I want to come and play in cities and states where transgender citizens are not discriminated against, where there's no hateful bathroom bills at the shows where I'm going to be playing.

Military members understand that the focus is on completing the mission. We don't care if you are tall or short; have dark skin or pale skin or freckles; or are gay, straight, or transgender.

I have a transgender nephew on my father's side of the family. So I'm extremely aware of how important it is to support and advocate for young people who are experiencing that in their lives.

During my sophomore year at American University, I was elected president of the student body. At the same time, I was struggling with my identity and whether or not to come out as transgender.

My grandma was a nurse, and she helped a lot of transgender clients, so growing up, I was very aware of that, and my family and I have always been very supportive of people going through this.

The transgender community has always been a part of Hawaiian society, where people who don't conform to the binary system of man/woman, masculine/feminine are accepted or, at minimum, tolerated.

To you people out there, you producers and you network owners and you agents and you creative sparks, please give transgender talent a chance. Give them auditions. Give them their story. Do that.

The first thing that's really important to understand, just when approaching the topic of transgender people, is that the sex you're assigned with at birth is not the same as your gender identity.

There's power in naming yourself, in proclaiming to the world that this is who you are. Wielding this power is often a difficult step for many transgender people because it's also a very visible one.

I remember in 2004, I had three gorgeous transgender models on the runway. That was my strength, in a way. That I did what I thought was gonna work, and I never paid attention to the industry's rules.

I think that the fact of the matter is that metal isn't really part of the big picture of the gay, lesbian, transgender music scene. But it's certainly there. There's gay metalheads all over the world.

Before any American points a finger at President Putin and calls him nasty names, they should recognize that a lot of Americans agree with Putin on his stance against homosexual and transgender people.

Being transgender is more than just medical books and everything, procedures. It's something spiritual in which you're finding yourself and really discovering who you are and learning to love yourself.

Put simply, barring transgender people from restrooms consistent with their gender identity doesn't help anyone, and continuing to allow transgender people to access those restrooms doesn't hurt anyone.

I'm not saying transgender characters should be only interpreted by transgender actors - because that would be as rigid as saying transgender actors cannot play cisgender roles, and that's not the idea.

The struggle isn't just about being straight or gay or transgender - it's a human struggle. That's always really been my kind of starting point: If you're out there and you're odd, come over to my house.

I think it can be difficult for young lesbian or young gay, bisexual, transgender to come out and be open with who they are because there's such a huge stigma attached to that preference of their sexuality.

At the beginning of each year, we have conceptual meetings. How are we going to challenge ourselves this year? So we suggested a transsexual or transgender. And to be honest, I am shocked they let us do it.

It's been a long road of self-transformation for me, and I'm so grateful for the care I received at NYU Langone with Dr. Rachel Bluebond-Langer, one of the best transgender surgery specialists in the country.

I wanted people not to care about whether you were gay, straight, black, white, transgender, whatever it may be... That being said, there's more work to be done... I still want to change the world, absolutely.

I believe that I am transgender to help people understand differences. It allows me to gain perspective, to be more accepting of others, because I know what it feels like to know you're not like everyone else.

I have had a small handful of truly blatantly discriminatory experiences for being transgender, but the vast majority are simply the differences between being a man versus being a woman in science and business.

Progress can't happen just from trans people being out in the open. Society also has to truly accept transgender individuals. If society is capable of treating us equally, then we can and will live authentically.

The transgender bathroom thing - it's just so obvious that people are scared of what they don't understand. It's like, 'I don't want to deal with the fact that some people might have been born in the wrong body.'

Cisgender actors don't take trans roles out of malice. I think it's just failure to realize the context behind having cisgender people play transgender characters because we don't see the same issue with sexuality.

Transgender folks have been part of the push for LGBT equality from the beginning, and we've spoken with loud and intelligent voices and have found political and personal success and advancement all over the world.

I think that a lot of people don't understand how much discrimination transgender people actually face. They think that we're just kind of saying it to put it out there and get sympathy, but that's not true at all.

