This is a transcript for a travel anxiety tips video posted to Kayley Whalen's YouTube channel, and is drawn from her experiences traveling for this blog Do you get travel anxiety? Maybe it’s related to being neurodivergent, autistic, and/or LGBTQIA+ ? I created these 5 travel anxiety tips to help you avoid anxiety, sensory overload, and autistic meltdowns/shutdowns during travel. This travel advice is based on my experiences as an autistic Latinx trans & queer person with ADHD, Bipolar and Anxiety. I’ve now spent several years as a full-time traveler interviewing trans/nonbinary and neurodivergent activists around the world. These five travel tips are based on my experiences managing my mental health during travel. Yes, at times I've experienced anxiety attacks, sensory ...
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Why I’m competing in the Miss International Queen transgender beauty pageant
From February 24 to March 7, 2020 I will represent the U.S. transgender community at the Miss International Queen pageant in Thailand as Miss USA. As the world's most prestigious transgender pageant, now celebrating its fifteenth anniversary, the two weeks of events will build positive visibility for the global transgender community. For me, this will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience to build connections with transgender women representing twenty-five different countries. The theme of the pageant is world equality, and each contestant will present their own vision of what equal rights means to them. I have never competed in, or even seen, a pageant before. I have never modeled or walked a runway. I don’t know how I’m going to survive two weeks of non-stop photoshoots, ...
Five Decades of Thai Transgender Resilience
Thai culture has a long history of being inclusive of gender roles outside of “man” and “woman.” Yet while many tourists may gain some exposure to Thailand’s transgender community through cabaret shows or LGBTQ nightlife, one Thai transgender woman has made it her mission to provide tourists a much deeper education about her community's history. Recently, while in Bangkok, I attended a two-hour talk about her life with five other tourists as part of an AirBnB experience. A Transgender Tour Guide to 50 Years of Thai History The host of the AirBnB experience asked I keep her name and her employer's name confidential, so in this post I’ll refer to her as Jip. Jip is now a cabaret performer at one of Thailand’s most prestigious cabarets, and identifies as kathoey and transgender. ...
Celebrating Latinx Art and Activism with Laya Monarez
In honor of Latinx Heritage Month in the United States, I interviewed Laya Monarez, a Latinx, Chicana, transgender bisexual artist and activist from Washington, DC. Amongst other achievements, she spoke at the White House in 2016, has painted several public murals in DC, and has been working with DC City Council members to pass a sex work decriminalization bill. Laya has been a longtime friend, and has inspired me as a Latinx transgender woman myself. We have worked alongside each other advocating for social justice, painted together, and even skated on the same roller derby league, the DC Rollergirls. In this interview, we talked about her activism, her heritage, and her artwork — which can be found on her site LayaMonarez.com. So why do you use the term Latinx? For me using ...
Serving Face vs Saving Face: LGBTQ Pride in Saigon
#VietPride2019 The 2019 LGBTQ Pride parade in Ho Chi Minh City (VietPride Saigon) began in six locations. People traveled together via bicycle, motorbike, and on foot. Students took buses from far-away colleges. One parade contingent marched by Notre Dame Cathedral Saigon, and a group of Catholics came out to greet them and bless them. Contingents from a handful of companies marched out from Aeon shopping mall, including a huge group wearing t-shirts for the popular gay dating app Blued. By 4pm, over 2,000 people converged on Nguyen Hue Walking Street, Saigon’s recently built public plaza by the waterfront. They unfurled a giant 30 meter by 20 meter rainbow flag, which has been present at every VietPride Saigon since it began in 2012. Hundreds of the marchers gathered and danced ...
Founding A Community For Transgender Men in Vietnam
Interview with Mai Như Thiên Ân, the Founder of FTM Vietnam It was one of the biggest flash mobs Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) had ever seen. Five hundred LGBT people were dancing underneath an enormous rainbow flag, stretching 30 meters wide by 20 meters tall. Saigon was celebrating its first-ever LGBT Pride, VietPride, in September 2012. And one of the people dancing in the flash mob was Mai Như Thiên Ân (Ân), a transgender man who had come out. Ân had been hesitant to take part in the flash mob. He was struggling with depression, fueled by rejection by his family and at school. But his friend Nguyễn Thiện Trí Phong (a.k.a. Aki), a transgender man he’d met online, encouraged him, saying ‘if you don’t do it, who will.” The experience for Ân was life-changing. As Ân told ...