By ZACHARY JARRELL
When Scout Rose was transitioning in 2003, it was nearly impossible to find the tools they needed. They remember combing through message boards and digging to find transition-related products that yielded mixed results. The trans community, they said, was an “afterthought” or a “side project” at best.
“While things have certainly improved in the almost 20 years since I began my transition, by and large, the needs of transmasculine and nonbinary folks were not being addressed,” Rose told the Los Angeles Blade.
So, Rose took matters into their own hands and started Transguy Supply, an online marketplace dedicated to supporting trans men and nonbinary people. The site offers everything from binders and packing gear to apparel and grooming supplies.
The amount of people who identify as transgender has grown generation by generation, according to a 2022 Gallup poll. In fact, trans Gen Zers – born between 1997 and 2012 –more than double the percentage of trans millennials, 2.1% to 1%. Additionally, about 42,000 children and teens across the country received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria in 2021, nearly triple the number in 2017, according to Komodo Health Inc. data compiled for Reuters.
As the need grows, so has the availability of transition-related products. But, Transguy Supply’s Chief Marketing and Community Officer Rocco Kayiatos said, when you look at companies for trans people “built by folks that are outside of the trans community, they don’t understand the economic reality of trans people.”
“That economic reality is stark against the rest of humankind, in that the majority of trans folks don’t have jobs and those that do are making well below poverty line levels,” he added.
how “pervasive discrimination,” “a lack of legal protections” and the “failure to adequately protect transgender students” contribute to the economic gap.
“I think one thing that Scout and Auston [Bjorkman, Transguy Supply’s creative director] did really beautifully – it’s embedded in the fabric of how they run this business – is to ensure that we are a lower cost option for the majority of the products that we offer to reflect the exact population that we’re serving,” Kayiatos, who joined the business late last year, said.
Take a $75 prosthetic, Kayiatos used as an example. “Seventy-five bucks is the choice between eating or not eating,” he said. Transguy Supply prices most of its prosthetics, also known as packers – a realistic or semi-realistic penis, usually made of silicone, meant to make trans men and gender nonconforming people more comfortable and confident – well below $75.
“It started with the need,” they said.
When they launched the business four years ago, Rose –who has worked in the trans and nonbinary communities for almost two decades – knew it would be a success. “Seeing firsthand both the size and the power of the community, I was fairly confident that the community would support a business whose primary focus was the community,” they said.
And, so far, it seems as if they were right. According to the company, it has seen between 200% and 400% yearly growth since launching in 2018 – a feat Transguy Supply attributes to the “absolute need” of the products it offers. The online marketplace said as the trans and nonbinary community grows, their needs can no longer be written off as “niche.”
“I believed that the community was large enough to be able to create a business that could support itself,” Rose said. Still, they added that they have been “blown away by how large the community is.”
“It’s been incredible,” Rose said.
It’s true. According to a 2019 study by the Williams Institute, an LGBTQ legal and policy think tank, 29.4% of trans people live in poverty – tied with cisgender bisexual women for the highest rate in the LGBTQ community. LGBTQ people, as a whole, have a poverty rate of 21.6%, according to the report, much higher than the rate for cisgender straight people, 15.7%.
In addition, researchers at Vanderbilt University found that trans Americans are 14% less likely to have completed college and 14% more likely to live in poverty. Even after controlling for the lack of a college degree and other observable differences, researchers said, trans people are still 11% less likely to have jobs than cisgender men in comparable situations.
“Economists call this an unexplained gap, but it’s likely that discrimination plays a role,” said Kitt Carpenter, who co-authored the study, “Transgender Status, Gender Identity, and Socioeconomic Outcomes,” published in the Industrial and Labor Relations Review.
The Center for American Progress and the Movement Advancement Project, in a 2015 report, said, “Transgender Americans face clear financial penalties simply because they are transgender.” In the report, the two nonprofits detailed
In many ways, Transguy Supply provides a version of gender-affirming care. “It’s life-saving and life-changing and life-affirming,” Kayiatos said.
Though some states have made strides in protecting trans people, the political landscape for trans people – especially trans youth – has largely gotten worse in recent years. In the first weeks of 2023, the ACLU has already counted over 120 new anti-LGBTQ bills across the country, most of which target education and trans healthcare. And that’s not to mention the record-breaking number of anti-LGBTQ bills seen in years past.
“These bills represented a coordinated effort to deny transgender people our freedom, our safety, and our dignity,” said Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project.
One major target of this legislation has been banning trans youth from accessing gender-affirming care – anything from puberty blockers to hormone therapies to surgeries, a rare intervention for minors. In 2023, though, the legislative efforts have leveled up, with some bills now targeting adults as old as 26.
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‘Social platforms make it difficult to reach our customers’Transguy Supply President and founder SCOUT ROSE (left) with the company’s creative director, AUSTON BJORKMAN. (Photo courtesy Transguy Supply Transguy Supply website (Blade screenshot)
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In Oklahoma, for example, a Republican lawmaker filed legislation seeking to prevent anyone under the age of 26 from accessing gender-affirming care – deeming it the “Millstone Act of 2023.” What’s more, doctors who break the law could be punished with an unclassified felony conviction and the possible revocation of their medical license.
“The bills targeting trans adults represent a significant escalation in the ongoing legislative attacks on the trans community,” Erin Reed, a legislative researcher and trans activist, told the Blade. “These bills serve to shift the Overton window in order to make passing bans on trans youth more palatable. They also indicate a willingness by these legislators to move towards a future where our right to exist is denied and those who care for us, criminalized.”
As the push to strip gender-affirming care from trans people grows, the products Transguy Supply offers become more important. “I think any sort of service that’s dedicated to creating access for goods or services or space or fostering a community for trans people is essential for our survival,” Kayiatos said. “And I think that we’re always going to be a community that takes care of ourselves because we’ve been discarded by the world at large.”
As the business continues to grow, it has found itself “bootstrapped,” Kayiatos said – running into advertising problems on Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram and Alphabet Inc.owned Google.
Rose said that Facebook “regularly rejects” Transguy Supply’s products for “Advertising Policy violations.” Screenshots shared with the Blade showed a gray crew neck sweatshirt with “SIR” in black letters being removed for an “Advertising Policy violation.” In addition, a black and white T-shirt with an illustrated image of two people in jockstraps also couldn’t be used for ads.
Instagram, Rose said, has also removed photos that were “quite PG.” They added that the platform rejects tagged products – a feature that allows brands to tag products in an image to make it easier for users to find additional information – so much so that they “had to turn off notifications because it was distracting.”
“We don’t tag prosthetics, and we rarely post them, so the products they are un-tagging are apparel, binders, and underwear,” Rose said.
Meta didn’t comment on Transguy Supply specifically. However, a spokesperson provided the Blade with background on its policies in an email. “We have long had a policy that limits ads with adult content, like nudity, and adult products, like sex toys, in part because we take into account the wide array of people from varying cultures and countries who see them,” they said.
The spokesperson also outlined the platform’s efforts to protect LGBTQ people, something the company has come under fire for in the past.
“While our policies are not changing, we have improved our enforcement and provided more detail to advertisers under our Adult Products and Services policy,” the spokesperson said, adding: “Over the last year – with feedback from advocacy groups including GLAAD – we removed Interest topics that people may perceive as sensitive, including those related to
sexual orientation and gender identities other than cisgender.”
The spokesperson also pointed the Blade to Facebook’s recently published LGBTQ Safety Page in the Facebook Safety Center. In it, the company states that it wants the platform to be “a place where LGBTQ+ people can share their voices, build community, and bring the world closer together.”
On Tuesday, Meta’s Oversight Board urged the company to update its policies on adult nudity to prevent enforcement errors for trans and nonbinary people. The independent governing body overturned Meta’s decision to remove two bare-chested Instagram photos – with nipples covered – of a trans couple posting about gender-affirming healthcare.
“The board finds that Meta’s policies on adult nudity result in greater barriers to expression for women, trans, and gender nonbinary people on its platforms,” a board blog post read. “They have a severe impact in contexts where women may traditionally go bare chested, and people who identify as LGBTQI+ can be disproportionately affected, as these cases show. Meta’s automated systems identified the content multiple times, despite it not violating Meta’s policies.”
