support group for trans people in Brickell and sits as a member of the National Alliance of State & Territorial AIDS Director transgender group. Lester says that, “the best way one can support trans women is through education: educating yourself by querying the mind of a local trans advocate, and attending trans educational workshops. Continue said education in public situations during conversations with friends and family, when you witness discrimination against a trans woman, and to our youth. Only through positive visibility could the trans community be fully assisted in living life with less strife, and it would take the voices of all to make it happen.”

via Pennlive

27. Dr. Rachel Levine

Dr. Levine is the Acting Physician General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the administration of Governor Tom Wolf. She’s also a Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine. Before this post, she served on the Board of Equality PA and the board of the Capital Region Stonewall Democrats.

via bilerico.com

28. Jennifer Louise Lopez

Lopez is a “Transgender, Transsexual, Bisexual, Lesbian, Curvy, Cross-eyed, Latina and Woman here to change the modern day views of society.”

via mccny

29. Kristen Parker Lovell

Lovell works at Sylvia’s Place/MCCNY Charities Inc., New York City’s only emergency queer youth shelter in order to carry on Sylvia Rivera, her former mentor’s, legacy. She works there as the Program Coordinator for HIV Testing and Counseling and is helping to relaunch STARR, the radical trans activist group original started by Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. She’s also the founder of the empowerment group Trans in Action. Lovell told me that she thinks “embracing each other and understanding one another’s differences is key! I need some time to really think about that because there are so many ways one can be supportive. For me support looks like  people who stand with me in a cause donating to organizations, volunteering and being present to help support and build community.”

via Facebook

30. Tommy Luckett

Luckett advocates for people living with HIV/AIDS and is trying to end the disparities in healthcare coverage that trans people face. She attended the 53rd annual Presidential advisory Council on HIV/AIDS and participated in a panel discussing Medicaid expansion. She was the Arkansas State Coordinator for AIDSWatch 2014 and sits on the board of the Arkansas Transgender Equality Coalition, is a Quality of Healthcare Advisor to the Arkansas Department of Health and is on the board of the US PLHIV Caucus Steering Committee. Luckett emphasized to me the importance of working together. “The best answer I could muster is that we need to stop seeing each other as the enemy,” she said. “We are people who need to learn how to agree to disagree without resulting to violence. If we cannot be respectful of each other, how can we and who are we to demand respect from others?”

via The Heroines of My LIfe

31.  Greta Martela

Martela is a software engineer from San Francisco who, with her partner Nina Chaubal, founded Trans Lifeline, a crisis line for transgender people staffed entirely by fellow transgender people. Martela told me that in order for things to get better for trans people, cis people need to change the way they think about us. “I think one of the most important ways that cis allies can support trans women is to be vocal advocates among their cis friends,” she said, “the discomfort that cis people experience when confronted with transness is killing us. This is something the community really can’t do for itself, it’s up to cis people to change the way they think about trans identities and we really need cis allies to step up. As far as what trans women can do to support each other, I think it’s important that we stop ostracizing people we disagree with. This can be really hard because there are some trans women with so much internalized transmisogyny, they can be really toxic and difficult to deal with. My point is this: no matter how much you disagree with that person, she is still one of us.”

via The Advocate

32. Joselyn Mendoza

Mendoza is an undocumented trans woman from Queens, New York, who organized and lead the largest immigrant youth-led movement to fight for trans liberation.She organized with Make The Road New York, a Queens organization, to push for GENDA legislation that would include gender identity protections. She’s a National Leader for the Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project, where she lead the recent #WeCantWait Campaign that led to President Obama acting to protect nearly 5 million undocumented immigrant families.

via Wild Gender

33. Toni Newman

Newman is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-nominated memoir I Rise: The Transformation of Toni Newman. Apart from being an accomplished author, Newman is also the Community Editor for Proud to Be Out- The Digital Magazine and a blogger for Huffington Post. She also works as the Development and Administration Coordinator of the largest health-care wellness centers in South Los Angeles.

via Facebook

34. Reyna Ortiz

Ortiz is a proud trans Latina who says “Living my life as a Trans woman growing up in the inner city you come to realize the lack of resources and understand the needs in your community. My passion is to inform all Trans women about the resources that are available. Connecting with ‘The Girls’ on a deeper personal level understanding the struggles that Trans women go through and finding ways to make our lives and Transition easier. Trans people are her, have been here and will always be here.”

via Facebook

35. Alexis Paige

Paige is a bisexual, mixed race Korean trans woman who helped plan Portland’s first ever official Trans Pride March, the Meaningful Care Conference and helped to promote and spread education about Oregon’s Medicaid program ending exclusions of trans related healthcare. She currently works at the Cascade AIDS Project where she’s also a member of the Trans inclusion committee. She asks that trans women be treated like other women: “Please don’t treat us like we’re different or something that has to be handled with care. Don’t act like we’re fragile and one tiny step away from breaking. Please just treat us like you would any other woman. Cause that’s what we are. We’re just women, and all we’re asking for is to be recognized as such. So please just understand that, and let us live our lives the way we need to so that we can actually live.”

via Facebook

36. Dianne Grace Piggott

Piggott is a trans woman who lives in Boise, Idaho, and has been heavily involved in the fight to add the words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the state Human Rights Act. She’s also worked with the ACLU under a Pride Foundation fellowship and helped to organize a statewide network of trans activists.

via Twitter

37. Chelsea Poe

Poe is an activist, porn performer, director and writer (who has written for Autostraddle). She centers her activism around improving sex work conditions for trans women and often challenges mainstream porn’s lack of trans inclusion and use of transphobic slurs. She was the first trans model in the history of alt porn site God’s Girls and has been nominated for two AVNs and 8 Transgender Erotica Awards. “I think the biggest thing that non trans people can do for trans people is listen to our voices and our experiences,” Chelsea told me, “so often trans issues become public debate; whether it’s about trans women at women’s colleges or trans people using the bathroom, our voices get ignored. I think for trans women the best thing we can do to support each other is listen to each and acknowledging there isn’t a right or wrong way to be trans.”

via Slog

38. Penelope Poppers

The founder and Executive Director of Lucie’s Place, an organization in Arkansas working with homeless LGBTQ young adults in the area. She hopes that she can one day make the American South a better place for LGBTQ folks.

via Twitter

39. Rebeka Refuse

Nominated for two Transgender Erotica Awards this year for her work as an adult model, Refuse also works as an escort and has been moderating the blog Trans Housing Network since 2013. She’s an advocate for homeless trans people and hopes to help develop better ways to help homeless trans people. She told me that she is a “communist, a gender abolitionist” and that  “trans women will continue to suffer, in my opinion, until capitalist patriarchy is overthrown worldwide. Expanding access to the social safety net is desperately necessary as a form of humanitarian relief in our society, but, ultimately, we need revolution for the liberation of all gender minorities and exploited persons in the world.”

via Zimbio

40. Geena Rocero

via josephlsimonis.com

41. Ms. Dr. Joseph L Simonis

Ms. Dr. Simonis is an athlete, activist, writer and scientist who not only holds a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell, but also is a conservation biologist at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and is the founder of the Trans, Gender-Non-Conforming and Intersex Athlete Network, which connects TGI athletes and promotes trans and queer inclusion in the sports. They also speak and write about the importance of self-identity for trans athletes and is a member of the Windy City Rollers and Team Illinois in competitive roller derby. Ms. Dr. Simonis suggests that if people want to support trans women, they can “affirm our beauty, strength, and intelligence, and respect our ability to know ourselves better than anyone else ever will.”

via To Survive This Shore

42. Grace Sterling Stowell

Stowell has over 40 years working as an advocate for social justice. In 1980, she joined the newly formed Boston Alliance of LGBTQ Youth as their first executive director and in the 1990s, helped to pioneer the national movement to expand community organizing for LGBTQ youth and trans communities. She’s a long-time Steering Committee member of the MA Transgender Political Coalition and remains doing work as a “Grandmother” to generations of trans youth. “Given the epidemic of violence and murder of trans women, especially young trans women of color, I call on all of us to come together to challenge and end the systems of social and institutional racial, gender and economic oppression that are devastating our communities,” She told me,  “we can, and must, fight for a world in which living while trans is not a premature death sentence, and that the lives of all black and trans people matter.”

via Facebook

43. De Sube

Aside from years in retail and management positions and founding De Sube Business Consulting, Sube created and became the facilitator of New Life Transgender Outreach, which later grew into the Gender Expression Movement of Hampton Roads. In 2011, she opened the LGBT Center of Hampton Roads where she still works as an advocate. She has also been awarded the Old Dominion University Diversity Award and the Virginia Beach, Virginia Human Rights Commission’s community service award.

via Facebook

44. Emma Todd

Todd is the Deputy Executive Director of the Trans Lifeline and has helped the organization to have the capacity to support thousands of trans people in need of help. She’s also volunteered with GLSEN, Equality Illinois, Oklahomans for Equality and Pride at the University of Tulsa to advocate for support, equality and protections for trans people and the rest of the LGBT community. She told me that, “the most important thing that we can do as women to support trans women is to amplify the diverse voices in our community. That can mean supporting other trans women to take on empowering positions who have not had the chance before, such as speaking at a panel or leading an event. Sometimes it’s as simple as asking trans women how we can support them and make them feel comfortable in a space. It requires acknowledging that true justice and visibility for trans women will only come when we are working to show the diversity of our community and the variety of experiences that we have as trans women, rather than reifying the patriarchal, transphobic culture that we live in.”

via gcc2.org

45. Jos Truitt

The Executive Director of the website Feministing, Truitt focuses on uplifiting the voices of young feminists and marginalized groups and getting them paid. She’s been published in the Guardian, Bilerico, RH Reality Check, Metro Weekly and the Columbia Journalism Review and has fought for civil liberties and reproductive justice for  years. She told me that she thinks we need to be more than casual supporters of trans women: “Sharing articles about violence on Facebook isn’t enough. People need to support trans women of color’s organizing, people need to hire trans women of color. People need to take concrete steps to change the disparities that exist.”

via Facebook

46. Victoria Villalba

Hailing from Hermosillo, Mexico and raised in Phoenix, Arizona until 2010, Villalba is a determined fighter for immigrant rights. When she realized that she would not be able to live an authentic life in Mexico, she went to the US border to request asylum, but was detained and held in an all-male ICE detention center for over three months instead. While there she lead a hunger strike among her fellow queer and trans migrants to protest the horrible conditions there. Since being released she has continued to fight for trans and queer migrants and founded the organization Transcend Arizona.

via Queer of Gender

47. LaSaia Wade

Wade is a 27 year old trans woman of color who has worked with the TPOCC and many other advocacy organizations. She’s currently the Executive Director of the TNTJ Tennessee Trans Journey Project where she deals with economic injustice and helps to create jobs and funding for trans folk in Tennessee. Wade says that “allowing us to lead and live in our narratives adds to our survival” a major way to support trans women.

via Facebook

48. Dawn Josephine Wilson

Wilson has been working for trans civil rights for 20 years. She went to the first Transgender Lobby Days event in 1995 where she helped train trans people how to effectively lobby Congress. She joined the Louisville Fairness Campaign in 1998 where she educated the LGB community and public office holders on trans topics and has also served on the board for the Council for Fairness and Individual Rights, the PAC for the Fairness Campaign and currently works at the Louisville Metro Human Relations Commission.

via Facebook

49. Kylie Wu

Wu is the creator, illustrator and writer of the wonderful autobiographical webcomic Trans Girl Next Door (which I’ve featured here on Autostraddle before). She also loves naps, watermelons and surfing. “I think one thing that people can do to best support trans women is to listen to our stories. People, no matter who you are, just wanna be heard. And through our stories you’ll develop a connection with us, understand us better, and discover the little (or big) ways to help us,” she said, “Oh, and buy us ice cream. This might be a better way to support us, especially if you met us on a super super hot day.”

via Linkedin

50. LaLa Zannell

Zannell is the Community Organizer at the New York City Anti-Violence Project where she works on behalf of New Yorks’ LGBTQ population. She’s also a key member of the AVP’s Rapid Incident Response Team, which responds whenever acts of violence against LGBTQ and HIV-affected New Yorkers become public. She’s also a mentor for the Trans Mentorship Program at the Ali Forney Center, a coalition member of Communities United for Police Reform and a member of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Program Movement Building Committee.

Each of these women brings something different to the table, and each gives great advice on how to best support trans women. Even if you take the advice of just a few of them, I’m sure that will go a long way in helping to make lives better for trans women, and all trans people in your community and across the country.

