The ‘pretty privilege’ can give you access to spaces, just like your able body gives you access. But it makes impossible beauty standards for many ot… - Janet Mock

The ball culture is a space started in uptown Manhattan, in Harlem. It was created by a group of black trans women and drag queens who were tired of being pushed out of white drag spaces, where they kept on being upstaged and not given titles. The titles were favored to white queens, white queens who embodied Western culture's idea of beauty and femininity more than the black and brown queens did. So Crystal LaBeija created the scene, and it has become this kind of community space — one where a lot of orphaned people, homeless folk, trans and queer people gather together in houses…

My grandmother gets who I am, so when you ask me about people who don’t understand, or people who are on their bully pulpits saying you shouldn’t accept people, I’m like: “What’s happened to you that, of all the things you can talk about, of all the injustices in the world, the one thing you want to concentrate on is trans people living their truth? How is that harming you and your identity? How I identify has nothing to do with you, and how you identify has nothing to do with me. Right? So live your life and let me live mine.

I did not, but that’s just my experience. I know a lot of people who do, and that’s where the burden of representation comes in. I’m sitting here telling my specific story, but though I wasn’t comfortable with that, there are thousands of people who are, or thousands who don’t have access to the funds to have surgery.