Rose also accused Google Ads of suspending their Transguy Supply, though they have “no idea why.” “No one from Google will speak to you once your account is suspended,” they said.
Rose estimated the original Google suspension came in 2018, with their appeal coming shortly after. “I took to the internet to see if I could figure out what to do,” Rose said. “I remember reading somewhere that this often happens to companies that use foreign banks, but that couldn’t be us because Transguy Supply banks with Chase.”
Rose’s best guess for the suspension was because their Google account name, which was under Scout, was different from the name on their credit card – their deadname.
Though Rose “triple-checked” their bank details, ensuring all information was accurate, and changed their Google account name to match the name on their credit card, the appeal was denied.
“When researching, I also read that repeat suspensions can result in permanent suspension, so I decided not to appeal again,” Rose said, adding: “Without the ability to use Google Ads, I was forced to figure out other means of getting eyes on our business.”
Google did not provide a statement before publication.
“Platforms make it difficult for trans-focused businesses to reach our customers at almost every turn,” Rose said. “Google wouldn’t let me advertise at all. Instagram routinely untags our products. And Facebook’s bots randomly reject products as benign as T-shirts from their ad program.”
Kayiatos, who was previously the chief marketing and content officer at FOLX Health – an LGBTQ-focused healthcare platform – said he has faced similar problems in the past. But he also had an “enormous budget” at the time.
“We didn’t face the same barriers that a small business faces when it’s serving LGBTQ-focused needs and services,”
Kayiatos said.
Still, Transguy Supply is marching forward. Late last year, Rose added Kayiatos – who has been a transmasc culture creator for over 20 years – to the team, something they saw as a big step forward. In addition to Kayiatos’ previous role at FOLX, he created a magazine about trans masc culture called Original Plumbing and worked for tech giants including BuzzFeed and Grindr.
Rose and Kayiatos had known each other for a few years, but they started to get closer over the pandemic. “I actually can’t even remember why, but we would have these long phone conversations,” Rose said. “It was just so clear that I was speaking to a kindred spirit, someone whose brain was really similar to mine, and someone who is just incredibly easy to trust.”
Rose added: “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say there is no other person in the United States who is and who in the last 20 years has created more opportunities for trans masculine people to connect with one another than Rocco [Kayiatos].”
“I’m gonna figure out how to get Rocco on board,” Rose thought to themself. “This is a match made in heaven.”
Kayiatos obliged. “Why not come back and do it with a bootstrapped community that I belong to, that I love, that I feel tethered to for the rest of my life?” he said. “This community needs resources.”
Kayiatos also praised the way Rose built the business. “I get to work with someone who doesn’t need more than he needs to build this company in this way that’s so counter to business right now, that is so central to the core of how I’ve lived my life,” he said, adding: “I don’t need to compromise my morals in any way, shape or form to show up and work for Transguy Supply.
With Kayiatos on board, the company is now heading full steam into the future.
“We already are the world’s largest one-stop shop for transmasculine, trans men and nonbinary folks when it comes to transmission-related needs,” Rose said. But to them, the potential of TransGuy Supply is endless. “We want to be a community hub, we want to be an informational hub, we want Transguy Supply to be a home for trans masculine, trans men and nonbinary folks,” Rose said.
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Former Dublin City Council member Shawn Kumagai has championed providing transit-oriented affordable housing for seniors and low-income residents and was instrumental in assisting the city’s small businesses weather the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
The gay first-generation, U.S.-born Asian American Pacific Islander, a third-generation military veteran, and 2022 state assembly candidate, saw his adept management of Dublin’s municipal budget earning the city the highest possible credit rating.
Prior to politics, Kumagai entered the Navy under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and worked his way up the ranks reaching E-9, a Navy Master Chief, in a career that between active duty and the active Naval Reserve has spanned 21 years. He was the only AAPI candidate in his 2022 State Assembly race, and was Dublin’s only openly Out council member.
Kumagai, 45, started his early childhood in the San Francisco Bay area. Kumagai and his siblings were raised primarily by their mother in Phoenix, Ariz., after his parents’ divorce when he was 10.
“I was being raised by a single mom,” Kumagai recounted. “My grandfather would come over every day to help us out and to bring groceries and make us lunch and get us after school while my mom went back to school and worked full time to get her career on track. She ended up joining the army as a nurse and then had a great career that she started later in life, finishing up as a psych nurse at the veterans at the VA facility in San Francisco.”
Kumagai feels inspired by his mother’s resilience and what she was able to accomplish through her tireless hard work. He also knows that government aid was essential to her being able to achieve her goals and provide for her family.
“We lived on government assistance,” said Kumagai. “We had food stamps and welfare payments. It was through that help, that kind of hand-up, that my mom was able to be successful. So that also informed my thinking about the role of government in people’s lives.”
“If it had not been for that educational assistance that she had with her tuition being offset by her service in the military, and if she had not had those food stamps, and if she had not had the welfare, I don’t think we would have had the opportunities that we had in life. This is true for both my siblings and me, but especially for my mom. So the role of government can really be a force for positive change and provide access to opportunity.”
Kumagai’s experience growing up as bi-racial also played an important role in making him the Councilman he is today.
“Growing up as a person of mixed identities shaped me. I mean this, of course, with my sexual orientation and also with my racial identity. Because I am half Japanese, growing up, it felt like having one foot in two cultures. That makes for an interesting experience.”
“My dad is a first-generation immigrant from Japan, and during that time in the 80s, I think it was similar to what we are seeing now today with anti-AAPI sentiment. It was a time when the American economy was not doing well, but the Japanese economy was doing really well. The global economy was in turmoil, and a lot of people I felt during my childhood blamed
Japan and Japanese people. I felt that stigma associated with coming from a Japanese family.”
“Also, on the flip side, being half-white comes with challenges. I was a part of the Japanese culture, but I was not fully part of the Japanese culture, so I have always had that understanding of what it’s like to be ‘othered.’”
While Kumagai is proudly out now, he did not always feel comfortable being overt in his sexuality.
“I grew up part of my childhood in San Francisco during the 80s. Mom did have gay friends, but even then, I didn’t feel comfortable coming out to my family even though I knew inside of me that I was probably gay and even though I knew that my mom probably would have accepted me. It was a really interesting and unique time because there was a lot of stigma around the AIDS crisis. That stigma created this shaming of the gay community, particularly gay men, and there was this whole pullback in society blaming gay men for this pandemic and accusing them and their sexual practices for what was happening. As a young gay man, I felt that shame.”
When asked about his coming out journey and why he has chosen to be an openly out politician, Kumagai responded that this was a very important question as he associates his coming out directly with his ability to lead.
“When I look back on my trajectory, coming out and having that support system allowing me to be true to who I was, really flipped the switch in me from allowing me to truly excel and being able to do good work and me holding back and not being able to do that.”
“At a young age, I started to come out to my closest friends. I feel extremely privileged that I had the support that I did. When I eventually told my mom, I think I was 17 at the time, a junior in high school. She said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner? You had all these gay uncles, and you could have had such great role models for you to talk to.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know, I don’t know. But I one hundred percent knew that I just wasn’t ready.’ But she was very supportive, and so was my father. As a Japanese man, as I think happens in many Asian cultures, it tends to be a little bit more conservative, but he was completely excepting. I
had my support at home, but then I joined the military.”
“Service,” Kumagai told journalist Karen Ocamb last Fall, “is in my DNA. My grandfather served in World War Two in the Army Air Corps. My mom was in the Army Nurse Corps for ten years. And her brother, my uncle was an Air Force Academy grad and flew fighter jets. And I went off and joined the Navy.”
“I was already a 100% out gay man,” says Kumagai of himself back in 2001 when he decided to join the military.
2001 was the height of a military policy called “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” a largely anti-LGBTQ policy presented under the guise of helping the queer community escape prejudice. As Kumagai quickly discovered, the policy did the exact opposite of its claimed intention.
“I was working at a bar slash cabaret in Phoenix, Arizona as a bartender and a cocktail waiter. They had weekly drag shows, and it was a very well-known LGBTQ restaurant. Back in the 90s, there weren’t too many places like that for people to go, but that was my life when I joined the military.”