On Visibility and My Choice To Live As An Out Trans Woman

I hadn’t even started estrogen the first time someone told me that I don’t “look trans.” As the years have worn on, and the hormones have worked their magic, the backhanded compliment of “I would have never known!” has become a regular part of my interactions with the cisgender population. Even my mother, who still views my transition as an embarrassing family secret, has asked me why I don’t simply stop telling people I’m trans and “just blend in.” When I started graduate school, I spent the 9 months of it living as functionally stealth. The fact that I’m transsexual just never really came up, and it reached a point where it felt awkward. On Trans Day Of Visibility last year, I finally got fed up, wrote the word “trans” on both wrists in sharpie, marched into school, and broke a lot of brains.

When the gay rights movement first started to gain real traction in the 1990s, visibility had a lot to do with their success. As more and more gay and lesbian folks made their sexual orientations public, it put a very human face on concept that was largely nebulous, scary, and “other” to the heterosexual world. It became a lot harder to denigrate queer folks as perverts unworthy of rights or consideration once they realized we were their neighbors, coworkers, friends, and family. Back in 2010, a poll indicated that nearly 80% of Americans knew at least one gay person, and that number has almost certainly risen since. The trans community is currently experiencing a meteoric rise in social awareness, but that awareness is largely driven by the news media and entertainment. You see, when it comes to the kind of personal-interaction visibility that was so successful for the gay community, it’s a numbers game. While we still don’t have super reliable estimates of how many gay people are in the US, we do know that somewhere around 3.5% of population is openly not heterosexual. While it’s more difficult to get an accurate estimate of how many trans people are in the US, current data seems to indicate that we’re probably only a tenth the size of the LGB population. Just in sheer personpower, that’s a hell of a deficit.

When I made the first moves toward transition, I didn’t think I’d have much of a choice about my visibility as a trans woman. I assumed I wouldn’t look terribly cis-normative, that I’d always stick out because of my trans-ness. I’ll admit that, once I was finally completely out and through the worst parts of transition, the idea of just fading into the background was really appealing. Transition made me feel very hypervisible, like all eyes were on me all the time, and it was effing exhausting. I also spent a whole lot of time and energy educating the people around me about transgender issues. While that was certainly as much for my own comfort as anything, it still burned me out eventually. But then, a funny thing happened — my friends started to become advocates. I started seeing posts about trans rights in my Facebook feed. I started seeing and hearing my friends call out on transphobia. When I later asked a few folks why they had suddenly taken up the cause, they told me that having a trans friend suddenly made those issues feel personal.

All too often, the vitriol spewed by the transphobic bigots focuses on dehumanizing us. When you can get people to see us as less than human, it’s much easier to fear us, to exclude us, to do violence against us, to hate us. When we’re nameless and faceless, it’s much easier to turn us into scary bathroom-peeping monsters instead of just nice folks who occasionally need to go pee someplace other than our homes. Othering people is easy when those people only exist as a concept. When trans people choose to live visibly, even just to those in our close circles, suddenly there’s a living, breathing person being attached to those discussions, a very human target all that hate is directed at. And, despite all the shitty subconscious biases people hold, most are pretty unwilling to tolerate hateful attacks on people they care about.

Some of the strangest conversations I have with people center around how poorly I fit into people’s preconceived notions of what trans people are like. First and foremost, I’m queer. It’s astonishing how many people are still quite convinced that trans women are all straight. I also met my lovely queer cisgender partner after I transitioned, which seems to absolutely blow people’s mind. Add to that my relatively unfeminine presentation, and that I don’t “look trans,” and folk’s brains just start to melt. I’ve come to really enjoy those moments. I view every single one of them as tiny bit of progress, as a one more swift blow against the hordes of ridiculous stereotypes about my community that still plague us.

We all know what the image is conjured the public’s mind’s eye when someone says “transgender.” Ugly stereotypes perpetuated by years of exploitative media portrayals. Jared Leto in Dallas Buyer’s Club. Even discussion of our community in the news media often seem to characterize us as some kind of homogeneous, monolithic entity. One of the coolest things about being very connected to the trans community is getting to see just how untrue that notion is. Trans people are a damn diverse bunch! We span just about every variation of presentation, sexual orientation, size, shape, color, faith, interest, career, talent, education, and economic background. We’re defined only by our indefinability. When we allow the world to see us, to meet us, to know us in all our infinite variation, we help destroy those stereotypes.

For me, one of the most beautiful and empowering parts about choosing to live as an out trans woman is knowing that I’m helping to dismantle the deeply fucked up power structures that have plagued us since we first gained access to transition in the middle of the 20th century. The concept of “passing” is largely a construct of the patriarchal cisgender medical world that has controlled our access to hormones and surgery for more than 50 years. When Harry Benjamin first began treating transgender women, he limited his concern to a very specific subset of our population, namely those who were attracted to men, and who could blend into the cisgender world without bringing attention to themselves and making cisgender people uncomfortable. These women were advised to completely destroy any connection to their pre-transition life, and never mention the fact that they were transgender. This was the birth of “stealth,” and those who have controlled our access to medical transition (along with certain factions within our own community) have long stressed it as the preferred end goal. That bias persisted for many decades, and undercurrents of it remain to this day. In essence, the long-standing expectation of trans people has been that our access to the kinds of interventions that make our lives livable and our bodies tolerable is only acceptable so long as it doesn’t offend sensibilities of cis people. By rejecting stealth and the “passing” narrative, I’m taking control of the narrative of my transition, and I’m centering it on my own happiness and comfort. The end-goal of transition for me wasn’t to blend into the cisgender background — it was to reach a personal harmony between my body and mind. I have that now (mostly), and cisgender people’s feelings on the matter is irrelevant. If we, as a community, can reject the concept of stealth as the most desirable of transition outcomes, we start to dismantle some of the historical oppression wrought on us by the medical profession.

The most touching, tear-inducing encounters I have with readers are when someone says “you made me feel like it was going to be okay.” Being trans, especially when you’re first coming out, can feel pretty lonely, and transition often feels like this huge, imposing mountain to climb. I remember how much inspiration I drew from two close friends who started transition just a few months before I did, how seeing them take those first steps made it feel far less intimidating for me to do so. I also remember the blogs I read and videos I watched from other young trans women going through transition that made the process feel survivable, like maybe I was going to be okay. Those women’s visibility and openness basically saved my life, as I’m not entirely sure I’d have ever had the courage to take that first step without them. When I first started blogging almost exactly two years ago, it was largely with the hope that maybe my experiences might strike a chord with someone else and give them the hope or strength they needed to survive their own transition, or just feel a little bit less lost and alone. I treasure every single email, comment, and tweet from other trans people, and it inspires me to push on as a writer and speaker. As much as my decision to live with my trans identity out in the open is about me, it’s just as much about hopefully making the world feel a little less intimidating and little less lonely for other trans people.

At this point in trans history, we have a huge opportunity to smooth the path for those will follow behind us. Because of the socially and medically enforced stealth that persisted for so many years, every new generation of trans people was in many ways stumbling blindly through the dark without a hand to guide them, every lesson having to be learned anew. With the advent of the internet, information about transition become more readily available than it ever had before, but the biases towards stealth and blending in still limited the degree to which trans communities were built, especially outside of the big cities. But now, with more and more trans people choosing to be and live out, and our unprecedented connection to one another through social media, we have a chance to make young trans people (and trans people of any age finally finding the strength to come out) feel that there’s a community waiting to support them, to protect them, to mentor and guide them, to care for them, and to love them. To be visible is sometimes to be a beacon when things otherwise seem dark, a shining light to safe shores for those who feel lost. With the still terrifyingly-high levels of suicide among trans people, we need all the beacons we can get.

There’s definitely a temptation in our community to fall into the trap of giving preference to certain kinds of visibility, out of a desire to “put our best face forward.” Because our community is given so few opportunities to represent ourselves in the dominant media spheres, we instinctively want to give those opportunities to those we feel will do the most good with those limited opportunities. But, too often, that means largely promoting the voices and visibility of white, cisnormative-appearing, conventionally attractive binary-identified folks, almost to the complete exclusion of others. We do our community a disservice when we present such a myopic view of community. It limits the ability of the cisgender population to grasp the depth and diversity of our community, and it destroys an opportunity for those who are at the greatest risk — trans people of color and especially black trans women — to see a face they can connect with and see themselves in. We similarly often end up discouraging the visibility of those perceived as less socially acceptable, particularly sex workers and those who are less educated, out of fear of that this might somehow reflect badly on the rest of our community. This is the worst kind of respectability politics. All trans people have the right to live genuinely and visibly without being shamed or hidden for their occupation, their education, their non-cisnormative appearance, or the color of their skin.

Lastly, we need to remain mindful that visibility is choice, not an obligation. While living out can be incredibly empowering and rewarding, it also has its share of hardships and drawbacks. Living visibly as a trans person, especially a trans person of color, opens you up to the risk of not just discrimination, but also violence and even murder, so there are very good reasons why someone might want to be stealth. Not all trans people are called to be writers, activists, advocates, or educators, nor all those who choose to live visibly required do any of those things. Life as a trans person is difficult regardless. Trans people who desire to simply live their lives after transition have absolutely earned the right to do, and we cannot and should not shame them if they elect to not openly identify as trans. Stealth is a perfectly valid choice for those desire it. As well, as much as we should embrace our trans siblings who do not seek a cis-normative appearance, it’s critical that we not disparage those who do. Those who chose not to live visibly, and/or to seek a cisnormative appearance are not any less trans than those who do, and deserve the exact same love, acceptance, support, and advocacy.

When I give talks about my experiences as a trans woman, as a writer, advocate, and activist, one of the most frequent questions people ask me is “Why?” Why do I choose do this for a living over a better paying, less stressful jobs? Why choose to out myself instead of going stealth? Why share so much of myself and my life through my writing? The answer is always the same. Because someone needs to, because I have the strength for it, because I want to, and because it means maybe someone will have the choice not to.

Playlist: Trans Day of Visibility

Happy Trans Day of Visibility 2015! This may be a bit obvious, but this is the day where we highlight trans people in our lives, our community and our world and celebrate the things that they do. Making trans people, and especially trans people of color, more visible in society is vitally important, and I use the word “vitally” on purpose, as more visibility and more diverse visibility will literally save trans lives. We need to see trans people so that we normalize being trans and people no longer think we’re freaks or that they don’t know anyone who’s trans and therefore trans issues don’t matter to them. We need to see trans people who are alive and successful so that other trans people have hope. We need to see, and hear, trans people telling their stories and sharing their words.

All the bands and artists on this playlist either are trans or have at least one trans member. Some are trans women, some are trans men, some are genderqueer, some are agender. I’m sure there are plenty of other trans musicians I left off. Also, apparently if you want to see awesome punk music by trans artists you need to head to Brooklyn right now (you should check out Brooklyn Transcore for more awesome queer and trans artists).

Katey Red via Executive PR and Talent

Trans Day of Visibility

[STREAM THE PLAYLIST]

True Trans Soul Rebel – Against Me!
Punk Under Pressure – Katey Red
The Dance of Diminishing Possibilities – Baby Dee
The Body Electric – Hurray for the Riff Raff
G.L.O.S.S. (We’re From The Future) – G.L.O.S.S.
400 Days – The Manifest Electric
Crown – Angel Haze
(I Wanna Be A) Dyke Wife – Little Waist
Hercules’ Theme – Hercules and the Love Affair ft. Nomi Ruiz
Subway – Girlcrush
Are You Ready – The Shondes
Oh Yeah – The Cliks
Wavvy – Mykki Blanco
Start Talking – Aye Nako
For Today I Am a Boy – Antony & The Johnsons
Cats! – Penguin
Eyes of the Patriarchy – Femmepire
Ondine– Lower Dens

Trans Day of Visibility from Autostraddle on 8tracks Radio.

Want to suggest a playlist theme? Hit Stef up and someone on the team might make it for you.

Drawn to Comics Classics: Runaways Makes Us All Feel Like Angsty (Superpowered) Teens Again

by rory midhani

You may remember that a few weeks ago I was talking about how excited I am to see the return of the Runaways title to the Marvel Universe for the first time since 2009. During the upcoming Secret Wars ultimate crossover event, Lumberjanes and Nimona writer Noelle Stevenson will be writing a new lineup of the classic team (keeping Molly Hayes from the original comics) and injecting new life into one of the most original superhero team comics of the modern era. If you weren’t here the first time around when Runaways was coming out, you missed out on one of the most diverse, female-led, genre-busting and ground-breaking superhero teams in all of comics. Because of that, I’m bringing back Drawn to Comics Classics for its second installment (you can check out the first, on Gotham Central to learn about the history of Renee Montoya).

The original Runaways lineup. (Clockwise from L: Nico, Gert and Old Lace, Chase, Karolina, Molly and Alex). Art by Adrian Alphona.

