I was cast in commercials, music videos, and booked a lot of modeling jobs. But my acting career never took off because I was holding myself back. I was acting across from male partners who didn't know that I am trans. I was being taught by teachers who didn't know.
What's hurtful is when you have portrayals like, you know, when you have someone like Jared Leto who accepts an award for 'Dallas Buyers Club,' after playing a trans woman, standing in a full beard and looking fully cis male: it is communicating to our audiences that underneath all of that, it's still a man under that.
Media is a double-edged sword and has the power to change hearts and minds through authentic storytelling as well as the power to paint a person, or an entire community, in a dim and misleading light.
I get by mostly on speaking engagements, but as soon as I try to pay myself, I end up having to give it back to the business to cover operating expenses or other unplanned costs.
I had always been pegged for being feminine. People would always say, 'Ooh, that's a pretty little girl.' They would talk about my eyelashes or that I was sensitive or that I was crying all the time. I didn't want to play in the dirt outside with the boys.
Somebody, just because they are black, too, or just because they are trans, too, or just because they're gay and recognize I'm trans, does that mean you have the familiarity to use certain language? And I don't mean with just me but with the community.
'Pose' makes the case that it's important to have some sort of family structure, even if you have to create one. You know, if I go back home for a while, my mom will be like, 'Oh, I didn't really throw you out the house.' And I know so many other LGBT parents who don't really own or talk about the rejection, and it prevents healing.
Let's not fantasize about having a world of only trans people or only of LGBTQ people. Let's fantasize about a world in which we all can co-exist and where there is just talent that recognizes talent.
Technology has flattened a world where trans people are demanding their rights in the U.S. and abroad. TransTech Social Enterprises is here to empower, educate, and employ them no matter where they are. I could not turn down an opportunity for global exposure that our efforts alone might not have ever afforded us.
The art of what they call female impersonation, or the drag shows, really helped me to hone what type of woman I was.
In 2014, I left my job and launched TransTech Social Enterprises, a for-profit and nonprofit hybrid model focusing on the well-being of the trans community, not on external profits for shareholders.
I discovered my path to independence through technology as well as the potential for a global lifeline for trans people around the world who were looking for the same.
I actually run a nonprofit that's all about giving people opportunities to be their own heroes and do their own work.
The problem with the spectrum that is trans-ness and where people like Caitlyn Jenner lie, transitioning and being trans is more than a physical thing. Transition is a process.
I was kicked out of my own house and had my own drag mother, you know, a house mother. Things with my family are great now - my mom and dad were at the premiere - but they had kicked me out.
I don't know that I had context for being trans until I moved to Rochester, New York, to pursue my dream of acting, and started going to drag shows. I had never seen a transsexual before, and I didn't yet fully understand my own identity.
Visibility has an effect on those who are privileged; it brings more privilege, and on those who are marginalized, it brings more marginalization, because it also brings a spotlight onto them where they're at, in the hood or in certain places that are less tolerable.
There are cis women who are being attacked and called men because they are wearing makeup and because they are too tall, and they might have an Adam's apple. Once cis women start to realize it's not just harmful to trans women, then we'll start to come together more and attack this together. It sucks, but we're all under the patriarchy.
What I would love to happen is to have people at the top of their game - straight, gay, cisgender, transgender, whatever - to volunteer with us, as long as they have something of value to offer and they see the value in our community.
I used to work at Bloomingdale's when I was transitioning, and they didn't want me using the same bathroom as the female employees or what have you, so it was a struggle.