“I talked to my mom, who was serving in the army at the time, and I said, ‘You know, maybe I want to go into the military. Tell me about this, ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” She said, ‘Well, they can’t ask you if you are gay, and as long as you don’t tell them, you are OK.”
“The ironic thing is, at the time, I viewed that as protection,” explained Kumagai, “Because I knew individuals who served prior to the implementation of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’ and it was really bad back then. You always had to be careful because there were these witch hunts where the military police would go into gay establishments to seek out people who looked like they were in the military. They would then demand to see their IDs, drag them back to base, and then promptly process them for discharge. So, when I heard those horror stories from the 70s and early on, I thought that ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell sounded much better than that. I thought I could just be quiet and do my service. I was going to go ahead and serve my time and get little benefits and go back to college. That was my plan.”
“But what I didn’t realize was when I joined in 2001, I was going in at the height of discharges under ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’ because even though they weren’t supposed to ask, a lot of people were voluntarily telling because they couldn’t stand serving in silence. Also, there was still a lot of witch hunting and targeting of particular individuals. That didn’t stop.”
“A lot of times, people’s sexualities would come out through second or third-hand information. A lot of times, people were even guilty by association.”
“I served with one person in particular who found out he was gay because they found chat logs and with another individual who was being investigated for another matter when it kind of came out incidentally. A lot of people I served alongside, particularly in language training at the language institute, were gay and processed out for being lesbian or gay back in 2001, 2002.”
This constant and often clandestine prosecuting of members of the LGBTQ+ community under “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” made Kumagai fear for his own place in the military.
‘I feel hopeful about the younger generation’
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“It was shocking to me to see. It also made me feel the need for self-preservation. If you got overly involved or got associated with those people, you know, we did have a little gay crew in the military, but there was always this fear that we would become guilty by association and that we would then lose our careers. It was this very insidious fear causing us to serve in silence.”
In addition to the witch hunts, Kumagai became aware of another major injustice against the queer community in the military: that of being unable to claim benefits for same-sex partners.
“What really made me realize how unfair and discriminatory the policy was, was to see so many of my siblings in service faced discrimination when it came to the benefits that they received for their significant others. For example, because there was no same-sex marriage at the time, if you were deployed, then your significant other was invisible. If you were going to go to a place where only a legally married spouse was able to go with you, or you were entitled to receive the benefits of you taking those orders in the military, your same-sex significant other was completely left out. There was no support system for those couples. That made me realize that there was just no way for people to serve under ‘Don’t ask. Don’t Tell’ in a way that was equal.”
The ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy was annulled in 2011, making way for more members of the queer community to serve and receive benefits that are equal to their heterosexual peers.
When asked what led Kumagai to politics, he admitted that the decision was not made lightly.
“When I served in the military under ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’ I never thought that I would be able to serve in any position of higher leadership because of the scrutiny that it would bring to me. I had this fear that I would be outed and that that would not only end my career but also bring shame to my comrades in arms.”
However, once the policy ended, Kumagai had the space he needed to reconsider his stance on being an out politician – an aspect of himself he now finds vital to his entire message.
“I think that those of us who can lead by example absolutely must,” said Kumagai. “I don’t ever say that every single person must come out and be a certain way, but certainly those who are running as candidates, they are a voice for people who may not be able to have a voice at any given moment, it’s the same for I think the LGBTQ community as for the AAPI community. We must have people in positions of power as role models for other future leaders.”
When asked what he feels is the best course of action to eradicate hate and prejudice, the Councilman paused before responding.
“It’s a tough question,” admitted Kumagai. “How do we solve this age-old problem? I think we need to continue to create awareness about the diversity of our cultures. We really need
to push back on these kinds of stereotypes and tropes as well.”
“I think nothing happens without intention in this arena, we have to keep our eye on the ball. We have to continue to do this work and move in a progressive direction and that’s why I’m so thankful for people like Senator Wiener and for people who are doing the work in Sacramento, There are so many areas in our systems that need to still be fixed to allow people to live out their full potential.”
In addition to leading by example as a queer leader, Kumagai recognized a need to push for AAPI leadership and representation.
“During my time on the city council, we saw a spike in AAPI hate. I really started to realize that I had a duty and responsibility as someone from these different identity groups to be a voice for those people who often do not have voices in this process to speak up and to do work on these important issues. I started to get more involved with different identity-based political and government work organizations to try to do that work.”
“When it comes to the AAPI side of things, I think we still have a lot of work to do in that space. We are underrepresented even in California, where I think we do have relatively more representation compared to the rest of the country. But there are systems and pipelines put in place that stopAAPI people from moving into positions of power. There is this kind of model minority mask that is put on people. Oftentimes AAPI leaders are expected to step aside. There is always an excuse for why any given AAPI individual should not run in any particular race. We are told, ‘this is a Latino seat, or this is a Black seat, or this is a labor seat, or this is…’ whatever it is. The API candidate, for whatever reason, seems to be pushed out of the systems of power. It’s almost like it’s OK to push an AAPI individual out of a given race or out of a position. We have a lot of work to do to create support systems that allow for AAPI leaders to ascend into positions of power.”
While there is still a lot of work to be done, Kumagai did share his optimism when looking at the new generation of young leaders.
“I feel very hopeful, particularly about the younger generation, which seems to have a deeper understanding of what a diverse culture and what a pluralistic culture looks like. When it comes to LGBTQ issues, they are much more enlightened than even I was at their age. In terms of sexual orientation and gender identity, it is truly this beautiful rainbow where we have so many different experiences and identities. I am still learning every single day about that, but I’m hopeful that the younger generation is going to be able to help us continue to move in a positive direction.”
Just last year, Kumagai conceded to straight labor candidate Liz Ortega in the race for a state Assembly seat noting he was still glad he ran.
“The primaries were an amazing experience,” said Kumagai. “You never know what the dynamics of a race are going to be
when you get in, but certainly we knew that I was the underdog, and in this race because we were going up against the labor and democratic machine, that was geared towards a certain type of candidate.”
“But I truly felt that because there was no other AAPI person getting in the race that it was important that this district, which has a plurality of AAPI people, have that option on the ballot. I didn’t know how far the campaign would go, and I was proud of the coalition that we put together and that we were able to get through the primary and go on to the general election. But, you know, we fell short in making the case to people.”
When asked what went wrong in the election, Kumagai felt that constituents were generally uninvolved, leading him to lose out on important votes.
“I think a lot of people were disengaged with the process. We had about a 50 percent turn out. A lot of folks were just not really paying attention. That is unfortunate, but that is kind of how things go in our democracy sometimes. I absolutely learned so much from that experience. There are also always other opportunities on the horizon. I know that I will find other ways to continue to serve.”
In 2019, Kumagai stirred up controversy when he sought to represent his queer community in Dublin.
“In 2019, I asked my colleagues to declare two things. The first was to declare LGBTQ plus pride month in the city of Dublin. The second was to raise the pride flag.”
“Unfortunately, there were members of the public team who made some very inflammatory remarks. These are the tropes we have seen forever, trying to associate the LGBTQ+ community with pedophilia and bringing in religious talking points. The sad thing is, those comments got inflated with the fact that my colleagues were largely afraid of issues around first amendment rights and the constitutionality of flying a flag and whether or not that would open up a can of worms or Pandora’s box of having to fly other flags. All of that got inflated, and it blew up in national news.”
“I think what was most surprising for people was that many think of the San Francisco Bay area as this monolith of progressivism and that everywhere there should be forward thinking and accepting. But what this incident peeled back was that there is still this underbelly of racism and of anti-LGBTQ sentiment. All of this still exists in the Bay Area within California.”
“Luckily, this is not the majority opinion. We got there. We came back, and we unanimously passed the raising of the pride flag for the entire month of June, which was more than I originally asked. We then went on to do that every year during my time on Council.”
“You know, raising the flag was commonplace in places like San Francisco and Oakland and Berkeley, but in broader suburbia, it wasn’t. That whole kerfuffle brought this rainbow wave throughout the east bay and outer east bay and even into the central valley. I have people write to me who say, ‘We want to do that too.’ and, ‘How do we advocate for this in our community?’