Runaways was originally created and written by Brian K. Vaughan, one of the truly great comics writers of our time, famous for Y: the Last Man and Saga, and artist Adrian Alphona. It starts with a group of five teens and one pre-teen who meet together once a year when their parents, a bunch of super rich people who live in Southern California, get together to talk and “donate to charity.” I put that in quotes because as we find out in the first issue, their parents are actually supervillains having a meeting to discuss how they, The Pride, will continue to rule the West Coast of the USA. This serves as a nice way to explain why seemingly the entire Marvel Universe takes place in New York and other Eastern cities. All the villains stay away from Pride territory. So these kids, Alex, the son of evil crime lords; Niko, the daughter of some witches; Karolina, who’s an alien; Molly, the youngest member of the group and a mutant; Gert, the daughter of a couple of time-travelers; and Chase, whose parents are mad scientists, find out about their parents. Not being evil themselves, they run away, giving the series its name. For the rest of the first three volumes, we follow these kids as they try to take down their parents.

The first 24 issues were all written by Vaughan, and these issues are all great. As superhero stories they’re extremely compelling, but that part of the comic often takes a back seat to the interpersonal relationships and character development. They really, and I mean really, get you invested in the characters. And just as a warning, some team members do die or otherwise leave the team, and when they do, it will probably break your heart to pieces.  There are also great cameos by heroes like Cloak and Dagger, Wolverine, the C-list superhero team Excelsior and more.

Julie Powers and Karolina Dean getting interrupted. Art by Adrian Alphona.

What really makes these cameos great, though, is the way the Runaways interact with the more traditional characters from the Marvel Universe. These kids come up with codenames but they rarely use them; Molly’s the only one who really ever wears a superhero costume; and since they’re fans of superheroes who rarely get to see them in real life (since they live on the West Coast), they treat them very much in the way that most comic book readers probably would: a mix of being starstruck, confused, iffy about the whole “superhero” thing and basically, like teenagers. One of my absolute favorite moments is when they’re fighting Excelsior, and in the middle of the battle, Karolina stops mid-flight to tell Julie Power, aka Lightspeed, that she’s “really, really pretty,” prompting the two to nervously flirt with each other a bit, right before Molly thows the mutant Chamber at her, knocking Julie right out of the sky. No worries, though, in the later series Avengers Academy, Karolina and Julie start flirting again and even end up dating. After issue #24, other writers Joss Whedon, Terry Moore and Kathryn Immomen take over to, uh, varying success.

Every queer girl’s coming out nightmare. Art by Takeshi Miyazawa.

Now, I can’t not spend some serious time talking about Karolina Dean. Although there were a few lesbian superheros before her (Karma from the X-Men is one example), she’s the first one I remember reading, and definitely the first teenager, which for college sophomore version of me reading these books, made her even more important. And oh my gosh, the scene where she comes out is heart crushing. Not only does she try to kiss her straight best friend who rejects her, but then that straight best friend suggests that maybe she’s into girls because she’s an alien and that “maybe this is just something that girls go through” back on her planet. Harsh. Hey straight people, just a tip, when your friend comes out to you, even if it’s awkward, don’t suggest it’s a phase or that it’s because she’s an alien, please. Then, to make her coming out even more complicated, a young Super Skrull shows up saying that they’re supposed to get married in order to end an intergalactic war. And this Super Skrull looks like a guy.

Now, Skrulls are shapeshifters and changing gender is like “changing hair color,” according to this Skrull, named Xavin. Karolina’s new betrothed is able to present largely as female when interacting with Karolina. Still, you can be sure that when you’re a queer teenager who suddenly gets engaged to a stranger the same day you come out, you’ll have some major stuff to deal with. But Karolina deals with it a billion times better than I ever would have. She’s so loving and accepting and has a huge heart (but also her depression and lack of confidence do play a role) that she agrees to marry Xavin in order to end an intergalactic war, and eventually, the two really do fall in love. Even if Karolina sometimes feels uncomfortable with Xavin’s shapeshifting and Xavin sometimes has trouble understanding what it means to be “human.”

Xavin and Karolina. Art by Adrian Alphona.

For as little as Xavin is actually in the books (she doesn’t show up until Vol. 5, which she’s barely in, same for Vol. 6, and then leaves in Vol. 9), she sure left quite an impression on me and on other readers. I’m going to use “she” pronouns for Xavin for a few reasons. When she and Karolina are about to get married, she’s in her male Skrull form, but shapeshifts into her female human form and tells Karolina “I’m only a groom for my fellow Skrulls; Karolina, deep down I’m a blushing bride like you,” and in Vol. 8 when she gets in an argument with Karolina, she unconsciously shapeshifts into her “female” form and when Molly and Karolina are excited that this means that that is her default form, Xavin says “I didn’t realize that was in doubt.” However, I do think it’s fair to read Xavin as genderfluid, rather than binary female, and Aphona said that he was told that Xavin should be drawn as different genders in different situations. There’s also this really terrific conversation she has with Molly where she’s asked why she doesn’t just stay a girl all the time, and that that would make everyone, especially Karolina a lot more comfortable. Xavin tells Molly that “some people would be more comfortable if Karolina liked males. Or if you were not a genetic mutation,” and that she’s not like everyone else and that’s okay, and all she’s asking for is acceptance.

Xavin laying down some truths. Art by Adrian Alphona.

Many people count Xavin as the first transgender superhero in a mainstream comic (earlier examples like Lord Fanny and Coagula were in more fringe, or mature-reader comics), but others don’t quite count her, as she’s an alien shapeshifter and says that changing genders isn’t a big deal for her. Either way, seeing someone subvert gender and give some representation to trans people the way Xavin did was mind-blowing. For years Xavin was my number one favorite superhero and I would read and reread this series just to see a comic book character who was sort of like me.

The Runaways (which I don’t think is actually what they officially call themselves) are one of the only teams I can think of that has more women (or girls) than guys, and that’s a dynamic the team kept no matter who joined, who left or who, sadly, died. It’s also one of the most diverse teams to ever exist. Out of the nine people who have been team members, five are girls, three are guys and Xavin is a genderfluid shapeshifter who leans toward being female. If you count Xavin, who when she’s being human, is black, then four out of the nine are people of color. The team even had Gert Yorkes, who was one of the few fat superheroes I’ve ever seen.

Some of Runaway’s girl power. Art by Adrian Alphona.

Runaways really paved the way for a lot of the best comics of the past few years. Books like Ms. Marvel, Young Avengers (the Gillen and McKelvie run) and Batgirl all owe a lot to this book. It was so far ahead of its time, not just in terms of story but also with its representation for women, people of color and queer people that it’s really quite shocking that it first came out over ten years ago. It’s also a must-read for fans of Vaughan’s work on Saga, Ex Machina or Y: the Last Man. Runaways, especially the first 24-issue run, is plainly one of the best superhero stories of the past 25 years, and if you want to see a great example of queer stories done right in comics, genre-busting and trope-challenging story telling or a book that laid a lot of the groundwork for the current trend towards more youthful, optimistic and girl-powered comics, you should check it out today.

New Releases (4/1/15)

Adventure Time Vol. 5: Graybles Shmaybles (Boom!)

Lumberjanes Vol.1 TPB (Boom!)

Angel and Faith Season 10 #13 (Dark Horse)

Gotham Academy Endgame #1 (DC)

Harley Quinn #16 (DC)

Teen Titans Annual #1 (DC)

Wonder Woman #40 (DC)

Wonder Woman Vol. 5: Flesh (DC)

Wonder Woman Vol. 6: Bone HC (DC)

X-Files Season 10 #22 (IDW)

Spider-Gwen #3 (Marvel)

Welcome to Drawn to Comics! From diary comics to superheroes, from webcomics to graphic novels – this is where we’ll be taking a look at comics by, featuring and for queer ladies. So whether you love to look at detailed personal accounts of other people’s lives, explore new and creative worlds, or you just love to see hot ladies in spandex, we’ve got something for you.

If you have a comic that you’d like to see me review, you can email me at mey [at] autostraddle [dot] com

DW Trantham, Courageous Trans Teen, Stands Up For Her Bathroom Rights and Finds Community Support

I first met DW Trantham when I went to Boise in January to testify as a part of the hearing on whether or not the Add the Words bill should move forward. She immediately struck me as confident, capable and wildly courageous. While the bill failed to make it out of committee, DW and her father’s testimonies left a lasting impression on me and many others who were gathered there that day. So when I heard that once again she and her father, Tim Trantham, were standing up and fighting for her rights and the rights of other transgender students, I wasn’t surprised in the least.

DW signing up to testify at the Idaho Capitol. via Facebook

DW Trantham is a 13-year-old transgender girl who goes to South Junior High in Boise, Idaho. She says that last year she went to school not telling any other students that she was trans, but decided this year she would be open about it and actively and visibly campaign for her rights as a trans student, telling me, “you’re never gonna solve the problem unless you do something, you can’t just talk about it.”

This visibility ran into what seemed like a huge obstacle last week when another student’s parents found out about her and very publicly took their daughter out of school rather than have her go to a school where she might share a bathroom with a trans girl. DW told me that she didn’t know about this issue until after the other parents had already gone onto the local news to talk about it. “I learned about it at the meeting,” DW said. “I had no idea that somebody was pushing for it… We got there he pulled out the computer and immediately just jumped right into the situation “Hey um, did you see the news last night?”

Her dad told me that he was equally surprised: “The first I heard of it was in the principal’s office, I guess they had a heads up about it, they knew about the news story. I didn’t know about it until I was in the principal’s office and he played that television story for me. I was pretty much caught off guard.”

However, despite being surprised by these specific actions, Tim had already been prepared to fight for DW’s right to use the correct bathroom. He initially thought that the meeting was going to end up in a fight against the school and was pleasantly surprised when the principal actually told the two of them that they were upholding DW’s rights. “About a week prior, the school board had decided to take the ACLU’s advice and allow transgender children nationwide to use the bathroom of their choice,” he explained. “I actually thought going into that meeting that I would walk out with DW no longer enrolled there and end up in the middle of a Title IX fight and I told them that. I said I was totally prepared to get my way that way. And [the meeting] was the total opposite of what I thought it was going to be.”

Tim Trantham wasn’t always the amazingly supportive father he is today. He says that it actually took him quite some time to come around and learn to not only accept his daughter as being transgender, but to be with her every step of the way fighting right along beside her. “I say this a lot,” he recalls. “But I just wasn’t on board with this at first. I thought maybe I wasn’t throwing enough baseballs, you know what I mean. It was like she never played with any of the boy toys that I bought her. She would take boy toys and trade them for Barbie dolls.”

DW with her dad, Tim via amermaidtail.com

He says that the main reason he learned to support her was simply by gaining knowledge on the subject. Once he really understood what it meant to have a transgender daughter, he felt he had no choice but to have her back, and hopes that other parents of transgender children will do the same.

“Knowledge is power. Get on the internet. Don’t be scared to type the word “transgender” in that little box,” He advises. “Look around, join some groups. Parents of Transgender Children is an awesome group and there are many others out there. Don’t be scared is what I guess I would say. Get some knowledge and remember your kids. When they were born, how you felt in your heart, how could you not want to keep that going for as long as you’re alive? You’ve got to support your kids no matter what you do, you know what I mean? If DW was wanting to be a scientist, I would be spending all my money buying beakers. But as it is, I spend it on make up.”

Based on this incident, however, it’s clear that not every parent is as educated on this issue as Mr. Trantham is. The other parents, Pauline Adams and Jacob Smith, said that they pulled their daughter out because of “safety” and “privacy” concerns and asked, “we would not allow our child to share a restroom simultaneously at home, so why would we be okay with it at school?” They say that at the least they should have been notified that there was a transgender student at the school and that this could lead to trans boys using the boy’s bathroom where “there is not as much privacy” or transgender students using locker rooms.

DW says that no one has anything to worry about. She just wants to be able to use the bathroom like every other girl her age, and like she’s been doing. “It was so shocking that parents felt so scared because of me being in the girl’s bathroom,” she told me. “I mean, what do you think am I going to do? Trans people are worried about their bathroom privacy more than anyone. We are the ones at risk of being raped or sexually assaulted. It’s happened to me before. I’m not hurting anyone. I am just simply using and expressing my rights as a human being using the girl’s restroom.”

Both DW and her father were extremely relieved and glad to hear that the school was standing behind them on this issue. They told Tim that they were going to continue to let DW use the correct bathroom. Principal Jeff Hultberg said that  “from my perspective, the students have not viewed this as a big issue. A lot of students went to elementary school with her. They have been aware of the issue for several years.” In a statement they released to clarify their stance on the issue, the school district said “The US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights has instructed schools nationwide that sex-discrimination prohibitions in federal law include protections for gender identity. As such, under federal civil rights law, the district is required to provide access to public facilities consistent with the student’s gender identity.”

