Gender reassignment is a life-altering experience. It takes a lot of bravery and the encouragement of family, friends, and loved ones. But it’s even more complicated when you’re a celebrity when journalists and paparazzi are constantly following your every move and hundreds of thousands of people are constantly judging you.
1. Balian Buschbaum
Balian Buschbaum, formerly Yvonne Buschbaum, is a former German pole vaulter who won the German pole vault championship and set the record in 1999. Buschbaum revealed in November 2007 that he was retiring from the sport due to a recurring injury and that he wanted to begin the gender reassignment process.
Balian is now a best-selling author, motivational speaker, life coach, and happy husband, demonstrating that transgender people are no different from everyone else through his successful transformation storey.
2. Geena Rocero
Geena Rocero is a transgender advocate and the founder of Gender Proud, a media production company that advocates for peace, equality, and trans rights. Geena Rocero was only seen as a talented model until she came out. She is also a spokesperson for the LGBTQIA community’s rights campaign.
In 2014, she announced a Ted Talk. Geena said that she came out regarding herself to encourage other transgender people to live openly and without shame.
3. Laura Jane Grace
Laura Jane Grace (born Thomas James Gabel) is a member of the American punk rock band Against Me! She is a singer and guitarist. Laura revealed her plans to live openly as a transgender woman in a Rolling Stone interview in 2012. “Transgender Dysphoria Blues,” the band’s sixth studio album, was released in 2014 after a long time of line-up changes and transformations.
Laura said that she would like to be a part of the final generation of “explainers,” and that coming out and doing interviews are important parts of that. In 2016, Grace published a memoir titled “Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout.”
4. Jazz Jennings
Jazz Jennings is a young LGBT rights activist, a Youtuber, and a spokesmodel. After being taken out of the girl’s bathroom at school when she was nine, she began to raise the issue of transgender people being misunderstood and disliked.
Jennings and her parents formed the TransKids Purple Rainbow Foundation to assist and encourage transgender youth. In 2016, she published “Being Jazz: My Life As a (Transgender) Teen” and began her own TLC television programme, “I Am Jazz.” She’s now one of the most well-known transgender role models in the country, if not the entire world.
5. Aydian Dowling
Aydian Dowling is a prolific YouTuber, bodybuilder, transgender activist, co-founder of a volunteer group called PointofPride.org, a transgender rights advocate, and a happy husband and father. Aydian was the first transgender man to appear on the cover of a Men’s Health collector’s edition and the first transgender man to appear on the cover of Gay Times magazine.
Dowling’s YouTube channel features fitness tips and information about transgender sports, as well as fascinating personal data. Aydian is also a powerful voice and role model for the transgender community.
6. Alexandra Billings
Alexandra Billings is an award-winning stage and film actress, a renowned theatre lecturer, and an AIDS and LGBT activist from the United States. Billings is also one of the few actors to have portrayed a transs*xual woman on screen, having appeared in “Grey’s Anatomy,” “How to Get Away With Murder,” and “Transparent.”
Alexandra won the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award in 2016 for her contributions to the LGBTQ community. Alexandra has taught empathy and highlighted the fact that people do not belong in either group and that they all belong to the same species – the human race – during the course of her activism.
7. Lea T
Leandra Medeiros Cerezo, also known as Lea T, is a transgender fashion model, a pop culture icon, and a transgender advocate. She is the subject of Givenchy’s most talked-about ad campaign. Toninho Cerezo, a well-known Brazilian football player, is her father.
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8. Lana Wachowski
Lana Wachowski is the first major Hollywood director to come out as transgender, with films such as The Matrix (1999), V for Vendetta (2005), and Cloud Atlas (2012). Lana Wachowski’s younger sibling, Lilly Wachowski, came out as a transgender woman a few years later, in 2016.
Lana Wachowski won the Human Rights Campaign’s Visibility Award in October 2012. She said in her speech that she couldn’t find someone like her when she was younger, so she came out now to maybe be that person for someone else.
9. Conchita Wurst
Since Conchita Wurst (also known as Thomas Neuwirth) is more of a stage persona, there is no before and after gender reassignment surgery. She became a major influencer and media star after winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014, taking critical LGBT and transgender-related issues to the international stage.
Conchita has delivered important speeches at EU and UN conferences on human rights and tolerant foreign cultures and supporting minorities’ rights movements.
Does it really matter what gender you are if you obey your heart and live honestly and openly? We’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments section below!
Preview photo credit jazzjennings_ / instagram, jazzjennings_ / instagram