“By the time we got to raise the flag, I think, the third year, pretty much every city in Alameda county was doing it, including every city in the Tri-Valley region, where Dublin is centered and which tends to be a little bit more of a purple area of the Bay Area. I was proud that it had this ripple effect that created awareness and moved people in that direction.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sat down with the Washington Blade in her office Tuesday evening for an exclusive interview just weeks after formally stepping down from leadership, having led her party in the House for 20 years, including as Speaker.
Pelosi reflected on the role she has played in landmark legislative achievements, including milestones in the fight for LGBTQ rights. She also addressed some current events that have earned significant attention from political observers and the beltway press.
So much of the historic progress over the past few decades in advancements toward the legal, social, and political equality of LGBTQ Americans, including those living with HIV/AIDS, was facilitated directly or otherwise supported by Pelosi’s leadership in Congress, but she was quick to credit the tireless work of individual activists and LGBTQ, civil rights, and HIV/AIDS advocacy groups.
“I attribute the success with [fighting] HIV/AIDS and everything that came after,” from legislation on hate crimes to marriage equality, “to the outside mobilization” of these activists and organizations, she told the Blade.
Despite positioning herself as an advocate for LGBTQ rights well before that position was popular, Pelosi said she is unaware of any instances where she may have suffered political consequences as a result. Regardless, she said, “I don’t care.”
The more she has been criticized for championing LGBTQ rights in Congress, “the more proud I am” of that work, Pelosi added.
Pelosi has always been a strident LGBTQ ally, guided by her commitment to justice, love, and fairness as ordained by the teachings of her Catholic faith. These ideals are in perfect alignment, she said, as opposed to the position held by many opponents of LGBTQ rights who nevertheless claim to believe we are all created in God’s image.
During an interview with Larry King, when serving as the San Francisco Democratic National Convention host committee chairwoman in 1984, Pelosi said the late television host remarked: “I just don’t understand how a Catholic girl who grew up in Baltimore, Maryland is such a champion for gay rights.”
“You’ve answered your own question,” Pelosi told him, referring to his mention of her Catholicism. “It is our faith that tells us that we’re all God’s children, and we must respect the dignity and worth of every person.”
Pelosi’s time in Congress began with the AIDS crisis, and she has kept up the fight ever since
After committing herself and the Congress to the fight against HIV/AIDS during her first speech from the floor of the House in 1987, Pelosi said some of her colleagues asked whether she thought it wise for her feelings on the subject to be “the first thing that people know about you” as a newly elected member.
They questioned her decision not because they harbored any stigma, but rather for concern over how “others might view my service here,” Pelosi said. The battle against HIV/AIDS, she told them, “is why I came here.”
“It was every single day,” she said.
Alongside the “big money for research, treatment, and prevention” were other significant legislative accomplishments, such as “when we] were able to get Medicaid to treat HIV [patients] as Medicaid-eligible” rather than requiring them to wait
until their disease had progressed to full-blown AIDS to qualify for coverage, said Pelosi, who authored the legislation.
“That was a very big deal for two reasons,” she said. First, because it saved lives by allowing low-income Americans living with HIV to begin treatment before the condition becomes life-threatening, and second, because “it was the recognition that we had this responsibility to intervene early.”
Other milestones in which Pelosi had a hand include the Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS program, President Bush’s PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) initiative, the Affordable Care Act (which contains significant benefits for Americans living with HIV/AIDS), and funding for the Ending the Epidemic initiative.
The last appropriations bill passed under Pelosi’s tenure as Democratic leader in December contained an additional $100 million boost to HIV/AIDS programs.
These and other hard-won victories over the years – from the biomedical progress made possible by investment in research to foreign aid packages that have saved countless lives overseas – have often come despite staunch opposition from lawmakers, particularly congressional Republicans.
For instance, the late former Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina opposed federal funding for HIV/AIDS research because he considered it tantamount to the government’s endorsement of “the homosexual lifestyle” responsible for the spread of the disease in the U.S.
Asked how she might compare anti-LGBTQ members like Helms with whom she worked in the past to those serving today, Pelosi said the most salient difference is the homophobic and transphobic attitudes among lawmakers in previous decades were in many cases borne out of ignorance.
Pelosi said that while the prejudice was “horrible [back] then” and she was “impatient” with lawmakers in the House who exhibited attitudes similar to those expressed by Helms, at that time people who held those views were often “just not up to date on what was happening in the world.”
(Pelosi noted that, for his part, Helms seemed to soften his stance on matters concerning HIV/AIDS. She suspects U2 frontman Bono may have successfully appealed to Helms as a parent, but “I don’t know exactly.”)
By contrast, today’s lawmakers, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, “must have a growing awareness of [LGBTQ] people in their own communities, maybe in their own families,” Pelosi said. “They’re really in a different world,” which means, they “have made a decision that they’re going to be
anti-LGBTQ,” she said, adding that hate and prejudice today is most often directed at the trans community. “It’s completely unacceptable.”
Asked to share her thoughts on the many scandals that have unfolded over the past couple of months concerning gay freshman GOP Rep. George Santos of New York, Pelosi pointed out that while the congressman has dominated headlines recently, other members of the House Republican caucus who have weaponized homophobia and transphobia to a far greater extent than he are much more dangerous.
But first, Pelosi said that House Democrats would never do what the Republican leadership has done by tolerating the embattled freshman congressman to protect their slim majority control of the chamber.
Santos is “almost a joke; he’s become a punch line,” Pelosi said. “He’s outrageous, and there’s no way he should be allowed to serve” given the extent to which the congressman has failed to exhibit the “dignity” required of members who are privileged to serve in the House of Representatives.
At the same time, “there are people over there who are more seriously dangerous to the freedoms in our country than him” Pelosi said. She pointed to the hate mongering and fear mongering in which many of Santos’s Republican colleagues have engaged, including “the things that that they say about trans families and, just, the injustice of it all.”
The aim of these far-right lawmakers extends far beyond undermining the rights of LGBTQ people, of course. Pelosi noted that, “you have to remember, with all of these things, whether we’re talking about women’s right to choose – we’ve always expanded freedoms. And now with this Supreme Court, they’re narrowing freedoms with women’s right to choose” by the revocation of constitutional protections for abortion via last year’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
During a lecture last year hosted at the University of California, Berkeley, Barbara Boxer, who formerly represented California in the House and then in the Senate, commented on the historic significance of Pelosi’s election to become the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2006. “The fact that a woman could get into the leadership like this, to win the trust of all these men, it’s more extraordinary than you can imagine,” Boxer said.
Boxer has also been a trailblazer for women in politics. She was the first woman to chair the Marin County Board of Supervisors, and after her election to serve in the upper chamber alongside California’s senior Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the two became the first pair of women to represent any state in the U.S. Senate.
Asked how she managed to secure the votes from, particularly, the older men in her caucus without compromising her values, Pelosi told the Blade, “I just did what I believed” rather than coming to Congress to “change other people’s behavior.”
She said that many of her male colleagues “had to get over their own negative attitudes” concerning the prospect of electing a woman to lead their party in the House, but “I wasn’t going to wait until then.”
CONTINUES ON PAGE 12
By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com
A worldwide clinical trial of an experimental HIV vaccine involving 3,900 volunteer men who have sex with men and transgender people that some researchers were hopeful would finally result in an effective HIV vaccine was found to be safe but ineffective in preventing HIV infection.
According to a Jan. 18 statement released by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which partially funded and helped organize the trial, the vaccine trial is being discontinued and participants were being notified of the findings, with further analysis of the study data planned.
The NIAID statement says the Janssen pharmaceutical company developed the experimental vaccine based on what researchers call “mosaic” immunogens or vaccine components featuring elements of multiple HIV subtypes. It says the goal was to induce immune responses against a wide variety of global HIV strains.
The statement says the investigational vaccine regimen consisted of four injections over a period of one year for the volunteers, who were based in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. It says an independent data and safety monitoring board, referred to as DSMB, analyzed the data obtained from the vac-
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10
cine trial, which began in 2019.
“In its scheduled data review, the DSMB determined there were no safety issues with the experimental vaccine regimen,” the statement says. “However, the number of HIV infections were equivalent between the vaccine and placebo arms of the study,” the statement continues. “During the clinical trial, all participants were offered comprehensive HIV prevention tools, including pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP,” it says.