Across the continent, the “bathroom issue” has been one of the biggest topics of contention when it comes to transgender rights in the past several months. At the Add the Words hearing in Boise, most of the people testifying against the bill cited access to bathrooms as one of the main reasons why. There’s currently a movement across Canada and parts of the US where transgender men and women are going into the bathroom that doesn’t match their true gender and taking selfies, posting them to social media in order to show how ridiculous anti-trans bathroom laws are. Many local non-discrimination ordinances get held up because people are worried that it will lead to chaos in the bathrooms. “Men dressing up as women in order to sneak into the bathrooms,” as opponents put it.

Via Facebook

It might go without saying, but these arguments don’t hold any water. Trans women are not men, so the issue of men going into women’s bathrooms has nothing to do with them. Under a law that protects the rights of trans people to use the bathrooms that match their gender, a man sneaking into the women’s bathroom would still be very much illegal. Additionally, across the United States, cities and states that have laws on the books confirming trans women’s rights to use women’s bathrooms have reported absolutely no cases of sexual assault by trans women after the passage of these laws.

This issue has been a big one in other schools as well. In 2013, the family of transgender girl Coy Mathis successfully won the right for their daughter to use the girls’ bathroom at her school in Colorado. Similarly, Nicole Maines won a lawsuit against her school just last year where they school district had to pay her and her family $75,000 because she was forced to use a unisex bathroom instead of the girl’s room at her school. Adams and Smith suggested a similar compromise. DW points out that this isn’t actually a good solution at all and that it ultimately amounts to segregation.

“It’s not okay,” DW says. “A unisex bathroom is just segregation. It’s completely away from the other girls. It’s challenging my personhood and it’s challenging my rights as an American, and I have every right to use the girls’ bathroom… I just don’t feel right about a unisex or genderless bathroom. I have a gender, I am a girl, you know? It’s important to me as a girl to be able to use the girl’s bathroom. Otherwise I’m being segregated.”

Even though DW had the backing of the school on the issue, she still left the situation feeling shaken. That is, until she arrived at school the next morning.  “I walked into my school and it was nine o’clock and I was greeted by hundreds of students,” she remembers. “They all had their hands out to me, ready to give me a hug. They were all wearing stickers, that said, “I Am DW.” They were handing out sheets to sign that they don’t mind that a transgender girl was sharing a bathroom with them… All these people, people that I didn’t even know, people were coming up to me saying, you’re beautiful, stay strong, all throughout the day. There were even lots of teachers that were wearing the “I Am DW” stickers.:

via Facebook

These students, many whom she had thought weren’t her friends and didn’t accept her were now standing firmly in solidarity with her. Students and staff from across the school were letting her know that they weren’t just accepting her, they were fighting alongside her. “It was so amazing,” she recalls. “This isn’t even doing it justice. This was so amazing. I just felt endless support of love and thankful for the hugs and I felt sorry for the uneducated parents that took their children out of school because of it.”

Both DW and Tim Trantham hope that they can spread their message of acceptance and rights for trans children across the country, and they both feel that knowledge is the key to that. DW advises parents to “do their research and really look into what it means to be transgender” and “get educated and know that that’s not what I’m in [the bathroom] for.” She says that she does what she does “to put a human face behind the word “transgender”” because “we’re not freaks, we’re not perverts, we’re just people. You know?” DW also points out that she’s worried about her own safety in the bathroom most of all. “We are human too,” she told me. “We are not going in there for the wrong reasons.”

Tim also says that he hopes DW’s situation will inspire other trans students and let them know that it’s possible that not only the school administration, but also the student body will stand with them:

“I hope that this story gets out far enough that other transgender kids in other schools in our nation can see what can happen if you’re like DW and stand up for yourself and ask your school for these rights,” Tim told me. “It involves Title IX and our national government has already got these protections in place. A lot of people don’t realize where the ACLU stands on that and what they recommend to school districts when asked. You either do it (allow trans students to use the correct bathroom) or you’re going to be sued.”

In a time when most news stories about trans people involve violence or discrimination, DW’s triumph at school is a breath of fresh air. It shows us the value of tenacity, courage and knowledge in the fight for transgender rights. It shows us that even in a traditionally conservative Western state like Idaho, a trans girl can be embraced by her community. Most importantly, it shows us that as long as there are brave and talented young people like DW Trantham fighting for trans rights, the fight for equality is going to continue to move forward.

Pay Us Some Mind: On the “Tragic” Humanity of Black Trans Women

When I was coming to terms with my gender identity in 2012, my initial understanding of the transgender experience was rudimentary at best. At issue were the run-of-the-mill things like obtaining hormones, finding clothing that worked with my rapidly changing body and figuring out which name would suit me perfectly.

The idea of how my life would operate in the broader society was an elusive concept. Figures like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox were well on their way to mainstream success, but the media landscape wasn’t teeming with transgender fascination like it is currently, and piecing together a map for my future seemed nearly impossible. Initial support came a peppering of online articles, anecdotes and transition how-to guides, but they overwhelmingly focused on trans women who were considerably older and white.

As a young black trans girl, I found that most of the information that contained even a sliver of nuance were statistics. And from there I realized that the narrative for girls like us is often deeper and darker. I learned that as a transgender person of color, I am six times more likely to experience physical violence from the police than my white, cisgender queer counterparts. I learned that while 72 percent of anti-LGBTQ homicides occur to trans women, 67 percent fall on the shoulders of trans women of color. And in nearly every study from HIV infection rates to socio-economic marginalization, in general, trans women of color are disproportionately affected.

When I was forced to stop looking at my identities as if they exist in a vacuum, I realized that being a black trans woman is a major risk and accepting myself would be just the first battle with a society obsessed with compartmentalization.

The Media’s Nuance Problem

When Leelah Alcorn’s suicide went viral at the tail-end of December 2014, it seemed like there would be some major shift in the transgender narrative. I saw the world stop and consider a trans person’s death on a more meaningful level.

I thought the world would take the severity of our experiences more seriously even if it meant that some of the nuance of that severity might be lost. The nuance that explains that we also experience so much marginalization and that trans women of color, particularly black trans women bear the brunt of the violence and discrimination.

Clockwise from left: Lamia Beard, Yazmin Vash Payne, Penny Proud and Ty Underwood

After a couple months into 2015, the media and society are back to their old means of understanding. We’ve already witnessed the murders of six trans women of color (including four black trans women) — Lamia Beard, Ty Underwood, Yazmin Vash Payne, Taja Gabrielle DeJesus, Penny Proud and Kristina Gomez Reinwald — and two more people who, based on reports, were gender non-conforming — L. Edwards and B. Golec. In Toronto, Somali-Canadian trans woman Sumaya Dalmara was found dead but police haven’t ruled her death a homicide. Their names have been discussed in articles and mentioned in newscasts, but largely mainstream media continues to reduce their deaths to numbers on a list.

This limited media presence revolves around paying tribute to lives that should’ve been respected long before they were lost through lackluster overtures about needing to respect and value trans lives. There continues to be no deeper consideration for the full lives of these slain individuals. They never fully delve into the “why” of their deaths.

There is much that can be said about the disparity between media coverage for young, white trans suicides and the brutal murders of the trans women of color. Are they not respectably queer enough to be hashtag worthy? Are their names not important enough in their respective racial communities to paint across banners? Perhaps they don’t fall in line with the perfect soundbite for your movement, but they should.

It is of the utmost importance to recognize the Leelah Alcorns and the Zander Mahaffeys and the Mike Browns and the Trayvon Martins, but we can’t shut down the conversation there and ignore the fact that there are numerous individuals like Islan Nettles and Nizah Morris being targeted as well.

Old Wounds in the Queer Community

If trans activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were to board a time machine and be transported to today, they would be proud of the strides we’ve made but balk at the idea that the queer community has fully embraced the trans unit of our acronym. Many of the same issues they faced before the Stonewall Riots have still not been rectified.

Both warned the influencers of the then Gay Liberation movement to be wary of bogarting the efforts from the trans and gender non-conforming individuals who led the initial resistance. Though Johnson and Rivera were adamant about liberation for all, we can’t ignore the roles their racial and class identities played in the immediate attempt to erase them from history.

When acknowledging that black trans women are routinely targeted for more strident discrimination, often the conversation is shut down in an #alllivesmatter attempt to push for solidarity. But true solidarity does not denounce diversity and individual voices. True solidarity actively engages them.

Yes, the LGBTQ community as a whole is fighting for many of the same goals, but structural racism, capitalism and respectability exist in every rank of the LGBTQ rights movement and cisnormativity continue to be upheld despite it plaguing us all. That means after 45 years of trying to catch up with the LGB movement, the trans community and black trans women are still catching their breath and wait for their reprieve.

Undoubtedly, we’ve made great strides in terms of visibility and awareness of trans issues. We’ve ushered in a trans renaissance in the media. More people are confronting our identity than ever before, but on the ground, life for the average transgender woman of color continues to be bleak.

Old Wounds in the Black Community

Similarly, the Black community has long ignored the issues of gender and sexuality. Many queer people of color have had their identities swept under the rug or been ousted from history books Bayard Rustin-style. Since the Civil Rights Movement, black women and black queer people have been pushed to the margins in an attempt to fight for what is deemed the greater mission: racial equality. But racial equality without nuance is centered on heterosexual black men.

Photo credit: Lauren Soleil-Downer

We see this in the #BlackLivesMatters movement which was started by three queer black women — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi — not only in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin, but in response to the anti-blackness that affects all black lives. It has been stripped down of all contextual meaning.

The recent death of Ty Underwood attests to this mindset. The 24 year old was allegedly murdered by jilted love interest Carlton Ray Champion, Jr., a black man. In tried and true, transmisogynistic fashion, many in the black community on social media upheld that she must have been deceptive about her trans identity — as if that validates her death and despite the fact that there is text message evidence that proves otherwise.

Blaming trans women for having the audacity to desire love is a petty and disgusting act of self-righteousness. The atmosphere fostered through shaming trans individuals and those who love and affirm them makes it incredibly difficult to exist authentically. And, as we’ve seen with Underwood’s case, even when that status is worn on our sleeves, we are dismissed as not being authentic enough.

The Remedy

Living at the intersection of racial and gender minorities means that all of these identities are constantly working together. The queer and trans community can’t continue to strip us of our racial oppression, just like the black community can’t solely blame our deaths on our gender identities. We’re targeted for both. Identities aren’t like clothing; you can’t just put us in the trench coat you identify with, completely ignoring the even more complex underlying context.

My heart breaks any time I hear about a trans death, period. But when it’s another black trans sister dying, I cycle through feeling helpless, hopeless and numb. I see not just another death, but another voice lost. I think of these women and what they could’ve become if they were able to define their lives for themselves. If they weren’t eliminated in their prime and their humanity wasn’t permanently wiped away.

We have tangible proof that under the right conditions we can be New York Times bestselling authors, A-list actresses on major network television productions, tech guru entrepreneurs and more. But, let’s be clear, we shouldn’t have to be all of those things to be respected and valued.

via sutterstock

So often society at-large commandeers the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s dream of racial and class equality or Harvey Milk’s view of a world where gay and lesbian individuals are less encumbered by the restrictions that society has placed on them, but we must dig deeper. We have to continue to shift our idea of what that end goal is. Now that the transgender community finally has a name and a face and stories that are burgeoning in literature and in cinema, we must critically consider what those narratives look like outside of fiction written by someone else.

In a truly evolved world, black trans women would be seen as more than the cisheteronormative scripts that society has grown accustomed to, we would no longer be targeted by transmisogynoir, proper healthcare and access to knowledgeable and affirming healthcare professionals would be a right, not a privilege, and the world at-large would be a safe space because restrooms and classrooms would no longer be political battlegrounds. We would also be able to keep our default institutions — origin families and churches — and they would work in tandem with our found institutions — drag families, GSAs and organizations. We would be able to choose our educational environments with more attention to our actual realities than presumptions on our upbringing and the configurations of our bodies. We wouldn’t have enough fingers on our hands to name off trans media figures and living beyond their 20s would be the norm, not an anomaly. Ultimately, our safety and livelihood would be centered and not relegated to the margins.

The road to that world requires more of our society and those around us. We deserve more than mentions on social media and impromptu vigils. We need help. We need allies. We need our queer family to bolster us on their shoulders. We need our black family to regard us and respect us. We need cisgender women to advocate for us.

We aren’t the vessels of flesh that you continuously try to define for us. We aren’t the insults, the wrong pronouns and the slurs you hurl towards us. We aren’t our forgotten and spit-on legacy and our minced and parsed humanities. We aren’t our “inevitable” deaths. We deserve our blackness, our queerness and our womanhood. We deserve respect, love and our lives. Every black trans woman deserves more than her obituary.

