Xin chào! My name is Xoai Pham. I’m the new Trans Subject Editor at Autostraddle.
Here are some of the basics about me:
- I was born in southern California on Tongva land. My parents fled to the U.S. after the war in Southeast Asia (wherein the U.S. destroyed Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos). I’m a Vietnamese trans person with a complicated relationship to womanhood. Some days I wish I wasn’t trans. What I do know is that we’re all more expansive than what we were taught.
- Whales are my favorite. The way many of them sing together, communicate with other species, and drift across the boundless ocean—it releases all the tension from my shoulders. I like to say I was assigned the wrong astrological sign at birth (making me trans in more ways than one), because I’m a Leo when I probably should be a Pisces. Also, I cry at least once a week.
- My life’s work is to tell the kinds of stories that put a blowtorch to existing cultural perceptions of marginalized people, especially trans people of color and sex workers. And to help people see those stories as a mirror to their own humanity, even if they aren’t themselves trans or in the sex trade.
My Big, Fluffy-Cloud Dreams for Autostraddle’s Trans Content
As the Digital Media Coordinator at Transgender Law Center, I am connected to a vast network of brilliant community organizers and thinkers who are very literally changing the world day by day. The trans community is on the frontlines of every movement. We are the imagination, resilience, and love that sustains every movement, despite efforts to neglect us or outright harm us.
With my position at Autostraddle, I plan on bringing the future to our screens — the future that trans people across the world are diligently crafting. I plan to preserve the Indigenous knowledge of gender variance that predates the word “trans”. To lift up the trans disabled activists that call for a monumental shift in our relationship to our bodies. To continue unearthing Black trans wisdom in the face of global anti-Blackness and the afterlife of slavery. These are just a few glimpses into what you’ll be witnessing.
Above all, I am privileged to be in a position where I can remind the world that trans people are sacred beings. That we have a divine purpose. I extend a big thank you to the Autostraddle community (that’s you, too!) for welcoming me.
