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https://www.teenvogue.com/story/demi-lovato-opens-up-coming-out-journey

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After officially coming out as non-binary, Demi Lovato is opening up further about their journey.

In an interview on Jane Fonda's Fire Drill Fridays livestream on Friday, May 28, Demi talked about the process of sharing their truth with the world, explaining that they grew tired of living their life for other people, at the center of which is a patriarchal society. "When I realized that, I thought, 'What are the ways that the patriarchy has been holding me back?'" Demi mused. "And for me, it was putting me in a box telling [me] that 'You are a female, this is what you're supposed to like, this is what you're supposed to do, don't dream bigger and don't speak louder.' That didn't vibe for me because I'm too outspoken for that."

Demi first opened up about being non-binary in a podcast episode earlier this month, explaining that their pronouns are they/them. "I feel that this best represents the fluidity I feel in my gender expression and allows me to feel most authentic and true to the person I both know I am, and am still discovering," they said at the time.

During that podcast, Demi echoed some of the themes and comments they addressed with Fonda, expressing that they were tired of hiding who they truly are in order to make others comfortable. "I was suppressing who I really am in order to please stylists or team members or this or that, or even fans that wanted me to be the sexy, feminine pop star in the ... leotard and look a certain way, you know?" Demi said in conversation with Alok Vaid-Menon, a non-binary artist and author. To Demi, gender is "just another boundary"-and they're ready to inspire others to break boundaries, too. "I'm doing this for those out there that haven't been able to share who they truly are with their loved ones," Demi wrote on Twitter earlier this month. "Please keep living in your truths & know I am sending so much love your way."

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Demi Lovato Says They Came Out After Realizing the Patriarchy Was Holding Them Back

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After officially coming out as non-binary, Demi Lovato is opening up further about their journey. In an interview on Jane Fonda's Fire Drill Fridays livestream on Friday, May 28, Demi talked about the process of sharing their truth with the world, explaining that they grew tired of living their life for other people, at the center of which is a patriarchal society.

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Hunter is an transgender actress and model who speaks out about LGBTQ2 + rights.

https://www.wmagazine.com/story/hunter-schafer-model-bathroom-bill

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In early 2016, Chase Strangio, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, sent a Facebook message to Hunter Schafer, then a 17-year-old student at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts' high school program. Would she be interested, Strangio wondered, in adding her name as a plaintiff in the ACLU's lawsuit against the State of North Carolina over House Bill Two?

House Bill Two, or the "bathroom bill," as it was known, was a measure that prohibited U.S. cities from expanding on existing antidiscrimination laws to include provisions for transgender and LGBTQ individuals. State laws included explicit protections for individuals based on race, religion, age, disability, nationality, and gender-but only biological gender, and they made no mention of sexual orientation. Officially known as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, the "bathroom bill"-passed in direct response to one such antidiscrimination law in Charlotte-provoked an immediate, enormous backlash, of which the ACLU's court action was just one aspect, both inside and outside the state.

Schafer had already been vocal about her identity as a transgender woman on social media and through her art.

"It was no secret," she recalled on a recent afternoon in New York. She joined the lawsuit, becoming its youngest plaintiff; in July 2016, she published an essay about the process in Teen Vogue; and just last summer, she expanded on it in i-D, outlining how HB2 was, in some ways, a proxy battle over discrimination against transgender individuals in all spaces, public and private: "We are on the forefront of a revolution in which identity and expression will take priority over the labels assigned to us at birth," she wrote. "In which self-identification will take priority over perception. In which gender will fall away entirely."

Schafer, now 19, admitted she didn't quite grasp the extent to which she would be involved with the lawsuit. She embarked on months of depositions and hours of meetings with lawyers, recounting her early life and experience as testimony against the bill. But she assured me, without hesitation, that she would do it again.

"Hell, yeah," she said. "Hell, yeah."

"I knew I should take the opportunity, especially coming from a background of privilege," she added. Her family had been supportive of her transition, and she had been able to begin the process before developing, for example, an Adam's apple. In her essay for i-D, she writes, "while some trans people might be able to avoid the consequences of breaking the law-because they pass as a cisgender man or woman-much of the community risks being profiled, facing harassment and, potentially, violence."

