Just me existing, as an openly black transgender woman from a working-class background, thriving, is a political act. My brother always reminds me that if you are black in America and you're alive, you deserve a round of applause. There are so many forces that don't want us to be alive, and so just being openly who I am, and happy and thriving, is a political act.

I'm a Self-made Woman in Every Sense of the Word

When a trans woman gets called a man, that is an act of violence.

I'm always skeptical about representations of trans people, especially when trans people are not making the work.

When people have points of reference that are humanizing, that demystifies difference.

We are not what other people say we are. We are who we know ourselves to be, and we are what we love. That's okay.

Many in the trans community are fed up with L.G.B.T. organizations that continue to erase trans identity or just give lip service to trans issues. We need our cisgender allies - gay and straight - to treat transgender lives as if they matter, and trans people need multiple seats at the tables in the organizations that say they're interested in L.G.B.T. equality; this absence has been painful since Stonewall.