“Study staff ensured that participants who acquired HIV during the trial were promptly referred for medical care and treatment,” according to the NIAID statement.
The NIAID study findings prompted the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, known as UNAIDS, to issue its own statement this week calling for the aggressive deployment of existing HIV prevention and treatment options as efforts to develop a vaccine continue.
“The disappointment of the vaccine trial further underlies the importance of rolling out available HIV treatment and prevention innovations, including oral PrEP, long acting injectables and the vaginal ring,” UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said in the UNAIDS statement.
At the same time, Pelosi acknowledged that “it took courage to vote for a woman as speaker,” noting that when she was sworn in back in 2007, she took the opportunity to thank the men who had supported her speakership. (She was elected unanimously on the first ballot.)
Pelosi said that prior to her speakership, she had always believed that the prospect of Americans electing a woman president was likelier to happen in her lifetime than members of Congress – who tend to be older men – voting for a woman speaker.
“I thought the American people were more ready than the Congress” to break the “marble ceiling,” she said.
Considering the parallel special counsel investigations into alleged mishandling of classified documents by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Pelosi has perhaps unwittingly strengthened the case for America to elect a woman president by virtue of her unblemished record as a steward of sensitive, top-secret information.
“I have 30 years of experience in intelligence. I have been on the [House Intelligence] Committee, the top Democrat on the Committee, ex officio on the Committee, a speaker and [Democratic] leader [in the House],” Pelosi said.
She distinguished the rules by which she and other members of Congress are governed, which prohibit the removal or relocation of classified documents, from the policies that the Commander in Chief must follow, which are comparably more permissive. Regardless, Pelosi said, “the documents are to be respected,” along with the rules and procedures for how they should be handled.
There are also important distinctions to note between the allegations against Trump and Biden, Pelosi said. “When you see the former president obstructing access to the documents, and you see this president saying, ‘I’ve instructed my lawyers to look for whatever is there and make them available to the Justice Department,’ that’s two different things,” she said.
Additionally, Pelosi said, from the information that has been made available so far, it seems that Trump was in possession of a greater volume of documents whose contents were more sensitive than those at issue in Biden’s case.
Pelosi’s LGBTQ fans celebrate her accomplishments
In November, the Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, issued a statement following Pelosi’s announcement of her plans to step down from Democratic leadership but continue to represent her constituents in California’s 11th Congressional District in the House.
“Speaker Pelosi has been the tip of the spear on watershed advancements for the LGBTQ+ community,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said in a statement, pointing to her 1987 speech on the AIDS crisis and “forceful advocacy for marriage equality long before its mainstream popularity,” both before she was elected as speaker.
The Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act, which banned federal recognition of same-sex marriages, was signed into law in 1996 with overwhelming support from both parties in both chambers of Congress; 342 members of the House voted for the proposal, with Pelosi joining only 64 other House Democrats, one independent, and one Republican in her opposition.
“During [Pelosi’s] tenure as Speaker,” HRC noted, “the House of Representatives passed an historic hate crimes law [the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act], repealed the discriminatory ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law, led the fight to enact the Affordable Care Act, and vocally opposed bans on transgender members serving in our nation’s military.”
Pelosi’s leadership was bookended with Congress’s passage late last year of the Respect for Marriage Act, which is credited as the greatest legislative victory for LGBTQ Americans since the 2010 repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
“The research for a vaccine must continue, but it’s important to remember that despite this setback the world can still end AIDS by 2030 by delivering all the proven prevention and treatment options to all people who need them,” she said.
“Global research efforts into vaccines and a cure must carry on,” the UNAIDS statement says. “At the same time, the world cannot wait for, or depend on, a vaccine or cure. The end of AIDS by 2030, as promised, is still possible, but leaders have no time to wait.”
An organization called the Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention, which keeps track of HIV vaccine studies, shows on its website that at least a dozen other HIV experimental vaccine trials are currently taking place in the U.S., Latin American, Europe, and Africa. Two of them in the U.S. are being sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the website shows.
Outside the U.S. Capitol building, Pelosi has also been celebrated by the LGBTQ community for signaling her support through, for example, her participation in some of the earliest meetings of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, her meeting with the survivors of the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre, and her appearance at a host of LGBTQ events over the years.
Of course, at the same time, Pelosi has been a constant target of attacks from the right, which in the past few years have become increasingly violent. During the siege of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, her office was ransacked by insurrectionists who shouted violent threats against her. A couple of weeks later, unearthed social media posts by far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) revealed she had signaled support for executing Pelosi along with other prominent House Democrats. And last October, the speaker’s husband Paul Pelosi suffered critical injuries after he was attacked by a man wielding a hammer who had broken into the couple’s San Francisco home.
Pelosi told CNN last week that her husband is “doing OK,” but expects it will “take a little while for him to be back to normal.”
Among her fans in progressive circles, Pelosi – who has been a towering figure in American politics since the Bush administration – has become something of a cultural icon, as well. For instance, the image of her clapping after Trump’s State of the Union speech in 2019 has been emblazoned on coffee mugs. “What is so funny about it,” Pelosi said, is rather than “that work [over] all these years as a legislator,” on matters including the “Affordable Care Act, millions of people getting health care, what we did over the years with HIV/AIDS in terms of legislation, this or that,” people instead have made much ado over her manner of clapping after Trump’s speech. And while the move was widely seen as antagonistic, Pelosi insisted, “it was not intended to be a negative thing.”
Regardless, she said, “it’s nice to have some fun about it, because you’re putting up with the criticism all the time – on issues, whether it’s about LGBTQ, or being a woman, or being from San Francisco, or whatever it is.”
SONDHEIM
BOOK BY JAMES LAPINE
DIRECTED BY SARNA LAPINE
FEB 14 - MAR 19
The “groundbreaking” new reality show launched this week, and man, was there drama. Too bad it wasn’t on the show itself.
Across the meta-sphere, pearls were clutched, and faces were hand-palmed, and the comments went from bitchy and nasty to bitchier and nastier. The WeHo Times “didn’t hate it”, and “kind of related” (but, hello, the show is set in… WeHo.)
The Wrap called it a show “we didn’t need.” The Decider (whose decision is that you “skip” the show) describes the program as “just watching six gays proclaim that they ‘aren’t here for drama’ and ‘don’t tolerate foolishness’ even though they are now contractually obligated to be present for drama and endure an exhausting level of foolishness. It’s a given that none of this is real, but it should at least be entertaining.”
Those were the nice reviews.
The writer of the blogshere LGBTQ Nation claimed that the show turned his “brains into real skull goo” and wrote a meandering non-sensical massacre of a review to prove it. None were quite as vitriolic as the Daily Beast however, that called it a “colossal gay nightmare” and stated that it “stinks as badly as the alley dumpster behind The Abbey after jockstrap night.”
I will have to take his word for that. I saw the show but have no desire to check out said dumpster.
Whether the vitriol is deserved or not, the viewers seem to have stayed away. Or at least, their interest did. The social media accounts for the show have a paltry number of followers so far. Only 3% of Google reviewers liked the show. It currently has a .8 out of 5-star rating on IMDB.
The show is really not that bad. Each of the guys has a reason for being on the show, and if they owned their individual motives rather than trying to be generalist and “representative,” the show could be intriguing.
The biggest failure was in how the show rolled out in the first place. The show came on like a wrecking ball and landed right on itself. The opening claim that “West Hollywood is the epicenter of the gay world” was demonstrative of the arrogance that will likely kill it.
There are gay people in LA that would dispute that West Hollywood is the epicenter of the Los Angeles gay world, let alone the rest of the globe. San Francisco, New York and Lon-
don may also have something to say about being gay centers. So, unless the intention was to piss off everyone not in West Hollywood, the opening line and its prominence in the promo for the show, was a big marketing mistake.
The next failure was rudeness and failure to “read the room” metaphorically. By forcing itself in between RuPaul’s Drag Race and Untucked programs, while stealing time from them, the show runners were completely clueless as to how eventful and anticipated those shows are to their viewers each week. Literally trying to force them to watch “Real Friends” was presumptive that the new show had earned the affection necessary to succeed in that program slot. It clearly had not.