"The more beyond the binary you are, the less safe you are, is the reality," she told me.

Over the past year, Schafer's involvement with the case has slowed. Last March, the bill was repealed, clearing the way for a second, even more draconian measure that eliminated the bathroom clause while preserving the terms that prevent antidiscrimination measures enacted on the local level. The ACLU's case continues its slow march through the courts, but without the bathroom cause around which to cohere, public attention has flagged. Yet the stakes remain as high as ever. "It's not just the lawmakers who are making the decisions," she said. "It's a social structure that's being upheld by them."

At the same time, though, Schafer's own career has begun to gain momentum. After graduating last year, she moved to New York City to pursue modeling full-time; later in the year, she also accepted an internship with the up-and-coming American designer Vaquera, for whom, ahead of the Spring 2018 season, she copied patterns and sewed garments (in addition to the usual coffee-fetching, of course). That season, she walked Shayne Oliver's Helmut Lang debut-"exquisite, highly artistic, and appropriately gender-f-ed, leaving me feeling more at home than I have felt at any other fashion function," she wrote on Instagram that day-and, this past season, she added Miu Miu, Mansur Gavriel, and Marc Jacobs to those credits. And here she was, having recently wrapped up a W photo shoot, modeling as the quintessential Capricorn. Her hair remained in a precariously teased coif, her eyes rimmed with black, a sharp contrast to the Hood by Air pullover she quickly changed into.

Since joining the ACLU lawsuit, Schafer has wrestled with the term "activist." She argued that, while "there's an argument about whether existing [as a trans person] is enough to call yourself an activist," her own activism is maybe not enough to make her comfortable with calling herself an activist.

"With the profession that I'm working in, being a model, it has not felt hard to be trans, recently," she said. Her tone grew very measured here: "I'm being tokenized, in a way, so it's this weird sort of in-between platform, where it's a privilege, but it's also not doing my community the best," she went on. "I'm not representing my community in its entirety.... But, at the same time, I am trying to lift my trans siblings up, and my gender-nonconforming siblings and those of color, and trying to use this platform for them."

In Fall 2017, Marc Jacobs, for example, drew attention when he cast three transgender models to walk his '90s-hip-hop-themed show; in the following weeks, several of those models noted that they felt it was a bigger deal that casting transgender individuals on a high-fashion runway was no longer a big deal. I asked Schafer if she agreed with that. "I mean," she began, "no. We still have so much work to do." After all, she noted, the models who walked Fall 2018 were largely tall, thin, and able-bodied; "next season, I want to see trans models that are dark-skinned and fat and disabled and transmasculine, transfeminine," she said.

For her part, next season Schafer is bound for London, where she will begin as a freshman at Central Saint Martins, the famous English design school that produced such talent as Alexander McQueen and, more recently, Matty Bovan, for whom Schafer walked this season. When Schafer was in elementary school, she would draw superheroes, inventing characters and designing their costumes and backstories. Though illustration was her first interest-she once fancied herself a future comic book artist, and she still carries a sketchbook around-she turned to fashion in high school, enamored of its own storytelling capabilities. And, months out from matriculating at CSM, she has already set a high bar for her work: "It's got the..." she began, hesitating. "The grit of Hood by Air, the narratives of Vaquera, and the craftsmanship of Thom Browne."

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Rising Model Hunter Schafer Is Fighting for the Future of Trans Individuals On and Off the Runway

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In early 2016, Chase Strangio, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, sent a Facebook message to Hunter Schafer, then a 17-year-old student at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts' high school program.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/02/lady-gaga-born-this-way/618000/

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Transgender student says former college forced her to sign contract to not engage in "LGBT" activities.

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Summer Luk, a musician and singer who empowers others by telling her story as a trans woman

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Summer Luk, a musician and singer who empowers others by telling her story as a trans woman

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I'm a Musician Who's Trans, Not a Trans Musician

“I Am A Girl, Always Have Been, Always Will Be”

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Transgender singer reveals how she found the courage to come out after she left the strict Christian college that made her sign a CONTRACT promising not to 'engage in LGBTI behavior'

Singer and student Summer Luk attended Biola University, a private Christian school, for two years

The transgender woman said she also had to sign a 'contract' promising not to 'drink, party or have sex'

The singer now goes to NYU where she said she was able to introduce herself to her professors as Summer without problems

Summer, who is originally from Hong Kong and lives in New York, has written a song about her identity called I am A Girl

LGBTI stands for lebsian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex

A transgender student and singer has told how she was forced to sign a contract by her former college promising not to 'engage in LGBTI behavior'.

