Mitch Kellaway

We__e at this really unique time, I think, in trans representation in popular culture where homelessness, depression, mental health issues, instability-in-general are still so very real and need to be talked about, but we__e aware that they__e dominated __rans_ stories for years and years. And we__e now finally at a place where we__e seeing some really positive representations of trans folks in pop culture, and there__ this new pressure -- at least, I feel it, within trans and trans-ally communities -- to only focus on the positive. Because we__e trying, in some sense, to overcompensate for the years and years of too much negativity. As a writer, you might feel a pressure to push the negative stuff away. But there are consequences for that too. Anyone who__ working with trans characters right now is going to have to reconcile that tension.

That night I looked Stephanie [Burt] up online and started reading more about her work...I kept encountering a striking factoid...: she__ often cited as the most influential poetry critic of her generation. And she__ openly trans. This is not the world I was taught I would grow into when I was a young trans child -- the one where transgender people are heard, are brilliant, are influential, are even the best. At anything. Being trans, I__ learned subliminally, was supposed to keep you from being that -- even if you loved your trans self, and even if some other trans people and a few allies did too, the world at large would keep your potential tamped down." - from "Surface Difficulty: An Adventure in Reading Trans Poetry," Original Plumbing Magazine 2014