Thus the show seems set up to fail. By promoting that it is thoroughly in love with itself, it has not given the audience a chance to know if we are really even interested in a second date.
I personally am going back for one. The guys on the show are specific to the hereand-now of gay, design, fashion and entertainment West Hollywood life. It would be nice if they seemed conscious at all of the horror of AIDS we lived through there back in the day, or gave a passing interest to the current right-wing attacks on trans kids, but then their prototypes, the Real Housewives franchises, don’t try to be The View either.
Brad Goreski is featured as the name-dropping designer whose first episode confession is that he has been secretly feeding his husband chicken disguised as turkey. It comes off cuter than it sounds. Goreski is the mouthpiece for most of the show’s self-aggrandizement and I thought he was more charming when he was on What Happens Live, and was more… real.
Todrick Hall is the cast member supposedly of great controversy, and takes his chance to explain and be humble around it. If he was selling, I bought it. I was also mystified – his supposed “scandals” are nowhere near Erika Jayne or Jen Shah levels, but with all the attacks, you would think they were.
Up and coming actor Curtis Hamilton is intriguing, as he is using his participation in the show to come out as gay publicly. We will see how the show handles that, and how his life plays out, but if things do not go well, it is the time in one’s life where one needs friends.
Dorión Renaud is also an intriguing cast member. He is the CEO/founder of Buttah Skin. As an accomplished black gay man fighting against others with more privilege, he could be absolutely fascinating. So far, he is not. He has an emotional armor and seems on guard with a tone of toxic masculinity. He does have a moment where he admits to being painfully socially awkward.
It is at this moment, that rather than showing some compassion, social media influencer Joey Zauzig throws him out of the party for being “negative.” Joey’s own story on the show needs some depth-infusion. He claims to have “a million followers” across various social media platforms while showing his Instagram page of 200-something thousand. For an “influencer”, that is not a lot.
The first episode features Joey’s engagement to his beautiful boyfriend. It is a story of how they fell in love looking at each other’s pictures and are now destined to be together for life. While that all could be true, the show did not take the audience along for the ride, so it all seems manufactured and artificial. There is no heartwarming emotional moment, at least, not for us.
Jaymes Vaughan, the final cast member, actually brings moments of romance tingles in scenes with his husband Jonathan Bennett. Their brief banter and impromptu kiss came off as authentic and real and charming. There is transparency that the producers actually wanted Jonathan for the show. He refused them, so they went with Jaymes. That disclosure was a bit embarrassing, and while getting more feelings for Jaymes because of it, it made you want to reject the show even more.
In the show Sex and the City, New York City felt like another character in the show. WeHo does not feel present in this show by contrast. Unlike other similarly structured reality shows, the show’s production itself DOES seem like another character presence and is discussed on camera regularly. At this point, it is unclear if that breakdown of reality TV protocol is refreshing or irritating.
Goreski laid claim to being the epicenter of the gay world. In an interview Zauzig predicted “some people are not going to like us and some people are going to love us.”
So far, the lovers have not shown up, and the only epicenter to be seen is one of, potentially unfair, unprecedented disdain.
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is a senior analyst at a D.C.-area think-tank, and is the author of ‘American Fascism: How the GOP is Subverting Democracy.’
To be trans in the U.S. is to know fear. It is a companion that travels with us constantly: from the moment we realize we are trans, to coming out, to transitioning, and now into our lives long past the point where we should have faded away into anonymity in days past.
We are in the midst of a second Lavender Scare, and in many ways this is far more dangerous: even Christine Jorgenson wasn’t barred from receiving hormones or being within 2,500 feet of children simply for being transgender.
I have been called a doomsayer who profits from prognosticating an inevitable end. This is not precisely true: there is hope, if precious little of it. We can all clearly see the situation deteriorating rapidly in red states, with (at best) spotty resistance from the Democratic Party as a whole. We can see the effects of this deterioration as transgender people not only ask how to flee, but actively do so now. But most in a poverty-stricken community, however, lack the money or resources to flee.
There’s an eerie similarity to 1933, when people sold everything they owned, with no job waiting for them, just to get away from what they saw happening and coming. Others look at what it will take to get to another country, even as those countries are not yet ready to grant trans people asylum or refugee status. Most can only tell you that it’s getting bad, and that they’re afraid of what their government is preparing to do to them, even if they don’t know exactly what that will be. However, with nowhere to go, and no country particularly wanting transgender people, I find myself dreading another S.S. St. Louis moment in history.
There’s an authoritarian party in permanent power in half of the U.S. They’re making it clear that intend to seize permanent federal control and bring their vision of a shiny, godly America to the rest of the country by any means necessary. They’re ready to destroy the Union and our democracy to save it from “wokeness.” And they have sold their base on the idea that the No. 1 threat that the country must be saved from is transgender people.
State level anti-transgender bills are becoming both more numerous and draconian year after year. The Overton Window of anti-trans legislation keeps shifting further and further to the right. For example, first they wanted to ban transition-related health care for everyone under the age of 18. Then the bills started putting the age at 21. Then, this year, we saw Oklahoma propose banning it for anyone under 26. Texas followed by passing a resolution condemning it for people of all ages.
Now Oklahoma has proposed a law that would ban providers who take state or federal money of money of any sort (e.g. Medicare or Medicaid) from providing transition-related care to anyone of any age. This means thousands of people who transitioned years ago will no longer be able to refill their prescriptions. Access to medical care will become a right that exists in theory but not in practice, like suffrage
in the Jim Crow South.
It’s not just medical care. It’s sports, bathrooms, birth certificates, driver’s licenses, bans on “drag”, required misgendering, and forced outing. The creativity of this performative cruelty seems endless. Of these though, the “drag” bans are the most devastating. These laws are deliberately written as to be so vague and overly broad that a symphony orchestra with a transgender 2nd clarinet, or a family with a trans child doing a sing-along in the car would be considered obscene. In West Virginia, SB252 and 278 single out transgender people (and not just drag performers) to declare that their mere presence in public is obscene.
Not only are the scope of laws increasing; the sheer number is growing exponentially. In 2018, there were 19 anti-trans bills proposed in state legislatures. By 2020 it was 60. Last year it was 155. Now, in 2023, we surpassed the 2022 total by the middle of January and are well on our way to more than 200. Even so, these numbers don’t tell the full tale.
anti-trans laws. None of these seems likely.
Additionally, there remains the fear that even states with sanctuary laws, like California, will not remain safe forever. Republicans in Congress have made it clear that should they take power in 2024, they intend to pass nationwide laws similar to those at the state level. The odds of the GOP taking full control are frighteningly high: the Senate map in 2024 for Democrats is very bad, Biden’s net approval is where Trump’s was in 2020, and gerrymandering makes taking back the House difficult.
Masha Gessen’s rules for surviving autocracy state that “your institutions will not save you.” This is true for trans people now in several ways: neither courts, the Democratic Party, nor the media seem prepared to stand up for us as the situation goes from hostile to non-survivable. There’s the open question of whether the courts will uphold sanctuary laws. When Texas demands the arrest and extradition of trans people (or parents of trans youth) who have fled to a sanctuary state, it seems unlikely that the current Supreme Court will do anything but what their Christian nationalist masters tell them to. It’s also unknown whether a state like California would defy the courts and break the union over trans people or women seeking an abortion.
Then there’s the news media, the fifth estate that is supposed to be the light of truth shining on darkness. Instead, half of the media ecosystem is leading the charge to brand transgender people as an existential threat to women, children, and society. The other half, like Reuters, the New York Times, and The Atlantic, produce poorly thought out “both-sideism” and concern troll pieces that amplify and reinforce the narratives of the side that believes the ideal number of transgender people in the U.S. is zero.
In years past, only perhaps 10% of these bills would pass, usually after opposition and debate. Now, we’re seeing bills introduced, sent to committee, debated, and sent to the floor in 24 hours. There is simply so much happening so fast that trans people cannot put together opposition in time to speak against these bills, whereas conservative legislators coordinating with religious legal groups always have “experts” lined up and ready, since they know exactly when and where the bills will be heard ahead of time. The result is that in a year where a record number of anti-transgender bills are introduced, a record percentage, and a record total, will be passed.