This entire issue of transgender people posing a kind of threat to cisgender women in bathrooms is made up. We are just like everybody else - we go into the bathroom, we keep our heads down, we don't look at anybody.

Between 'Orange' with Laverne, the show 'Transparent,' and Caitlyn Jenner, obviously we're in the middle of something enormous - a transgender movement. I'm just proud to be alive during this massive shift in the world.

I believe marriage equality is a simple change that sends a powerful message. It is a chance for us to say, as a nation, to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex Australians: your love is equal under the law.

When I would walk down the runway back in the late 90s, I could feel the tension from others who knew I was transgender. I could see the joy on the faces of people from my community, elated to see someone represent them.

Transgender casting is a kind of literalism. It is the same with racial casting. This means that you can now only play Othello if you are black. There is something quite tainted about it. It is a form of racism in itself.

I've always been Sarah. My gender identity has always existed. I've always been a woman. Gay people aren't straight before they come out as gay, and transgender people are who they are before they come out and transition.

HB2 discriminates against fellow citizens because of who they are. This law directly challenges the legitimacy of the identity of transgender persons and then compels them to deny it every time they use a public restroom.

It's important to have transgender representation because we represent the forthcoming generation, and their new perception on the standard of beauty - which I believe is being true to yourself, loving yourself and others.

'I Am Jazz' was more for children to understand what it means to be transgender, but with 'Being Jazz,' I wanted to get the universal message across that we are all just people, and we have to live our lives authentically.

All our friends - so many friends are gay or lesbian and transgender. We're just in that world. We all went through the devastating time of the AIDS crisis, and I think that galvanized us to be more activists - AIDS activists.

Days after being sworn in as the nation's top law enforcement officer, Trump's attorney general, the virulently anti-LGBTQ Jeff Sessions, revoked lifesaving guidance promoting the protection and dignity of transgender students.

I am not covering stories as a transgender reporter. I'm a reporter who is transgender. Otherwise, it would be like having a black reporter only cover stories about blacks or a Hispanic reporter covering stories about Hispanics.

Any way that I can use my career or my platform to push along transgender visibility in the mainstream and society serves me on a personal level in that it will make day-to-day existence when I'm not doing this that much easier.

I can only imagine how much more fun it's going to be to play someone who shares my identity rather than having to contort myself to play a boy. I'm going to gun for those roles, be it a transgender female or a cisgender female.

I want to help transgender individuals who might be struggling realize that they have to love themselves and stay true to who they are because if they keep moving forward, and keep a positive attitude, then things will get better.

Here in America, just as we see such incredible progress happening in one state, we see another state passing absolutely disgusting and oppressive laws against the rights of all sorts of people - transgender people, gay people, women.

The way I see things is that, I think that transgender people are super brave. If you're a female to male, male to female, if you're that brave to take control of your own body and make it however you want it to be, more power to you.

What I would love to happen is to have people at the top of their game - straight, gay, cisgender, transgender, whatever - to volunteer with us, as long as they have something of value to offer and they see the value in our community.

I always supported gay issues, but I never understood transgender issues. But after I heard Bruce Jenner speak so honestly, so sincerely, and so relatably, I totally got it. I totally understood what he was saying - it was so compelling.

The fight for justice for the transgender community is largely invisible to our fellow citizens, despite the rampant systematic discrimination of trans people - those whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.

I know that one day all transgender individuals will have the freedom to be who they are, no matter what. And we won't have to face the cruel judgments of society. We can just live our lives and be treated and respected like everyone else.

A lot of people, when they look at the whole trans thing, they think,'Oh, you're transgender, and in the fashion industry, which is very pro-LGBT, so you don't have any problems because it's a progressive place.' But that's not the reality.

As a transgender child, I was always looking around for someone like me, because I thought I was the only one. It's hard to feel like that. But having support from my family changed everything. They helped me love myself and embrace who I am.

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