OkCupid wants to send someone who is looking for a special someone to A-Camp. This is not a drill.
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.
Mey asked the women of the 2015 Trans 100 how everyone can do more to support trans folks in their communities. Here’s what they had to say.
Arkansas and Indiana legislatures both passed revised versions of their “religious freedom” bills this afternoon. They’re still terrible.
Last year, my partner C and I tied the knot at the local city hall before a select group of people comprising of close friends and one family member on each side — the fathers of the brides. That our fathers made it to the ceremony warmed our hearts, impressed some friends and surprised a few others. This was followed by my first American Christmas — also my first family Yuletide — in a warm southern state, which was a welcome relief from the New England chill. Now, a business-related event is taking me back to India, my place of origin, and compelling me to face my extended family, some of whom have gaped in horror, felt anger, sadness, and general confusion at the turn of events in my personal life.
Willie Colón’s voice was my grandma dressed in her widow’s black counting novenas. It was End of Days empty, calling out for redemption. He sang like that time I asked my Grandma if my Dad loved me, like that time I got spanked for asking such an obvious question.
My answer for him, the answer I’ve created for us, was and still is, I’m not really sure how to love you, yet.
Last night was the first time a TV show with a principal Asian cast took on gay issues. That may not sound like a lot, but stop and digest that. There have only ever been two shows about Asian-American families, ever, on TV. Until last night, they have never directly addressed gay people or gay issues.
For Bessie Smith to be so boldly queer as a celebrity and especially a woman of color in the early 20th century was powerful. To celebrate her for everything she was now – every last drop of her boisterous, promiscuous, defiant person – could still change everything.
So is this outcry (and the looming threat of financial impact) why Pence is now backpedaling? Seems likely.
What’s going on in Indiana? Rachel’s got the scoop.
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 more of the show I watched, the more I understood my own childhood wasn’t just a series of unfortunate events related to my awkwardness, or my girlhood, but something much larger. I’d constantly faced racism as a mixed-race girl in school, and I’d chosen the easiest way through. Where Eddie struggles not for assimilation but for respect, I’d done the opposite. I’d been complicit in my own assimilation to whiteness because I was afraid of being disliked. Where Eddie fights against the bullies in his school and revels in his successful power plays episode after episode, I’d done the opposite. I didn’t bother eating the dried pork sandwiches my mother had made me the way Eddie eats his stinky tofu outside of school: I just starved, or saved up for my own Lunchables. There were no other Taiwanese kids in school with whom I could carpool, like Eddie, but I was so afraid of being seen with my mother that I’d ask my white father to be the one to pick me up from school.
I made my mother disappear from my story.
