Thought about using the term idol, but idolizing people who we'll never meet is bad. Who's a trans person that you look up to just for making it?
My pick has to be Rebecca Heineman. Rebecca was one of the founding members of Interplay. As in OG Fallout Interplay. She was one of the lead developers of Wasteland, the Bard's Tale series, Out of This World and many others. After founding interplay, she went on to do a lot of port work. Her work on the 3DO version of DOOM is an insane story, Stop Skeletons From Fighting has an amazing video on it.
Later in life, she moved onto consultant work. From Wikipedia "During this time, she also provided consultancy work directly for other companies: She acted as "Senior Engineer III" for Electronic Arts, upgraded engine code for Barking Lizards Technologies and Ubisoft, optimized code for Sensory Sweep Studios, provided training on Xbox 360 development for Microsoft's development studios, and worked on the kernel code for the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 4 at Sony." Nowadays, she runs a company called olde skuul, probably best known for porting Descent 1 & 2 to modern machines.
I just think her story is really cool. I also like the reminder that we've always been there, yk?
wendy carlos. an early pioneer of synthesizer music (she was a part of creating and popularizing the moog and even made a few synths of her own). she has lived out as a trans woman since 1968 and did the soundtracks for a clockwork orange, tron (1982), and the shining. i also own a copy of her album switched-on bach on tape and vinyl and it's a masterpiece of synthesizer work. her website is also visually unchanged since the 90s.
beth elliott. a lesbian trans woman who was a folk singer in the 70s and made a lot of awesome songs. she was a huge part of her local lesbian/feminist organizing in her area in the time, serving in the leadership of many orgs. but in the orgs she served with, she was consistently harassed and attacked mercilessly by TERFs from within the orgs. i think her story goes to show that we have been, since the early days, instrumental in organizing these spaces with other feminists and lesbians and yet even back then they've attacked us for it.
i don't know much about her life, but there's a trans woman named linda phillips who wrote a little section about her life that ended up in feinberg's "trans liberation: beyond pink or blue". in it, she wrote a sentence that i think about every single day and one day i'll get tattooed somewhere. "i have actually had the best of any life i could dream of". in the face of medical professionals and transphobes and all saying how much it must suck to be trans and trying to define our existence by suffering, it is a bold statement that out of any of the lives she could have lived, this one where she lived out as herself was the best one she could have lived.
I came here to mention Wendy Carlos. I know we shouldn't attribute artistic movements to single people, but she is very much responsible for making electronic music go from being perceived as nerds doing beepboops, to serious music with sound theoretical foundations with artistic merit. She's a musical genius and I'm collecting all her albums on vinyl.
As a synth nerd, Wendy Carlos was almost my pick for this thread. Her website post about Bob Moog's death is extremely powerful imo.
I'll say Maddie Blaustein. She was a voice actor and dubbed Meowth in the Pokemon anime, which I watched a lot when I was young. It's a bit silly maybe, but I liked how she managed to infuse that character with a tragic trans subtext and, separately from that, how she managed to use her voice as an asset. Like possibly everyone here, I worry a lot about how I sound (does my voice come across as male? female? real or inauthentic?), so I admire the range she had in voicing male, female and non-human characters, and she did all of that back in the early 2000s. Unfortunately, she died of a preventable illness because she couldn't afford healthcare, which makes me sad every time I think about it.
She was frequently on Second Life as well in the mid 2000s. I ran into her a few times and had no idea it was her. She was a really prolific designer and I had a few of the beer bottle props she designed.
Also her brother Jeremy Blaustein was the translator, VA director, and mocap director for Silent Hill 2 and that's wild to me
For me it's gotta be Laura Jane Grace. Her coming out was such a huge deal to me as a young punk egg and seeing a trans woman be a punk who wasn't dressed super femme all the time really made me feel less alone.
her music saved my life when i came out and as i was navigating life as a trans woman for the few years after coming out. seen her every time she's toured through my state with whatever band she's doing stuff with. her book is a really good read and she's a very inspiring person.
you might wonder which trans person is my icon... read the first word
i haven't listened to against me! in a while, but laura jane grace coming out and transgender dysphoria blues were hugely important to me when i was younger, and were a big part of me developing ideas about my own gender
Lilith Walther cos Bloodborne Kart and also just talented in general. And Holly Hollowtones cos doctor coomer and being absolutely hilarious
I wish I could say I had any. Maybe it's because of when I transitioned, I suspect I'm older than most on this board, but my only examples of transgender women were in pornography. Even once I understood there was a life for people like us outside of that, I had no positive examples or role models. It wasn't until I'd been out for years that I started to see trans people in public life, but I guess the damage was done by that point, because I've never really been able to see myself in others like that, someone I could look up to and be like.
I dunno if Imogen Binnie is actually a cool person or not? Sometimes she seems it, sometimes she seems crabby, but Nevada was foundational to my entire worldview. It taught me that Blanchard's typology is a load of horseshit, that having gender-related kinks doesn't make you less trans, that the medical establishment is not always right (more often, it's wrong and run by fuckers) regarding trans matters, and also that trans people are not exotic creatures, but just people who are every day, and are messy like everyone else.
Shit that was really important to me at age 15. Nevada's not really a super lefty book, but it probably instilled a left leaning in me just as a result of all of the above, just by taking the stance that "people are valid because they say so".
Plus, Nevada has a ton of other cool books referenced in it that I'm still poking through. I'm reading Gender Outlaw because I first heard of Kate Bornstein through Nevada, which has been awesome for my wife and I. Relatedly it instilled a love for trans fiction into me, which I'm still following to this day and frequently leads me to neat works.
Otros Valles might exist as the yin to Nevada's yang, but I'll never not be a Maria Griffiths enjoyer. Such an excellent book that is personally important to me.
cw sadness
spoiler
also some of the people i know that have died, not to emulate them, but because i miss them
Just narrowing down to one person and an artist activist, I look up to Anohni so much. Love her music, and she is an inspiration for me making my own art.
kill your heroes, but, I wouldn't be where I am if I hadn't found Evan Greer and Adhamh Roland (along with the rest of the riot folk collective) when in high school. Both artists songs definitely saved and influenced me greatly.
I agree with the kill your heroes thing, hence why I switched the word choice from idol to icon. They can be flawed people and still have admirable achievements. I actually don't know a ton about the people you're talking about, but I'm glad they were able to help you grow!
