IT’S FINE Her right hand alternates between a half-full can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a lined notebook that contains her newest stand-up material. Her left hand clutches the microphone in front of her as her soft voice delivers a joke that projects to the audience’s funny bones. Her bright purple bobbed hair in contrast with her white lace-collared black ensemble adds a bit of spunk to her reserved stage fright. Her peers have described her as a “walking Star Wars fan fiction” in roasts because of the uniqueness of her name.
How one transgender woman breaks down barriers in comedy with a blatant look at life mixed with a taste of wit. WORDS / JULIA M. TRUPP ILLUSTRATION / JOSHUA BRADLEY
how they feel, so oftentimes depression and anxiety can build along with a lack of proper identity. Throughout her childhood, Hodo had vague thoughts about her sexuality and repressed them. Coming from a lesser accepting town, she believed she had to keep the thoughts she was having to herself, a commonality within the transgender community.
When she saw her first doctor in Kansas City about the initial treatment process, they wanted to schedule more appointments to make sure Hodo was ready to begin the transition.
“At a certain point, being actively, kno knowingly closeted (as a transgender ran woman) was a toll,” l,” Ho Hodo said. “You’re making public ublic appearances, meanwhile, it was involving my perception of myself -- how I present myself and how I am. There’s that anxiety of going to math class, and I don’t want anyone to see me.”
Many who experience gender dysphoria do not have language to describe exactly
After the epiphany of her gender identity and cutting necessary ties with homophobic and transphobic family with the help of her parents, she began hormone treatment immediately, starting just before her 21st birthday. Her parents supported her emotionally but not financially—this was something she needed to do on her own, and luckily her insurance came in handy; the hormones she needed without insurance could have been thousands of dollars out of pocket.
But before she created a reputation for herself as a well-known comedian and roller derby queen in Northwest Arkansas, 26-year-old Tulsa-native Kaia Hodo had another err public identity to figure ure out: her gender.
Gender dysphoria, or transgender identity, is a conflict between a person’s biological or assigned sex and the sex and/or gender they identify with. If a transgender person chooses to undergo sexual reassignment surgery, they are can be recognized as transsexual and transgender, but because ‘transsexual’ is an outdated term, many transgender people only use transgender as an identifying term, according to GLAAD.
people can be,” Hodo said, recalling the moment her repressed thoughts started resurfacing.
Once she moved out of Tulsa and began attending the University of Arkansas in 2011—“I am a dropout, it’s fine!” she’ll tell you before nervously sipping her coffee— she met different people who knew their true selves, whether that was cisgender or nonconforming. Hodo had only discussed her sexuality and dysphoria on popular microblogging site Tumblr, where she came across others in the trans community. Here were physical people she could somewhat relate to on a face-to-face level. “This isn’t a perverted thing, it’s a way
While every precaution is necessary to make sure that the dysphoria is not actually a temporary disorder—the World Health Organization removed gender dysphoia from the mental health diagnosis list in 2019—this action could be labeled as a form of gatekeeping, which is any requirement that controls access to medical resources for transgender people, and it can also exclude transgender people by creating standards to “prove their gender” in gendered spaces, like public bathrooms. “There’s that potential with trans-medical care, a second guess,” Hodo said. “Like, ‘Oh, you have purple hair, trans people don’t want to stick out so you must not be.’” Hodo saw a doctor in Fayetteville who made a much more comfortable experience, and then referred her to an endocrinologist, a
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