I’m Both an L and a T and I Don’t Want to Choose a Side

It seems like more and more often I’m seeing people talking and writing thinkpieces about how the lesbian community and the trans woman community are at war. We’re constantly fighting! We don’t have the same goals! We’re communicating across a great divide!

It’s true that there are lots of issues between these communities and that there is a very small but very loud contingent of cis lesbians known as TERFS (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) who are almost entirely dedicated to the mission of bringing down trans women. But often these conversations fail to acknowledge that there are lots of overlaps, too. I am a lesbian and a trans woman, and I’ve found that we share much more common ground than drawn battle lines. Personally, I like existing and living in both communities rather than having to choose one over the other. I know that being the Trans Editor here at Autostraddle, I’ve kind of painted myself into a corner of being a Professional Trans Woman, but that doesn’t mean that I like other people pigeonholing me into that role. Especially when it means that they exclude me from other communities that I’m equally a part of.

A lot of the arguments about why trans women and cis lesbians don’t get along come from perceived problems between the two groups on an institutional level. While that’s important to discuss and to work on, when we focus solely on that, we ignore the very important personal relationships that often form between members of the two groups. I’ve found a lot of my current community among cis lesbians. I’ve found a lot of my current friends, a lot of my current co-workers and a lot of my current support system in the cis lesbian community. It was cis lesbians and other cis queer women who gave me the platform that I currently have as a writer and as someone who can help amplify other trans women’s voices here at Autostraddle.

In my real life, I don’t get in that many fights with cis lesbians. At least not as a group, at least not because they are cis lesbians. It’s usually because of other reasons, like they’re racist or a jerk or they don’t like Nicki Minaj or they’ve never seen Jurassic Park. Really, I find that the majority of my conflicts with cis lesbians on a structural level happen when I write about the relationship between cis lesbians and trans women. Even then, if I’m writing about dating and sex or even if I’m not, the conflicts usually boil down to a few cis lesbians saying “I don’t want to have to date a woman with a penis! But I’m not transphobic,” and a few trans lesbians reminding them that no one ever said that anyone should have to date anyone they’re not attracted to for any reason.

As a trans woman, I love seeing characters like Sophia Burset from Orange is the New Black and Alysia Yeoh from the Batgirl comics. There are huge parts of their stories that I totally relate to and love to see on screen or on the page. But I also love seeing characters like Santana Lopez from Glee, Callie Torres from Grey’s Anatomy and Renee Monotya from the world of Batman. All of them are cis, but all of them are also lesbian (or in the case of Callie, bisexual) Latinas, and those identities are just as much a part of me as being a trans woman is. It’s really jarring for me when I read things telling me that since I’m a trans woman, I have to put that first and be in conflict with cis lesbians when I relate so much to their stories.

Let me expand on that point for a minute. As a queer Latina woman, I have a deep and strong sisterhood with my fellow queer Latin@s. Both on a personal level and a political one. So when I’m looking for community, I often have better luck finding it with cis queer Latin@s than with white trans women. My transness doesn’t overpower my Latinidad. And when I’m told that there’s this great divide between trans women and cis lesbians, I can’t help but wonder why people are so quick to paint both groups with such broad strokes.

A lesbian couple in Russia where one woman is trans and the other is cis. Photo courtesy Alyona Fursova

Really, I’m not sure why we feel like we have to keep on amplifying this fight. According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, only 23% of trans women identify as heterosexual. The 67% of respondents who identify as queer, lesbian or bisexual are therefore a part of the L, B or Q, as well as representing the T in the acronym. A solid two-thirds of trans women are on both sides of this so-called “divide.” Two-thirds of us are probably hoping for same-sex marriage and queer women’s representation and all the other issues cis queer women want. We may not be cis lesbians or cis bisexual women or cis queer women, but we’re still lesbians, bisexuals and queer women. Especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships, we’re still a part of that community.

As a trans woman, I’m much more afraid of, and much more angry at, about a dozen demographics before cis lesbians, and as a lesbian I’m much more afraid of, and much more angry at, another dozen demographics before trans women. Actually, I’m pretty over this pitting women against women thing, especially when we have so much in common. I feel much more kinship with cis lesbians than I do with gay men or most trans men, or to be honest, with many white trans women. Oftentimes I feel a bigger divide between white trans women and trans women of color than I do between trans women and cis lesbians.

Yes, I do have some problems with some factions of cis lesbian culture. Obviously I’m not on good terms with TERFs, I’m not on good terms with women’s shelters or music festivals or lesbian bars who won’t welcome trans women and I’m not on good terms with cis queer women who prioritize same-sex marriage at the expense of protecting trans lives. And I’m definitely not on good terms with cis lesbians who welcome trans men into their community but continue to keep trans women at arm’s length. But I’m also not on good terms with white trans women who appropriate the violence committed against TWOC in order to lift up their own voices. I’m not on good terms with trans women who constantly put down trans women of color like Laverne Cox and Janet Mock, saying that they’re “too pretty” to represent “real” trans women. I’m not on good terms with trans women who police other trans women’s looks or lives, saying that they’re not trans enough or the right kind of trans.

Certainly cis lesbians aren’t perfect, and certainly they make plenty of mistakes. But in my experience, most of the issues they have with trans women are really born out of ignorance or inexperience. Once they learn, most cis lesbians and most cis lesbian groups I’ve come into contact with have fixed their mistakes and grown from them. And they usually do it much faster and much more willingly than most other groups. (For example: cis men!)

Laverne Cox and Janet Mock via glaad

Things like trying to date a cis lesbian can be pretty tough as a trans woman. But for trans women who date men, things are often even more difficult, as shown by the even higher rates of domestic violence and even murders by intimate partners that trans women, especially trans women of color and even more specifically black trans women, often face. I am terrified, terrified every single day, for my TWOC sisters. I am terrified that I’m going to find out that one of my friends is the next trans woman of color to be murdered, and that fear doesn’t come from cis lesbians; it comes from the men who murder trans women of color. (Which isn’t to say trans women aren’t subjected to intimate partner violence from cis women, too — they absolutely are, and for more on that topic, read this.)

It’s usually not cis lesbians who are kicking their kids onto the streets when they come out as trans. It’s typically not cis lesbians who are introducing and supporting bills that don’t allow trans women to use the women’s bathroom. It’s not cis lesbians who are murdering trans women of color at a rate of almost one per week. On the other side, trans women aren’t blocking cis lesbians from adopting their partner’s kids. Trans women aren’t shooting queer teenage girls or lesbian couples. Trans women aren’t firing lesbian school teachers. We really have much bigger threats on both sides that deserve our focus. It’s easier, of course, to write about and focus on and attract attention to riffs within the LGBTQ female community than it is to tackle more significant threats from the outside. Mainstream media has always loved stories about feminist in-fighting, after all, but we owe ourselves and each other much better.

Whenever I see people talk about this issue, it makes me feel like they’re sort of saying that since I’m a trans woman, I don’t count as a real lesbian. That “real” lesbian culture is only for cis lesbians and that that culture is in direct opposition to me, excludes me. But I’m a real lesbian, and so the lesbian community is my community, just as much as the trans woman community is my community.

My experience and worldview are not defined by any one of my many identities. I am proud of my gender as a trans woman, but it does not singularly define me. I am proud of my sexuality as a lesbian, but that doesn’t singularly define me either. In fact, the two help to inform each other. I’m going to say this plainly. Trans women are women, and two thirds of us are attracted to other women. So please, can we stop pretending that we have to pick a side?

Hurray For The Riff Raff Interview and Ticket Giveaway!

Party of Five is a quick little ditty where we ask someone (anyone we want) five questions (any five questions we want) and they answer them. This doesn’t have to be necessarily ‘queer’ — it doesn’t have to be anything at all, except five questions and five answers. Today we’ve got Alynda Lee Segarra and Yosi Perlstein, co-founders of Hurray For The Riff Raff. Ticket giveaway details at the bottom.

Hurray For The Riff Raff is the New Orleans-based queer Americana band that stopped your heart mid-beat with “The Body Electric’s” music video this January. They’re currently on tour, and according to Alynda, are playing the absolute best shows they’ve ever played.

On a rare day off during a stopover in Oakland, Alynda and Yosi graciously chatted with Autostraddle about about their recent successes.

Alynda Lee Segarra and Yosi Perlstein. Credit: Joshua Shoemaker.

Can you tell me about some of your inspirations? For your latest album but also in general.

AS: This album was a lot about New Orleans, actually. I found myself writing a lot about place. Small Town Heroes was definitely a lot of inspiration from living in New Orleans for 10 years and learning to play music there. And definitely there were a lot of different music styles that went into it. We have song like “Blue Ridge Mountain” and then we have songs like “Good Time Blues.” We just really tried to get all of our inspiration in there.

In general, I feel like when it comes to our band, we have a lot of different inspiration. Sometimes they’re not even musical. Lately I’ve been reading a lot of Junot Diaz and he’s become a huge inspiration to me. … When I have a shell of a song — I’ll have the lyrics and the melody — I bring it to the band and we kind of bring it to life. Definitely with Yosi, I’ll come to him and explain to him the vision that I have for the song, and we’ll try to make that feel happen. Especially in the studio. He understands the way I explain my ideas. I’ll come to him and be like, this song I want to feel like a 16-year-old girl crying in her room, playing her guitar, and her mascara is running. And he like totally gets it and we can somehow create that.

I think it’s always sort of subversive when queer and marginalized people — the “riff raff” — enter these more traditional spaces and stake their claim. Could you talk a little bit about that experience? How do you feel your identity affects your work?

AS: I feel like with this album we really stepped forward and decided that we really had to be very overt about who we are. So much of what this album meant to me was me really claiming all parts of my identity. Like with the cover even, it has many different parts of my identity. I wanted to not put anything aside, and not feel like I was having to lower any parts of myself to fit in or something. You know?

Album cover via The Body Electric Fund.

AS: Ferguson sparked this whole movement of political activism among youth and people of color. It really inspired me to be like, this is the time to not be silent anymore, to really let our audiences know that this is who we are and this is what we believe in. You might think we’re an Americana traditional band, but just because we’re influenced by those things, we’re also very modern. And we’re very here, and we’re queer. I’m a Puerto Rican woman and I’m going to say things about this. I’m not going to try to fit into a white male hetero world just in order to have our band be a little bit more successful or something.

It feels really good, and it feels like we’re attracting people who have been waiting for that and who feel like they fit in with that. That’s really rewarding to me. Lately I’ve noticed that there have really been a lot more hispanic people coming to our shows, and that means so much to me. Being a Puerto Rican girl who feels like a weirdo who doesn’t quite fit in with the mainstream culture, it means a lot to see people who relate to that feeling. They come to our shows and feel like they belong, for an hour.

You do an incredible job of integrating your political philosophy into everything you do, from social media to music videos. … You frequently spotlight people that don’t always get to be in the spotlight. What’s your thought process like?

AS: I feel like me and Yosi talk a lot about being more responsible and being very intentional with everything that we do. In [“The Body Electric“] especially, we thought it was really important to bring a trans woman of color in. We just kind of wanted to bring them to the spotlight and let them shine. Let them reinvent our ideas of power and our ideas of femininity and our ideas of beauty. Also, Katy Red is from New Orleans. I feel like we rep New Orleans so much but I’m not from there. I thought it was really important to bring a New Orleans person into that song and to let her do her thing. She was so amazing and captivating.

With “I Know It’s Wrong,” the girl gang video, I really wanted to bring in all different sorts of people and let them have their moment. Because when you include different types of people, it makes more room for viewers to see themselves and to feel represented.

Some of the cast of characters in “I Know It’s Wrong (But That’s Alright).”

AS: With social media — I’ve been thinking about how for me, as a woman, I finally have a space where I can represent who I am. Somebody isn’t doing it for me. I just feel like it’s finally a time when a woman can be in control of how she’s represented. And even through something like Instagram, it may seem silly, but it actually becomes something really important.

YP: I think that probably for both of us, we don’t see ourselves in the media very often. So when we do it’s really exciting. I honestly actually can’t think of anywhere I see myself right now.

What does success look like for you?

AS: We do a lot of dreaming and a lot of trying to manifest the future. For me, it would really be just for us to be ourselves and to really be creative and to keep changing our sound. To just keep growing as a band and be able to play shows to audiences that find our shows fulfilling. I guess that’s like a mutual fulfillment, you know, for us to play shows where we feel we’re living our dream, and to audiences that feel like they’re getting some type of emotional release from it. I would love to be a musician until I die, but it’s not an easy life, especially financially. So I think that’s a big part of my dream is to just make it sustainable, to keep moving forward and to keep focusing on what’s happening in the moment.