Trans people are not doomed, but we’re clearly on an accelerating trajectory to the end of the community in at least half of the U.S. Reversing these trends, and preventing a nationwide destruction of the community, requires numerous highly improbable things to happen. This includes Republicans moving on from the moral panic about trans people, deciding that they’ve gone far enough already with their oppression at the state level, or the courts overturning
Trans people have precious few people that they know will go to the mattresses for them. We’re already seeing who on the left and center is stepping aside, or even joining in, to let self-proclaimed Christian fascists like Matt Walsh have their way. Not only can it happen here, but it is happening now, at this very instant, to the sound of deafening silence from the people who swore without irony “never again.”
The American public, for their part, either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. It’s just happening to “those people.” Most trans people cannot enunciate all the factors that have them afraid, and why they form an interlocking system of failures that make recovery from the trajectory we’re on improbable. They just know that things are getting worse, and they don’t see how it will get better. Like animals before an earthquake, they know something is very wrong, even if they can’t explain why, or get anyone to listen.
All they know is that they cannot get out, the unstoppable power of the government is coming, and no one is coming to the rescue. For those who cannot flee, and cannot survive the laws about to be passed, the end comes soon. Drums, drums in the deep.
Billy Porter — the Tony, Emmy and Grammy winner — needs no introduction, especially to the many fans of his character Pray Tell on Ryan Murphy’s hit TV series “Pose.”
Arriving in theaters on Feb. 10, Porter will star as a Super Bowl half-time show choreographer, opposite Oscar winners Sally Field, Rita Moreno, Jane Fonda, and Tony winner Lily Tomlin, in the feel-good comedy “80 For Brady,” a comic homage to popular quarterback Tom Brady.
Porter rocketed to superstardom when he originated the role of Lola in the Tony-winning Broadway musical “Kinky Boots” just over 10 years ago. But show business was always in his blood.
“I started singing in church at a very young age,” he says. “By fifth grade the bullying had stopped and in middle school I got involved with theater. I dreamed about being on Broadway and becoming the male Whitney Houston.”
Porter knew he was onto something when he won $100,000 on Star Search, in 1992 but he never expected success would come easy.
“I took all of the necessary steps to prepare myself for a career in show business,” he says. “There have been moments of frustration, but no one is entitled to anything.
“I’ve practiced acting every day for decades. I went to Carnegie Mellon. I went to graduate school at UCLA. To this day, I still take singing lessons. I have the patience of Job. My best advice for anyone who wants to become a professional is to practice – even when no one is looking.”
How did Porter prepare himself for a trajectory in acting and a career in fashion? “I decided at a very young age to dress for the job I wanted, not the job I have,” he explains.
The “Oscar” dress, which made Porter a viral sensation,
wasn’t something that “just happened.” In 2013, while Porter was in Chicago doing previews of “Kinky Boots,” he met with fans at the stage door after every performance. “It was right at the time when social media was taking off, especially Instagram photos, and I was dressing geek chic.
“When I looked at the news the day after the first performance I saw pictures of myself and I looked like a bag lady. From that moment on, I dressed up every day. After every show, before I went out the stage door to go home, I dressed up.” From then on, any candid photos that people did take of Porter were not only flattering but trend setting. “For three years, while I was on Broadway with ‘Kinky Boots,’ I dressed up after every performance, just to go out to the car to go home.”
In 2019, just a year before the pandemic hit, Porter started to gain attention for some of the most fabulous outfits that have ever adorned any human. At the Grammy Awards, he wore an embroidered suit and pink cape. That same year, at the Academy Awards he wore the famous black fitted tuxedo and velvet gown created by Christian Siriano, accompanied by six-inch Rick Owens boots.
The gender-fluid outfits worn by Porter that are now famous the world over were not intended to be labeled. “All of the outfits I have worn aligned with the roles I was playing. The term ‘non-binary’ never occurred to me.”
And now Billy Porter has become an inspiration for celebrities like Harry Styles, who posed on the cover of Vogue last year in a Gucci dress. “You said that, not me,” Porter insists I disclose.
“I have a calling,” he admits. “It is funneled through artistry.
The race for Oscar — Hollywood’s favorite sport — officially began Tuesday morning, when past winner Riz Ahmed and “M3gan” actress Allison Williams appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to announce the list of nominees for the 95th Academy Awards. As always, that list was mostly comprised of established favorites, boosted by the momentum gained from wins and nominations for other film awards, with a few inevitable snubs and surprises thrown into the mix just to keep things interesting.
From a movie-lover’s perspective, the Academy’s final ballot reflects a year that has yielded a better-than-average crop of films, even as post-pandemic box office numbers skewed away from the kind of “prestige” movies that usually win Oscars. With plenty of deserving front-runners among the nominees, cinema buffs will have plenty of worthy choices to root for when the Academy Awards presentation airs on March 12. Looking at the nominations through a queer eye, on the other hand, there’s not much to get excited about. But let’s focus on the good news first.
Among the movies nominated for Best Picture, several include LGBTQ characters and storylines. In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the popular indie sci-fi comedy that received the most nods (11) of any movie in the pack, the fate of the multiverse hinges on – among other things – a woman’s ability to acknowledge and affirm her daughter’s queer sexuality; the controversial but acclaimed “Tár” is built around Cate Blanchett’s consummate performance as an acclaimed lesbian symphony director accused of sexual misconduct, and features numerous queer characters among the supporting cast; “Women Talking,” Sarah Polley’s powerful drama about victims of sexual assault in a Mennonite colony, includes a transmasculine character (portrayed by nonbinary actor August Winter) in a small but crucial role. In addition, “Elvis” was helmed by queer director Baz Luhrmann, who snagged a nomination as one of the film’s producers; and “The Fabelmans” was co-written by out gay screenwriter Tony Kushner, who likewise gained a nod as producer as well as sharing a nomination for Best Original Screenplay with Steven Spielberg.
As for the acting categories, a handful of performers earned nominations for playing LGBTQ-identifying characters. Blanchett, in “Tár,” is seen as a shoo-in for Best Actress; similarly, first-time nominee Brendan Fraser, whose “comeback” performance as an obese gay man consumed by grief and regret after the death of his partner in “The Whale” gained almost universal praise despite controversies surrounding the movie itself, is a strong contender among a slate of other first-timers in the Best Actor race. Stephanie Hsu, who portrays the above-mentioned lesbian daughter in “Everything,” also became a first-time Oscar nominee, for Best Supporting Actress; lastly, though it might be a bit of a cheat, it’s worth mentioning that “Everything” also depicts – quite memorably – versions of the characters played by Best Actress nominee Michelle Yeoh and Best Supporting Actress nominee Jamie Lee Curtis as [SPOILER ALERT] a samesex couple in an alternate universe.
Other notably queer-inclusive films in the overall Oscar lineup include: “Close,” directed by filmmaker Lukas Dhont, a Belgian coming-of age drama nominated for Best International Feature; “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” the comedy
By JOHN PAUL KINGcrime caper sequel that confirms the queerness of detective Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig), earned writer-director Rian Johnson a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay; “Babylon,” Damien Chazelle’s ambitious ensemble drama about 1920s Hollywood, which was snubbed in the “major” categories but earned nominations for Justin Hurwitz’s original score and its costume and production designs; and incredibly enough, “Top Gun: Maverick,” which scored multiple nominations including Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay, makes the inclusion list through the involvement of queer ally Lady Gaga, who is co-nominated (with BloodPop) for writing Best Original Song contender “Hold My Hand.”
the Best Picture nod for “Women Talking,” failed to make the cut – though she did pick up a writing nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Recognition for people of color also took a step backward. This is particularly notable in the acting categories, where only two Black performers – Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) and Brian Tyree Henry (“Causeway”), for Best Supporting Actress and Actor, respectively – received nominations. Among the year’s potential nominees were snubbed powerhouses like Viola Davis (“The Woman King”), Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”), Gabrielle Union (“The Inspection”), as well as the aforementioned Pope and Monaé, any of whom might have helped to even the balance.
Don’t get us wrong; there are plenty of reasons to be happy with this year’s Oscar contest, not the least of which is the element of surprise – though there are definite favorites, there are no clear winners in most of the categories. Returning to our focus on the positive, there’s a strong showing of Asian-American nominees in the mix, thanks to “Everything,” and it’s worth adding that, with queer-inclusive films scoring high in total nominations, some of them are sure to win – and that will give us ample reason to celebrate.
