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Were you ever ambivalent about your power?Oh yeah.
The month I was on the cover ofTimemagazine,five trans women were killed.
So I felt a lot of survivors guilt.
Its a really dark place to live in.
One of them bought me a drink and was flirting with me.
I have no tolerance; one and a half cosmos in, Im drunk.
I kept imagining his friends coming in and murdering me.
This is what trans folks are walking around with.
I deserve to live a good life.
But I still have trauma.
I dont do a lot of marches, and I have a lot of guilt about that.
But as a black trans woman, me getting arrested is different.
Trans people experience horrible shit in prison.
Power is being clear about who you are.
A friend of mine called me and said, The tabloid rumors are true.
Caitlyn is trans and shes never talked to a trans person before.
Can you talk to her?
So I started her calling her Caitlyn then.
We talked for a couple of hours and it was lovely.
After she came out, people were constantly asking me about her.
Initially I was like, Im not going to say anything about her until she speaks for herself.
And then it became difficult to support her, because of some of her politics.
Ive been very intentional about not talking about her, mainly because shes become so divisive.
But I have love for her.
Shes still a human being.
I think if youre early transition, youre figuring out who you are.
A newborn should not really be in the press.
I think that accounts for why there is more visibility of trans woman than trans men.
Because our media already objectifies women.
I am aware of that, but I dont go into this uncritically.
So I dont make my aesthetic choices without that knowledge.
But I also have the right to make them.
Hari Nef gave a great talk about embracing your femininity as a survival strategy.
Being perceived in a more femme way on the subway means you might not get attacked that day.
Does that mean the culture should not change?
Is it draining to have to be a role model in everything you do?It is.
I have to constantly acknowledge that I am a human being and that this is going to be imperfect.
The truth is, I misspoke when I said that.
The second you dont toe the line of patriarchy, youre excommunicated from it.
There is a self-loathing there.
Theres also this whole space of oppressing someone that youve had sex with.
Slave owners had sex with slaves.
You cannot take a man like that and turn him into some ally.
In dating you get a lot of information about whats really going on with people.
I think that is an issue.
That is 19 years.
I realized in that moment that its an inside job.
That there is nothing in the material world that is going to really fill my soul and heal me.
I have to do that work.
It was time for me to slowly begin to say, This happened.
I think thats the truth, because I can barely handle it now.