YP: Yeah, I think if we can just do what we’re doing forever, that would be really nice. And hopefully we’ll be able to get by.

“We took this photo to honor some of then women we look up to. We were inspired by the well-known Audre Lorde photograph. ” Photo by Laura E. Partain, via Hurray For The Riff Raff Facebook.

Is there anything that you want to say to Autostraddle readers?

AS: Something that I would like to say to young women of all kinds is that it’s really good to be confusing. And if you confuse people, that’s totally fine. Just make sure that you’re not really letting any part of yourself be dumbed down or taken away from you. You can be as complicated as you want. There’s a Billie Holiday quote that my friend Amelia says, which I love: “If you can’t be free, be a mystery.”

YP: Yes. What Alynda said is really good. Hopefully we can all just be our authentic selves and not have to worry about what other people think of it.

Don’t you love them? Well prepare to love them even more! Alynda and Yosi have two presents for you:

1. A new and free tour EP (including an excellent Billie Holiday cover)
2. The chance to win a pair of tickets to any non-festival show on Hurray For The Riff Raff’s tour. Wahoo!

Here are the tour dates:

3/17-19 – Austin, TX – SXSW
3/20 – Seattle, WA – The Crocodile*
3/21 – Vancouver, Canada – Electric Owl*
3/22 – Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater*
3/25 – Boise, ID – Treefort Music Festival
3/26 – Salt Lake City, UT – The State Room*
3/27 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater*
3/28 – Boulder, CO – Fox Theater*
3/30 – Sante Fe, NM – Sky Light*
4/1 – Dallas, TX – Dada*
4/18 – Charlottesville, VA – The Southern#
4/21 – Washington DC – 9:30 Club#
4/22 – Philadelphia, PA – World Café Live#
4/23 – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club#
4/24 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom$
4/25 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg$
4/28 – Detroit, MI – The Shelter^
4/29 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall^
4/30 – Madison, WI – High Noon^
5/1 – Minneapolis, MN – Cedar Cultural Center^
5/3 – St. Louis, MO – The Sheldon Concert Hall^
5/5 – Little Rock, AR – South on Main – Oxford American Series^
5/29 – Louisville, KY – Headliners
5/30-31 – Nelsonville, OH – Nelsonville Music
6/2 – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom
6/3 – Buffalo, NY – Ninth Ward
6/7 – Hunter, NY – Mountain Jam Festival
6/14 – Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo
6/27 – Dover, DE – Big Barrel Country Music Festival

* Adia Victoria
# Son Little
$ Clear Plastic Masks
^ Daniel Romano
& Jess Williamson
% Joe Pug

To enter, all you have to do is comment on this article! Super easy, right? You could tell us which show you want to go to, wax poetic about your favorite Hurray For The Riff Raff song, or even just post a cute gif. Whatever you like! We will select a winner on Thursday, March 19 at 8pm.

Update: the winner has been selected. Congrats, Hanna!

Transgender Teen Jazz Jennings is Starring in Commercials, Getting a Reality Show, on Top of the World

At age 14, Jazz Jennings has already accomplished more than many people two or three times her age. She’s fought for the rights of trans youth like herself; she’s co-written a children’s book based on her life, I Am Jazz; she was named one of Time Magazine’s 25 Most Influential Teens of 2014; she’s been interviewed by Katie Couric and she’s just getting started. However, it seems she’s not content with all of that — she’s also getting ready to take of our televisions. Just within the last two days, two big new projects were announced for Jazz that will hopefully help other trans kids and teens feel like they’re not alone, that they can be themselves and live a life that’s long and happy.

Jazz (far left) and her family. Via People.com

The first big news for Jazz came when TLC announced that she’ll be starring in brand new reality show following her life and her family as her teen years start to really hit their stride. The show, called All That Jazz, will air this summer and will feature Jazz, along with her parents Greg and Jeanette, her sister Ari and her brothers Griffen and Sander. For the most part, Jazz and her family have previously been pretty good at managing her public appearances and done a good job at making sure she isn’t exploited or subjected to insulting or overly ignorant interviews and by now, she definitely seems like she’s comfortable in front of a camera. So hopefully all of that will continue with this series.

If everything goes according to plan, All That Jazz could be an extremely helpful resource for families with trans kids, and for those trans kids themselves. When a network like TLC is showing off a young transgender teen with a happy and healthy family who supports her, it can serve the double purpose of giving any trans youth who see it hope that they too can find acceptance and happiness and also educating their family and hopefully making them more receptive to the idea of having a trans kid and ultimately supportive of that child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyNZXQ136oI

Jazz isn’t stopping there, though. She’s also becoming the newest face of Clean & Clear’s “See the Real Me” campaign. In doing so, she joins celebrities like Keke Palmer and Skylar Diggins in sharing their stories and helping sell skin products. At face value, this might seem like a shallow accomplishment. But when you take a deeper look, you see that it’s actually a profound step for trans girls like Jazz.

Commercials like this show where our cultural definitions of beauty lie. In showing that a fourteen-year-old trans girl fits into that definition of beauty, they’re challenging the normal transmisogynistic narratives that say that, just by virtue of being trans, a trans woman is not as beautiful or worthwhile as a cis woman. When we have trans kids killing themselves because they’re bullied and they feel like they don’t have a chance to “successfully” transition, we need examples of society saying that trans lives are valuable and that trans people are beautiful. That’s what this commercial can do.

Obviously, reality shows and skincare commercials alone aren’t going to make things better for trans kids. We need to make sure they’re safe in their schools and in public bathrooms, we need to make sure they can get the medical treatment they need, we need to make sure that when they do end up homeless, they’re welcome in shelters that match their gender and we need to make sure that when they’re bullied or abused, others step in and stop it. What these commercials and TV shows do, however, is help to change people’s minds, and honestly, if one parent sees Jazz’s new reality show and learns to accept her trans kid or if one trans kid sees Jazz’s commercial and finally feels beautiful, we owe her huge thanks.

New Report Finally Gives Crucial Numbers on Economic Disparities Hurting LGBT Women

We know — intuitively, from stories, from our own lives — that queer women face unique and devastating economic challenges and are at higher risk for poverty than even straight women and LGBT men. Now, we have clear, comprehensive data that solidifies the seriousness of the problem and provides a new resource for battling it.

A new report from LGBT Movement Advancement Report in collaboration with the Center for American Progress and numerous other organizations shines light on the devastating economic disadvantages that LGBT women face. LGBT and other organizational leaders call the report the first of its kind. LGBT women experience discrimination in employment, housing and healthcare, a lack of recognition for their diverse families and various other challenges that create additional barriers to those faced by straight women and LGBT men. Queer women of color, trans women, older women and women raising children face additional burdens that further limit their ability to thrive economically. The report focuses on a subset of a data from MAP’s Paying An Unfair Price project, which launched last fall.

“I was most taken aback by the poverty levels of specific communities within the LGBT community, particularly transgender women of color, who are facing incredibly high levels of poverty,” said Heron Greenesmith, a policy analyst for LGBT MAP. “The women’s leaders, LGBT groups and communities of color can look at these inequalities and use them to be more intersectional in their work.”

A lot of the statistics in the report will seem familiar from other studies, but it’s never been collated in one place before, and much of the data related to trans women and women of different racial groups had never been disagreggated from data on more general populations in previous research research.

At Forward Together, a national organization dedicated to changing policy and culture in favor of all types of families, the data will be a vital tool in their state-level initiatives to affect policy change, said Deputy Director Moira Bowman. For example, it will bolster the case for laws that protect women’s reproductive health, promote workplace equality and create sick and family leave policies that include and protect queer women and their families. MAP’s research brings together disparate data and cuts out “endless Google searching” that led to unreliable answers, Bowman said, and replaces it with a clear and coherent document that leaders across movements can rely on.

“For communities that have traditionally been marginalized and excluded, having research in the toolbox is a very important piece of what we need to make our case to policy makers,” she said.

Much work on the LGBT population doesn’t examine queer women’s unique needs, which means they’re not getting access to the information, support and resources they need.

“People forget that LGBT women need access to abortion and contraception,” said Naomi Goldberg, a policy specialist at MAP. “If you’re taking time off work to care for a sick spouse or child or when you’re sick yourself, you may not get paid sick time. These are areas where we see higher costs and a reduced ability to balance work and family.”

The report breaks down into three main areas: Difficulty of finding and keeping good jobs, barriers to good health that reduce economic security, and a lack of support for LGBT women and their families.

The report highlights challenges like the cost of child care, difficulty acquiring insurance, the cost of adoption and, for many families, the longerm lower income of having two women head a family whose salaries are lower because they are queer women. Marriages or partnerships between two women will see reduced income and benefits over their life times compared to heterosexual or gay male couples, for example.

Throughout, it is clear that trans women, queer women of color, older women and women with children face some of the sharpest disparities in income, access to health insurance and other factors that contribute to poverty.

For example:

• It is much more difficult for two partnered women to access resources like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, meaning their incomes don’t go as far.
• Older LGBT women have reduced Social Security benefits because their lifetime earnings are lower, meaning a lower return from the program, and because they have less access to spousal and survivor benefits.
• Transgender women often can’t access adequate health insurance leading to higher costs associated with poor health. 36 percent of trans women report losing a job because of their gender identity or expression, compared to 26 percent of the overall trans population.
• Queer women of color experience oppression on multiple axes including race, gender and sexuality. Trans women of color experience poverty at particularly alarming rates.

Health care access can be an expensive fight for LGBT women. We are less likely to have good insurance, and in our jobs we may not be protected by family leave policies.

At The LGBTQ Task Force, priorities include reducing LGBT youth homelessness, reducing incarceration of queer people, and promoting economic justice. Numbers like these strengthen their power to work on behalf of the most vulnerable populations, said Meghan Maury, a policy counsel for the Task Force.

“When I walk into the Housing and Urban Development office and say LGBT people are disproportionately poor or that we know trans people in general are facing inequality at incredibly high levels, they appreciate the anecdotal evidence, but they want the numbers,” Maury said. “I can walk in with this report and show them why LGBT women in particular need access to services.”

Because the data is so diverse, it indicates many possible next steps. Maya Pinto, Economic Justice Program Director at the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, said the report “points to the need for increased intersectional work between the economic justice and LGBT movements.” Some of the recommendations include updating definitions of “family” to include LGBT families, creating comprehensive sex ed programs, raising the minimum wage, and passing laws requiring that health insurance providers treat LGBT people equally in their policies.

“We as LGBT women don’t live in a vacuum, and our employment policies, our educational policies, our healthcare policies impact us as women and LGBT people together to reduce our economic security,” said Greenesmith of MAP.

Fortunately, there’s hope that better data and growing national coalitions will help change that.

“Boy Meets Girl” Is Heartwarming, Groundbreaking, Has Cute Queer Kissing

feature image via Boy Meets Girl

Though trans people are enjoying a significant rise in visibility in many spheres, finding any movie with a trans actress playing a trans woman feels like cause for celebration. When it happens to be the lead role in a romantic comedy, it become a ground-breaking moment for trans media representation. Add some beautiful queer chemistry, a little heartbreak, and a happy ending, and you’ve got Boy Meets Girl, a new indie film from writer/director Eric Schaeffer that I recently had the opportunity to screen.

The film centers around Ricky (played by newcomer Michelle Hendley), a gorgeous and whip-smart 20-something trans woman, and her straight-guy best friend Robby (played by Michael Welch of Twilight fame). Ricky is frustrated by the lack of acceptable men to date, and dreams of a life as a fashion designer in NY. She develops an attraction to her new friend Francesca (played by Alexandra Turshen), a 20-something cis girl from an influential local family who is engaged to her Marine boyfriend serving in Afghanistan. As Ricky and Francesca’s friendship blooms, her fiancé grows increasingly hostile and hateful towards Ricky. As the two young women spend more and more time together, Francesca eventually admits her own attraction to Ricky, which eventually lands them in bed together. Their budding relationship forces Francesca to deal with her fiancé’s bigoted views, and Robby to deal with his long-hidden feelings for Ricky. As emotions run high, secrets are revealed and all the characters must decide how best to move forward, and which relationships to hold on to.

Ricky and Francesca (image via Boy Meets Girl)

Boy Meets Girl certainly isn’t perfect, but it would do the film a tremendous disservice to focus on the missteps when there are so many things to love about this movie. As I said, simply having a lead trans character who is portrayed by a trans person is really reason enough to be excited. But, perhaps even more importantly, Ricky is portrayed as both attractive and desirable without being fetishized or exploited. Ricky is sweet and smart and quirky and cute, and I dare you all not to have a crush on her by the end of the film. She’s also a whole person, with feelings and dreams and heartbreaks and desires all her own that don’t necessarily have anything to do with being trans. While she is feminine, she’s far the hyper-femme stereotypes, with a definite tomboy spirit. She’s perhaps one of the most nuanced, least stereotypical trans characters that has ever been portrayed in film. Schaeffer also completely avoids one of the most obnoxious of trans tropes: focusing on the transition/transformation aspect. We never hear her dead-name, there are no discussions about when she decided to transition, and even the flashbacks show Ricky as a girl. It’s a script that consistently validates her female identity, and portrays her the with same care and respect that’s given to cis characters. If only that weren’t such a revolutionary act.

