By Lou Weaver
Equality Texas would like to thanks Deborah Duncan and Great Day Houston for dedicating a whole show this week to transgender topics and issues.
Dr Colt Keo-Meier set the stage educating the audience about gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation. It is important to understand these differences and how they should not be conflated. In short my gender identity is who I am, my gender expression is how I share myself with the a world and my sexual orientation is who I want to share my world with on a romantic or sexual level.
Hearing two moms share their journey stories help highlight the struggles a family can face and how much acceptance can affect trans folks, especially our youth.
Jessica Zyrie and Michael Cade offered insight into their lives as transgender adults navigating society. Michael spoke of waiting until his parent’s passing before transitioning, while Jessica told a story about her dad’s final acceptance being the difference of life or death for her.
As a black transgender woman Jessica highlighted the role race can play for transgender folks, in acceptance and survival. So far this year we have lost 9 trans people that we know of to anti-bias crime, all trans women and all but one of them were black.
You can watch the entire segment here: http://www.khou.com/entertainment/television/programs/great-day-houston/defining-transgender-042417/433683108