While the inclusiveness in some cases could be perhaps described as marginal, at best, and none of the nominated titles are predominantly queer focused, it’s still heartening to see a crop of widely varied films in which an LGBTQ presence is not only visible, but normalized, almost routine. That’s a far cry from 2006, when the high-profile nominations and wins for “Brokeback Mountain” provoked outrage and outcry among industry old-timers. Progress has clearly been made.
Unfortunately, while the Academy has clearly become more comfortable with movies that allow queer people to exist on the screen at all, it’s still prone to some of its old habits – and this year’s nominations underscore the importance of keeping up pressure on the Hollywood establishment to prevent backsliding. In recent years, LGBTQ-themed films and out queer performers have increasingly been part of the party on Oscar night, with movies like “Moonlight,” “Call Me By Your Name,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Rocket Man” and more emerging as major contenders and, in some cases, even taking home the prize; but this year, the roster is frustratingly straight.
This is most telling in the acting categories, where – true to what has become a long-standing Oscar tradition, at this point – none of the nominees, including those playing LGBTQ characters, identify as queer. There’s no argument against the worthiness of Blanchett, Fraser, or Hsu, each of whom does superb work and deserves recognition for it; what is more pertinent is the omission of actual LGBTQ people from the roster, like Janelle Monáe of “Glass Onion” or Jeremy Pope of “The Inspection,” whose much-lauded 2022 performances put them high on the short list for Academy recognition.
The LGBTQ community is not the only one with reason to be disappointed. After two consecutive years of being won by women, the Best Director category is once again made up entirely of heterosexual men; female filmmaker Polley, despite
It won’t keep us, however, from expecting Oscar to do better next year. Until then, don’t be surprised if this stumble on the road to real LGBTQ equality in the movies spawns a new hashtag: #OscarsSoStraight.
The complete list of Oscar nominations is below:
Best picture
- “All Quiet on the Western Front”
- “Avatar: The Way of Water”
- “The Banshees of Inisherin”
- “Elvis”
- “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
- “The Fabelmans”
- “Tár”
- “Top Gun: Maverick”
- “Triangle of Sadness”
- “Women Talking”
Best director
- Martin McDonagh, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
- Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
- Steven Spielberg, “The Fabelmans”
- Todd Field, “Tár”
- Ruben Östlund, “Triangle of Sadness”
Best actor
- Austin Butler, “Elvis”
- Colin Farrell, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
- Brendan Fraser, “The Whale”
- Paul Mescal, “Aftersun”
- Bill Nighy, “Living”
CONTINUES ON PAGE 20
By TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER
Your mother lingers way too long in the children’s department. She sighs over tiny suits and little sneakers, running her fingers along soft blankets, hugging plush animals. You know what she wants but you’re not ready; she might be sure but you’re not. Maybe baby for you or, with the new book “So When are You Having Kids?” by Jordan Davidson, maybe not.
It’s the thorniest of decisions, “one of the biggest you’ll ever make.” It’s personal, but even strangers want to know; the questions start in your 20s and end when you’ve acquiesced or aged, although having kids is not a given or a thing-by-committee. So how do you quiet the busybodies and make the right decision for yourself?
First, says Davidson, ask yourself if you even want children, and after you’ve looked inward, “it’s worth looking outward” at expectations, culture, and things that “shape our understanding of parenthood.” Ask around, to see why others had children but don’t be surprised if you get cliches. Throw out the idea that children fulfill you or that they’ll take care of you when you’re old. Know that genetics, religion, and your parents’ parenting styles will affect you; and that if you’re queer or Black, there’ll be other factors involved in having and raising a child.
Should you decide to the positive, you may still have reservations. Don’t give in to the romance of having kids; it’s hard work, and expensive in both money and time. Remember that perceptions of good parenting have “shifted over time” and that having a childhood
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 18
Best actress
- Cate Blanchett, “Tár”
- Ana de Armas, “Blonde”
- Andrea Riseborough, “To Leslie”
- Michelle Williams, “The Fabelmans”
- Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best supporting actor
- Brendan Gleeson, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
- Brian Tyree Henry, “Causeway”
- Judd Hirsch, “The Fabelmans”
- Barry Keoghan, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
- Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best supporting actress
- Angela Bassett, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
- Hong Chau, “The Whale”
- Kerry Condon, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
- Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
- Stephanie Hsu, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
exactly like yours probably won’t be an option for your kids. If you have a partner, communicate your thoughts, hopes, and divisions of household labor and childcare.
Finally, decide how you’re going to become a parent. Will you give birth, choose IVF, adopt, foster, or kick the decision down the road? Says Davidson, the mere ability to ask these questions and decide “is in many ways a privilege.”
Chances are that if you hear a screaming baby, you have one of two reactions: you cringe and look for an exit, or you notice and shrug. Either way, “So When are You Having Kids?” is a book for you. There are many, many parenting books on miles of shelves, and a number of books on being childless, but author Jordan Davidson pulls the two subjects together here with thoughtfulness, candor, inclusiveness, and a refreshing lack of judgment. This is a book that doesn’t promise answers, though: it’s meant to give readers –whether they want kids, don’t, or are ambivalent – an in-one-place, balanced look at myths, truths, pros, cons, and rarely-considered points for an informed decision. It also, perhaps most importantly, offers comforting reminders that there is no right or wrong, no matter what Mom says.
“So When are You Having Kids?” is like having a big sister to bounce ideas with, or a break-out session in your living room. It’s like asking Baby Maybe questions you didn’t know you had. It’s help when you need it in that department.
- “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”
- “The Sea Beast”
Best original screenplay
- “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Martin McDonagh
- “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
- “The Fabelmans,” Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg
- “Tár,” Todd Field
- “Triangle of Sadness,” Ruben Östlund
Best adapted screenplay
- “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell
- “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” Rian Johnson
- “Living,” Kazuo Ishiguro
- “Top Gun: Maverick,” Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks
- “Women Talking,” Sarah Polley
Best cinematography
- “All Quiet on the Western Front”
- “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”
- “Elvis”
- “Empire of Light”
- “Tár”
Best international feature film
- “All Quiet on the Western Front” (Germany)
- “Argentina, 1985” (Argentina)
- “Close” (Belgium)
- “EO” (Poland)
- “The Quiet Girl” (Ireland)
Best documentary feature film
- “All That Breathes”
- “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”
- “Fire of Love”
- “A House Made of Splinters”
- “Navalny”
Best animated feature film
- “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”
- “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”
- “Turning Red”
Best live action short film
- “An Irish Goodbye”
- “Ivalu”
- “Le Pupille”
- “Night Ride”
- “The Red Suitcase”
Best documentary short film
- “The Elephant Whisperers”
- “Haulout”
- “How Do You Measure a Year?”
- “The Martha Mitchell Effect”
- “Stranger at the Gate”
Best animated short film
- “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”
- “The Flying Sailor”
- “Ice Merchants”
- “My Year of Dicks”
- “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It”
Best original score
- “All Quiet on the Western Front”
c.2022, Sounds True, Macmillan $28.99 | 356 pages
- “Babylon”
- “The Banshees of Inisherin”
- “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
- “The Fabelmans”
Best original song
- “Applause” from “Tell It like a Woman”
- “Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick”
- “Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
- “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR”
- “This Is A Life” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best film editing
- “The Banshees of Inisherin”
- “Elvis”
- “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
- “Tár”
- “Top Gun: Maverick”
Best production design
- “All Quiet on the Western Front”
- “Avatar: The Way of Water”
- “Babylon”
- “Elvis”
- “The Fabelmans”
Best costume design
- “Babylon”
- “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
- “Elvis”
- “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
- “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”
Best makeup and hairstyling
- “All Quiet on the Western Front”
- “The Batman”
- “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
- “Elvis”
- “The Whale”
Best sound
- “All Quiet on the Western Front”
- “Avatar: The Way of Water”
- “The Batman”
- “Elvis”
- “Top Gun: Maverick”
Best visual effects
- “All Quiet on the Western Front”
- “Avatar: The Way of Water”
- “The Batman”
- “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
- “Top Gun: Maverick”
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