While Schaeffer’s writing sets a great tone, it’s absolutely the acting that pushes Boy Meets Girl to the next level. Michelle Hendley absolutely shines in this film. She’s charming and instantly likable when the film opens on Ricky working her barista job, bantering first with Robby and then Francesca. Hendley perfectly portrays the strength of a long-out trans girl enduring transphobia and a backwards hometown, but also the vulnerability of someone in love for the first time. If there’s any justice in the film world, she will be the break-out star of the next few years. Alexandra Turshen also deserves mention for her outstanding performance. It would be easy for a rich debutante to come off as irritating, entitled or ignorant, but Turshen manages to make Francesca simply kind, friendly, and a little naive. Even in her momentary fuck-ups, you still can’t help but root for her to end up with Ricky. Hendley and Turshen also have fantastic chemistry with one another, and from early in the film, the sexual tension between them is palpable. When that tension is finally broken, the result is both rather steamy, and wonderfully heartwarming, with probably the best cis/trans queer lady sex scene that’s made it to film outside of porn.

image via Boy Meets Girl

The film isn’t totally without flaws, but they don’t take away significantly from its enjoyability. Perhaps the biggest issue has to do with how the film handles sex. While no actual sex is directly portrayed (it’s not porn, after all), the dialogue very heavily hints that Ricky is a top (that is, she penetrates people with her girl parts). While top trans girls do exist, they’re not exactly super common. And, given that Ricky was supposed to have started hormones as a teenager, it’s not super likely she’d be able to do that. Also, the horrific transmisogyny (along with some racism) spouted by Francesca’s Marine fiancé is difficult to stomach against the backdrop of a film with such a sweet nature. It’s a very jarring change in tone, could be triggery for some trans viewers. That, in turn, also makes his later change of heart somewhat difficult to believe, and it comes off a little hollow. Lastly, Ricky is the only trans character in the film. In the real world, trans folks very rarely exist in complete isolation, but that’s functionally the only way we’re portrayed in film and TV. Ricky being from a small town makes this somewhat forgivable, though. Again, these are relatively small flaws, and even all together, they do not detract from the movie. But, if Schaeffer had engaged a few trans people when he wrote the script, they might have been avoided all together.

In a year where cis people are still frequently cast in trans roles, Boy Meets Girl is an amazing of example of the transformational power of a trans woman as a lead actress. While the film certainly deals has some queer and trans themes, the story and characters should be approachable for a mainstream straight, cisgender audience, potentially providing a much needed portrayal of trans women as worthy of attraction, affection, and love. It’s a romantic comedy that’s actually both genuinely romantic, and genuinely funny. Michelle Hendley’s outstanding performance should catapult her into the spotlight, and hopefully we’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the future.

Boy Meets Girl continues to screen in limited release, and will be release to DVD and streaming services on April 28th. In the meantime, you can watch the full-length trailer.

TransBlack and Beautiful: Acknowledging My Authentic Revolutionary

feature image via shutterstock.com

When I started HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy), I was in for a big surprise: over time, my skin seemed to be getting lighter. I did some research online and discovered that estrogen therapy plays a role in changing melanin composition, causing trans women to assume skin tones a bit paler than when they started out. I never knew that this happened. When you look at your friends who are on the same journey, honestly, they look exactly the same as far as skin pigmentation is concerned and that’s probably the same for when people look at me. But the internal conflict one has with glamorizing this pretty inconsequential lightening of the skin implies a lot about one’s own journey with self-hate and navigating western beauty norms and ideals.

Colorism is a shackling concept that has been engrained in our community since the days of white imperialism. During the time of slavery, white slave owners would rape young black women and produce fair-skinned babies – black but of a lighter hue. They would be favored by their masters and be allowed to work in their homes or be taught a bit. As time goes on, color and pigment became political. Lighter skinned blacks would benefit more in a system that favored whiteness. A lighter skin complexion was closer to this “ideal beauty norm” and black people around the world would go out to bleach their skin or envy their lighter counterparts. We currently see this sensationalization of fair skinned and light eyed babies and the hypersexualization of those women that are referred to as “red bones.”

My mom is lighter complexioned and my dad is very dark. When they had children, they produced me – this caramel-skinned baby – and then my younger brother — who was as light as a banana. Growing up, I envied my mom and brother. They looked like “heaven” to me. They didn’t have to worry about looking “dirty” or “burnt.” As I grew older and gained a better understanding of how whiteness and anti-blackness influence our sentiments around complexion, I grew to love my beautiful chocolate skin and realized that I wasn’t “burnt” but was actually baked to perfection. I couldn’t help but praise my melanin and flaunt my blackness everywhere I went. I started investing in makeup and worked to accentuate the chocolatey vibe of my skin. I was really learning to love myself and feel beautiful — that is until I started to question my own gender expression. My ego took a huge hit because I suddenly felt ugly again. I felt abnormal. I no longer dealt with this inner turmoil of being black but now I was fighting with feeling comfortable as a person in general. To make a long story short, I decided to embark on the journey of medically transitioning as a transgender woman. Euphoria hit me again once I plopped that first pill in my mouth and everything seemed to be straightening itself out.

I intentionally chose not to highlight my face as brightly as I use to in this photo.

I noticed a few months later that none of my makeup was working for me. All of my foundations were too dark and my under eye concealers didn’t give me that extra pop that I needed, so I decided to splurge on new makeup to better fit my face. I walked into Sephora to get matched and I found out that I was a lighter shade. All of this time, I thought I just sucked at makeup! I kind of got excited about this. I pranced through the aisles asking for samples of foundation in my new light shade (which was only like a hue to be completely honest). I was flaunting this new skin like I had won the lottery. Ain’t nothing better than being a fresh faced woman, right? That’s what the beauty aisles teach you – brighter is fresher. Brighter is more beautiful. Brighter is more feminine. And on my skin, lighter was brighter. I even found myself in the MAC cosmetics store investing over $100 in a face cleansing collection called “Lightful” intended to brighten the face. How lovely.

Day in and day out, I was looking in my mirror slathering this lightening toner on my skin not really knowing how in the world it was truly destroying my beautiful skin. I’d researched makeup techniques to enhance femininity which always came down to highlighting with concealers two shades lighter than your own complexion in large amounts in certain zones on your face. I even took pictures for social media and edited them in a way to “highlight” my face, which I pretty much just increased the brightness by 1000. I had become mentally enslaved once again.

One morning, while I was applying my new lighter makeup, I accidentally put too much banana powder on which created a shroud of ashy yellow veil all around the center of my face. I stopped and stared back at my reflection. I looked absolutely foolish. Here I was relishing in this depigmentation of my beautiful ebony skin that I no longer looked like myself. I realized that this is what we do in our day to day lives. We allow whiteness to shroud our judgment and our identities in a way that stymies who we really are. We have allowed whiteness to infiltrate our minds and our communities and snatch the wealth of our culture and our history. My loss of pigmentation gave me a tiny slither of hope of accessing that ideal and being seen as beautiful – through white eyes. This phenomena of mine was quite ironic because here I was on a journey of self discovery to truly embrace and uplift the trans beauty that I unapologetically was but in turn, that journey uprooted these problematic anti-black sentiments that I buried deep down inside so many years before, forcing me to hate myself more. How could I blossom but die simultaneously? How do you love all of yourself with exceptions?

Identifying as your Black is to critique and confront whiteness and to acknowledge your rich history. Your blackness is your claim to this land. To be your black is to respect your culture and your family that has built all that has made you exist. I am my Black because I am a Chocolate Goddess created here through the toil of slavery. No longer do I celebrate this skin lightening experience but I use it as a reminder to truly embrace all that is my black in my physicality and in my politics. It’s helped me to realize the importance of intersectionality and affirming the multiplicity of my identities – owning my transness and the experience but ALWAYS centering and focusing my blackness. The forces outside are consistently trying to strip me of that. I will grasp onto everything that makes me the bronze Goddess that I am through and through. Every time I take a hormone injection, I remind myself that these hormones make me the queen that I am but my authenticity in owning my rich black history emanates through my skin and I will always be a goddess because of it. My blackness will forever radiate through my writing and be the vehicle of my thoughts and my sword in battle. Black is beautiful. Black is revolutionary. Black is to be glorified.

Nationwide Week of Action Calls on ICE to Free Nicoll From Men’s Detention Facility

Immigration activists are gathering across the US this week to demand the release of Nicoll Hernández-Polanco, a Guatemalan transgender woman currently held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in an immigration detention center for men in Florence, Arizona. Hernández-Polanco applied for asylum in October 2014, after experiencing transphobic and transmisogynistic sexual and physical violence for nearly a decade in Guatemala and Mexico. While in detention, she has faced continued sexual assault and harassment from ICE staff and other detainees.

Actions in Phoenix, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, DC will call for two main demands: that ICE immediately free Hernández-Polanco from detention, to be housed and supported by Mariposas Sin Fronteras, an organization in Tucson, AZ, while her asylum case is processed; and that the White House and Department of Homeland Security take immediate action to define LGBTQ immigrants as a vulnerable group whose detention is specified in the President’s executive action memos to be “not in the public interest.”

In a letter to her supporters which will be read at the actions this week, Hernández-Polanco wrote,

Here in detention, unfortunately, I feel very discriminated and not protected. The conditions are very inhumane. Here they do not treat anyone with dignity, much less a transgender womyn like myself.

Aquí en la detención, lamentablemente, me siento muy discriminada y sin protección. Las condiciones son muy inhumanas. Aquí no hay trato digno para nadie, mucho menos para una mujer transgénero como yo.

via #FreeNicoll

Yesenia Valdez, national organizer for Familia: TQLM, told Autostraddle that making cases like Nicoll’s highly visible is critical:

Unfortunately these cases are very common, and don’t get enough media or visibility. People don’t really hear about them. And so we just have to fight as much as possible to get even into the media. We feel that nationally, we have a lot of different partnerships, and so that really helps us get the word out and highlight the stories such as Nicoll’s. She needs all the support, and by doing a nationwide week of action, we can highlight the work that still needs to be done in order to free her.

ICE Policies Don’t Reflect Reality

Hernández-Polanco’s experiences in detention reflect reality for many, if not most, trans women detained in immigration facilities. As Fusion reports, while trans women make up 1 in 500 detainees, they represent 1 in 5 victims of sexual abuse. As we saw last summer with the case of Marichuy Leal Gamino, another trans woman detained in a men’s facility in Arizona — despite the fact that the Prison Rape Elimination Act creates regulations and protocol for reducing and responding to sexual violence in prisons, including detention centers — these regulations are implemented spottily, at best. Olga Tomchin, an advocate for Hernández-Polanco, Leal Gamino and other detained trans women as the Soros Justice Fellow for the Transgender Law Center, told Autostraddle,

“ICE has progressive policies that exist solely on paper: trans women are supposed to be housed with women; people are supposed to be given access to medical care right away; people are supposed to be allowed to choose the gender of the guards that search them; trans women are never supposed to be forced to shower with men. However, ICE is a rogue agency that never follows its own rules. There is absolutely no accountability. I’ve seen that the conditions for my clients are not improving. ICE has shown over and over and over again that they are totally incapable of detaining trans people with even minimal levels of dignity and safety, so they have no business detaining trans people.”

Tomchin says ICE claims to be “investigating” Hernández-Polanco’s case. They also say that because she has been deported in the past, she is classified as a “priority” for deportation under the terms of President Obama’s recent executive action. This is arbitrary. Unlike incarceration in prison, where people have been sentenced to serve a specific amount of time there, ICE detention is a holding mechanism, which detains people for an unspecified amount of time, until they have a hearing to determine if they will be deported or not, or before the hearing if the person is deemed vulnerable or with some other extenuating circumstance. However, ICE has complete discretion in determining who they will release and when. If ICE felt like it, nothing would stop them from releasing Hernández-Polanco tomorrow.

Community Support for Nicoll

Community members march to ICE Headquarters in Phoenix in January 2015 via Maria Inés Taracena for the Tucson Weekly

If ICE releases Hernández-Polanco, Mariposas Sin Fronteras would be ready to support her. Mariposas Sin Fronteras is a grassroots organization in Tucson which has been supporting current and former LGBTQ detainees since 2012. Raul Alcaraz Ochoa, a community organizer with Mariposas sin Fronteras, told Autostraddle they would be able to provide her with an extensive support network.