Summer Luk, 22, who comes from a religious and conservative family from Hong Kong and lives in New York, said the Christian school also made students vow not to drink, party or have sex.

The musician, who went to the school when she first came to the US, told Refinery 29 that biblical studies was 'compulsory' and she had to go to church around 36 times per semester.

After two years, Summer, who identifies as a transgender woman, left the college and moved to NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study where she is now a senior and studying media, communications, music and social justice.

She said NYU was the first time she could email her professors as Summer and use female pronouns and said 'they didn't have a problem with it.'

Summer said: 'My first college experience here in the US was at a Christian school, where biblical studies was a compulsory minor and I had to go to church about 36 times per semester.

'We even had to sign a contract that says that we weren't allowed to party, drink, have sex, or engage in LGBTI [which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex - a person born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male] behavior.'

Writing about the moment she left Biola University in Los Angeles and moved to New York, she said she felt 'waves of liberation'.

'When I first stepped into the hallways at New York University, it felt like a dream,' she wrote on Huffington Post earlier this year.

'I had a hard time believing that I was finally able to introduce myself as Summer to everyone I knew.

'I was so quickly accepted everywhere I went that for a moment I forgot that it was just months ago when I had to hide myself and interact with people who were trans-phobic.'

The university confirmed that every student are required to agree wen they apply to sign a 'statement of faith' and a 'community standards' agreement.

Spokeswoman Jenna Loumagne told Daily Mail Online: 'Every student agrees not to have pre-marital sex, to not drink alcohol while enrolled as a student and to not engage in same sex behavior.'

Summer, who secretly started dating gay boys when she was 14 and first wore high-heeled shoes in public when she was 16, said in Hong Kong, transgender is 'definitely not accepted'.

'NYU was the first place where I was able to email my professors and reintroduce myself as Summer and go by female pronouns. They didn't have a problem with it,' she told Refinery 29.

Her family were not positive about her gender initially because she said on film and television transgender women are 'sex workers, are mentally unstable, or are victims of violence.'

But recently she said her mother called her to tell her about Chinese transgender television presenter Jin Xing.

She said: 'My mom called me one day [and asked], 'Summer, do you know of Jin? She would be a good role model for you.

'I never knew trans women could have healthy, fulfilling lives doing what they love.' It never occurred to her because it was never shown.'

Recently Summer released her debut single, I Am A Girl, which she wrote, produced and performed and talks about identity and gender. The video for the song features Summer and more than 20 other people who are transgender.

She said the video was a 'big milestone' and the bathroom scene, where she writes 'it never was a dream, it's my truth, it's the truth' on a mirror was particularly emotional for her to film because she was 'reclaiming my narrative and identity'.

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Transgender student says former college forced her to sign contract

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Singer and student Summer Luk attended Biola University, a private Christian school, for two years The transgender woman said she also had to sign a 'contract' promising not to 'drink, party or have sex' The singer now goes to NYU where she said she was able to introduce herself to

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https://www.storybench.org/how-kate-sosin-told-the-story-of-transgender-individuals-in-california-prisons/

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Cecilia is a transgender woman, immigrant from Hong Kong, and civil rights leader and activist for HIV/AIDS awareness, LGBT equality, and social justice. 

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Cecilia Chung, Civil Rights Leader & Activist

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Cecilia Chung, Civil Rights Leader & Activist

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http://www.ceciliachung.com/bio,

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/cecilia-chung/,

https://abc7news.com/cecilia-chung-transgender-law-center-positively-trans-our-ame

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Elliot Page - Famous Canadian Transgender Actor

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Elliot Page - Famous Canadian Transgender Actor

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https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/actor-elliot-page-wants-advocate-other-transgender-people-n1261174