My most prized possession was my lanyard of Lip Smackers I tore it out of the confines of the paper package, which read “all the flavor of being a girl.”.. In the car, I draped the black lanyard around my neck with a single green plastic balm dangling. I proudly dangled my girlhood in all its fruitiness. It cost only $2.99.

Trans women of color dangerously fall in between the cracks of racial justice, feminist and LGbt movements.

He's trying to do info-tainment. He doesn't really want to talk about trans issues, he wants to sensationalize my life and not really talk about the work that I do and what the purpose of me writing this book was about.

We have to organize. We have to build up coalitions across all of these people who are considered "the other." If we all banded together and built coalitions that were truly intersectional, we would be in power. I believe in the power of the people.

We have different experiences, but trans women have experiences that do parallel with the whole fabric of what womanhood is. Embracing trans women, listening to their stories, enriches what womanhood is. It expands it and makes it even better.

What keeps me going is that quest for just being able to be present and be myself. Not for people, but for me.

No matter how discouraged I get from the people who are being appointed in this next administration, how discouraged I feel to know that I will no longer have folks who look like me and share in my vision, I am encouraged by what I think that this particular time period and this particular election season will inspire in the next generation and the current generation of freedom fighters.