We have a place for her to stay. We also have our organization and she’d have support if she’s looking to get to English classes, if she needs medical attention or mental health care. We’d be able to connect her with a network of support of people here in our community so that she can begin to heal from all that trauma that she’s been undergoing and that’s been intensified by being detained in ICE custody.

Mariposas Sin Fronteras does extensive outreach and network building within the Florence and Eloy detention centers in Southern Arizona, offering legal support, bail money through the Rainbow Defense Fund, community visits and letter writing campaigns. It was through these networks that they initially connected with Nicoll. Alcaraz Ochoa explained,

Another trans woman was in detention earlier. We helped her get released. She called us a few months later and told us that her friend Nicoll was planning to enter the US and seek asylum. So once we got information on her and figured out where she was detained, we wrote to her and visited her, and now we’ve been in contact since October of last year as she seeks asylum in the US.

Mariposas Sin Fronteras, the Transgender Law Center and other organizations have been pressuring ICE to release Hernández-Polanco since late 2014, and in late January, community members marched to the ICE office in Phoenix calling for Hernández-Polanco’s freedom. ICE has refused, saying that they monitor complaints.

Cycles of Detention and Deportation

Hernández-Polanco’s case and her categorization as a “deportation priority” also highlights contradictions in the rhetoric pushed forward by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. She’s been designated a priority because she has been deported multiple times and last entered the US in October, after the January 2014 cutoff, set by the President’s Executive Action documents. However, Tomchin said her multiple deportations are the result of her coming to the US to flee transphobic violence, being detained, and then consenting to be deported before her asylum hearings, just to escape the unlivable abuse she faced in detention. This is a common cycle. According to Tomchin,

“[If you are in immigration detention], you can decide that you can’t handle one more day in immigration detention. You can decide that you’d rather risk being killed back in your home country rather than spend one more day being raped and subjected to solitary confinement inside detention. ICE agents will come to people’s cells every day and basically will pressure them to sign deportation orders and give up on their asylum case. Most trans women will win their cases under existing asylum law, but ICE makes things so horrible for them that people just can’t go through with the process. That’s what’s happened with Nicoll.”

So while immigration rhetoric and asylum law claim to offer relief for vulnerable populations, including trans women, the actual conditions trans women face ultimately make them more likely to be deported, rather than less. The ongoing abuse of transgender women in immigration detention also highlights a glaring contradiction in President Obama’s lauding his administration for standing against persecution of trans people in the State of the Union. ICE personnel who have been harassing Hernández-Polanco are employees of the Department of Homeland Security, which is part of the executive branch. “As he does a victory lap on LGBT issues,” Tomchin said, “[the President’s] staff are torturing trans women, and we will not let him forget.”

via Detention Watch Network

As Tomchin pointed out, the increased vulnerability for trans women like Hernández-Polanco, who have been detained and deported multiple times, who have any semblance of a criminal record, or who otherwise don’t qualify for protection under DACA and executive action, is connected to the financial mechanisms which drive the detention system. While DACA and executive action make fewer people eligible for detention and deportation, the “bed quota,” or the arbitrary number of beds required to be filled in immigration detention centers on any given night, has not been reduced. This means that the people who are not protected by DACA or executive action are more susceptible than they were before to deportation and long stays in detention.

Take Action

Hernández-Polanco wrote further in her letter,

We need to be included, not persecuted, not targeted, not incarcerated, not discriminated. Release us from detention TODAY!

¡Necesitamos ser incluidas, no perseguidas, no encarceladas, ni discriminadas! ¡Déjenos libre HOY!

A wide coalition of immigration and LGBTQ groups across the country are working together to make Hernández-Polanco’s message heard, to draw national attention to her case, to speak out against the injustices faced by the LGBTQ community as a whole in immigration detention, and to demand freedom for Nicoll and all LGBTQ detainees. H Kapp-Klote, communications coordinator for GetEqual said in an email, “[Multiple actions show] that people all over the country are standing with Nicoll, and that the repercussions of  ICE and President Obama’s actions go far beyond Arizona, where Nicoll is currently detained.”

In Los Angeles, the week of action to Free Nicoll coincides with the Trans Power Month of Action, drawing attention to the trans women of color who have been murdered and committed suicide so far this year. Valdez, who has been organizing with the Trans Power Month of Action and the Free Nicoll Week of Action, spoke to the connections between the two:

Because of all the recent trans murders — trans women of color, specifically — we have been meeting [in LA] these past two weeks, just to bring our community together and bring more awareness of what’s really going on. We feel like nobody’s paying attention… We’re going to continue the month of action by being in solidarity and joining the Free Nicoll action… The physical violence of murder and the physical violence and mental violence that trans women are suffering in detention – they’re very different struggles, but it’s the same pain, the same hurt for our communities and for these women who are suffering.

Other collaborating organizations for the Free Nicoll Week of Action include the Arcoiris Liberation Team, the Arizona Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project, the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project, the CA Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, the TransLatin@ Coalition, Gender Justice LA, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Casa Ruby, United We Dream, the YAYA Network, the Audre Lorde Project and others.

There are lots of ways to support the Free Nicoll Week of Action. Alongside the actions in Phoenix, Los Angeles, New York and Washington (details listed below), supporters can call ICE and demand they release Hernández-Polanco, sign the petition for her release or send her a letter of support. Hernández-Polanco is particularly interested in femme sparkly letters. She doesn’t speak English, so if you if you can write in Spanish, or translate your message in some way, that would be appreciated. Otherwise, follow your sparklefemme heart and send along the best message of support you can.

Actions

Monday March 2
11am
Rally at ICE ERO Field Office, coordinated by Mariposas Sin Fronteras, Arcoiris Liberation Team, AZ QUIP
2035 N. Central Avenue
Phoenix, AZ, 85004

Tuesday March 3
3:00pm
Rally at ICE Headquarters, coordinated by GetEqual, Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project of United We Dream, Casa Ruby
500 12th St. SW
Washington, DC 20536

Wednesday March 4
9:00am
Rally at Metropolitan Detention Center, Coordinated by Familia: Trans/Queer Liberation Movement, Translatina Coalition, Gender Justice LA, California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance (CIYJA), Los Angeles Immigrant Youth Coalition, GetEQUAL
180 N Alameda St
Los Angeles, CA 90071

Thursday March 5
10:00am
Rally at New York ICE ERO Field Office, coordinated by Queer Detainee Empowerment Project
26 Federal Plaza, New York, New York 10278

To call and demand Nicoll’s release, contact ICE at 202-732-4262

Sign the petition demanding ICE immediately release Nicoll

Write to Nicoll
Hernandez-Polanco, Abner Neftali (Nicoll)
A# 089-841-646
Florence Detention Center
3250 N. Pinal Parkway Ave.
Florence, AZ 85132

VIDEO: Kristin Russo’s New Web Series “First Person” Tells LGBT Stories

It seems like everywhere you look, people are trying to tell queer stories. Laverne Cox makes the cover of Time, everybody obsesses over Orange is the New Black, and dozens of national publications launch LGBT-specific verticals. Many times (but not always) these stories are told well, with nuance and care. But for me, even the most thoughtful pieces often lack a pretty big component: first-person accounts from the queer people that seem to fascinate the mainstream media.

That’s why I’m so excited about “First Person,” a new digital series from PBS and Kristin Russo (of Everyone is Gay and adorable gay wedding fame). Russo describes the project as an opportunity for “people to tell their own stories about being queer and trans. … Our mission for the show is to tackle the topics of gender and sexuality by actually talking with people whose lives intersect with those issues.”

via First Person

The first episode, which premiered today on YouTube, does just that by speaking with Skylar Kergil, a trans artist and activist known in part for documenting his transition via YouTube videos. In it, we get a more rounded out look at Skylar’s life and how he came to transition in the public eye, including the effects that decision has had on his life:

But that’s just the first episode! As the series continues, Russo says they’ll delve into topics like “queer fashion, bisexual erasure and sports” and more. Subscribe on YouTube to make sure you don’t miss a single story.

Another Heartbreak: Somali-Canadian Trans Woman Sumaya Dalmar Found Dead in Toronto This Weekend

feature image via facebook

In what has already been a year of horrifying violence and tragedy for trans women of color, a young Somali-Canadian trans woman was lost this weekend in Toronto. Sumaya Dalmar, known also as Sumaya Ysl, was found dead on Sunday morning at the age of 26.

Details about her death remain sketchy, though it has been widely speculated across social media that it may have been homicide. Autostraddle spoke extensively with Toronto Police Media Relations Officer Constable Victor Kwong, who indicated that her death had not been ruled a homicide, but that the investigation remained open. Kwong also clarified that, because the matter did not readily appear to be a homicide and there appeared to be no immediate public safety concern, they could not share more details on the investigation due to privacy concerns. The Toronto Police tweeted earlier today that more details would be forthcoming, and Kwong confirmed that the department is working their LGBT liaison to update the community soon.

Thank you to all who have shared info about #SumayaYsl We are looking into the matter & will provide more information very soon ^mg

— Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) February 24, 2015

Friends of Sumaya made a statement through the facebook event for her memorial service, stating:

“We are absolutely devastated by the loss of our dear friend and sister Sumaya. And yet, we are reminded by all the memories being shared by community members that her spirit will stay with us forever.
We understand that there is a lot of speculation surrounding the cause of Sumaya’s death. We want to make clear that the cause of death has not been verified. Rest assured, we are working diligently with the appropriate officials to confirm it.”

image via facebook

Sumaya was a model and adult-film actress who was well-known in the Toronto LGBT community. Another Canadian adult model, Blair Ryder, who had worked with Sumaya spoke to us, saying Sumaya “was very strong, independent. A girl that people instantly noticed when she walked in the room.” Sumaya was also the subject of a 2014 art exhibit and documentary by fellow Somali-Canadian Abdi Osman called Labeeb, exploring the interplay of gender, trans identity, and traditional Somali culture. According to the exhibition announcement, She emigrated to Canada at the age of three, had trained in speech-therapy, and was very active in the local LGBT community. Osman spoke highly of her when contacted, saying, “she was a lovely soul and I considered her to be my little sister.”

We remain in contact with the Toronto Police, and will add updates as more information on this case becomes available.

HUD Instructs Homeless Shelters to Treat Trans People Equally

Feature image via Jay’s House

Two years after promising it would implement LGBT protections across all its programs, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has released guidelines instructing homeless shelters and transitional housing programs on how to provide equal treatment for transgender people, ThinkProgress reports.

The guidance documents, released Friday, apply to all programs that receive HUD funding. They cover the proper methods for placing a trans individual in single-sex facilities, as well as what qualify as “appropriate and inappropriate inquiries related to a potential or current client’s sex.” In general, facilities are directed not to ask a person about their gender identity, even if their identity documents differ from their appearance. Questions about medical history — including gender confirmation surgery — are off limits as well. Complaints about a client’s gender from other residents should not be a factor in the client’s access to services.

ThinkProgress notes the latter situation has caused issues particularly for trans women, who are often told they can only stay in men’s shelters — not exactly the safest places for them:

Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality, told ThinkProgress that her organization hears about such discrimination frequently. “We’ve seen and heard of numerous cases in which transgender women were admitted to a women’s shelter — maybe after spending all day just searching and waiting for a shelter bed — only to have, late at night or the next day, staff kick them out because someone questioned their gender,” she explained.

In all, the new guidance seems promising. We know that transgender people are twice as likely as the cis population to use homeless shelters or transitional housing services, and we know that until now, those programs have not done a very good job of serving them. According to the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, trans people who use shelters report staggering rates of mistreatment: A full 19% of that survey’s respondents said they were homeless at some point in their lives as a direct result of their gender identity; 29% of those respondents had been turned away from a shelter while homeless. 55% had been harassed at a shelter, with a heartbreaking 22% reporting sexual assault by staff or other residents. Barring staff or residents from asking the kind of questions that force trans people to identify themselves as such offers at least a modicum of privacy and protection from these kinds of attacks.

via the National Transgender Discrimination Survey

As with most issues, housing discrimination also disproportionately affect people of color. The NTDS found that 19% of people surveyed had been denied a home or apartment. Native American (47%) and black respondents (38%) were most likely to report the problem, followed by  26% Latino/a and 17% Asian. 15% of the group was white. And of those respondents who reported being currently homeless, only .5% were white, compared to 13% black and 8% Native American.

More than one million people access HUD-funded homelessness services each year. If the housing programs that receive HUD funding abide by these new regulations, it could literally mean the difference between life and death for some homeless trans people. For others, it could simply be the distinction between a shower or bed and another night on the street. Both are valid reasons for HUD to enforce these updated rules, no matter what it takes.