Transgender Living [BETA]

The inaugural Trans 100 List was released today, and what an amazing honor it was to find myself included on the list along with so many of my personal heroes.  People like Miss Major, Masen Davis, Janet Mock, Jenny Boylan, Kate Bornstein, Namoli Brennet, and so many others… well, 93 others.

For anyone who found this site through the list, here are some things you should know about me:

I started my advocacy work on Youtube back in 2006.  At the time, posting videos about my transition just seemed like a good way to connect with others going through the same thing.  As it turned out, I was the first openly Trans* person to do something like this… and apparently it caught on.  At this point there are literally thousands upon thousands of youtube videos covering every aspect of life as a transgender person.  Over 200 videos and nearly 5 million views later, and I’m still constantly blown away by the impact the community I helped to build has had on people all over the globe.  Who would have thought that taking a video camera down to the subbasement of the store I worked at would have such a lasting change on my life, and so many others.  (Hint: Not me!)

Nearly 7 years later, and I’ve been able to document everything from getting a name change, visiting my family for the first time after transitioning, getting married, and even undergoing GRS, but at some point these sorts of life changes slow down… after all, you only do most of these things once.

Today I continue my advocacy across many different online spaces such as my Facebook, Twitter, or even this very site.  I was lucky enough to snag a job working in the Transgender community in SF doing HIV prevention and community empowerment.  I am so fortunate to be able to turn my passion into a career.

What a journey my life has been.  It’s hard to express how lucky I feel to have been a part of all of this.  And if you want to continue this journey with me you can:

Subscribe to: www.youtube.com/grishno

Like me on: www.facebook.com/grishno

Follow me at: www.twitter.com/grishno

Hi Everyone!

That’s right, we raised just over $1,500 to help build this site!  That’s incredible!  I want to make sure that everyone who contributed, either by spreading the word or sending in a donation, made this happen.  This is a site for the community, and I was so happy to be a part of raising the money for the community.

To update everyone on what will happen next, I just got the money from the campaign.   Since Indigogo takes a 9% cut, there is about $1,350 in funds remaining.  Part of that needs to go to fulfilling the donation rewards, like creating the t-shirts and postcards.  The plan is to spend a max of $350 on that (though I’m hoping to bring that in under budget), which will give us $1,000 to hire a web programmer to work on the site.  I  plan to post the “job description” on here once we’re to that point, and then that person will work with me (and however many volunteers I can get together) to bring the site out of beta.

There are a lot of things that need to happen on the site: finalizing the resource section, combating spam, creating the tools to link your profile here to your profile on other social networking sites like Youtube and Facebook.  But that’s just the beginning… look forward to these, and many more updates to the site coming soon, all thanks to all of you!

Many thanks, and look forward to more updates soon,

Erin