Historically, our culture has not made room for the nuances of humanity. People have not been kept safe: women, people of colour, queer people, transgender people.
Indya Moore
My love is political. My body is political. I talk even when I don't speak.
Both 'Saturday Church' and 'Pose' are incredible because they demonstrate something essential about survival. When you get pushed hard enough by certain circumstances, your survival mechanism kicks in, and you grow into the things that you need or are missing in your life.
Tradition is nothing but ancestral peer pressure.
I want more people to hear me and be part of the change that everyone would benefit from: the change we need so that people like me can be safe and happy.
We're standing on the shoulders of so many people who have already broken down so many barriers.
We deserve the same things that cis women do, the same things that other humans do, from our social lives to our families to love.
I'll use shea butter to moisturize my skin, or coconut oil.
I think 'Pose' is unique in that it's not just a trans story - it's about family. It's about love. It's about friendship and acceptance and really deconstructing humanity, and the ethical side of that, with how we treat people who are different than us.
I always believed that clothes should be designed to conform to our bodies and not our bodies to conform to the clothing.
My love is not measured in reciprocity. That's not the way I learned love.
We rarely see cisgender heterosexual men in positions where they're nurturers. We only paint femmes, trans women, and cis women as nurturers, and because of toxic masculinity, men are taught not to be that way.
A lot of times, when parents overdiscipline their children, especially when they're queer, their intention isn't to hurt them. They think they're saving their children from harm. But they don't realize that they're causing harm, that they're doing to their kids exactly what they're afraid of the world doing to them.
We will fight ignorance and a lack of information with information.
I don't always feel seen.
Binaries definitely keep us from progressing. Imagine if we didn't have political parties and just had people who worked together to improve the life quality of everyone.
We have so many different television programs and various things that teach us about the lives of people we will never meet otherwise.
I don't know who I am outside of someone who's just trying to be free and find safety for myself and for others.
I didn't want anyone to have control over how people saw me. I wanted to have that power myself.
Even before 'Pose,' I was involved in activism and advocating for my community in various ways. I didn't see that stopping with my entry into this industry, but people are going to be afraid of what you're going to say. I'm going to bump heads with people that benefit from the oppression that they put trans people through.
Emotional information is very, very rich in influence. You're giving somebody something to connect with, to see themselves in.
I get to decide how my body shows up in any space. When I'm walking into a place like the Globes, I want to make it very clear that how I show up is to further the freedom of everybody.
Toddlerhood, I just knew I was the farthest thing from a man. I've known that my whole life.
I have often been many companies' first experience with a gender-variant model. I am proud of that because I think I have broadened their horizons in my own way.
I'm really proud of the way that 'Pose' has brought people's families together and touched people's hearts and opened people's minds. It's really incredible to see. It's a show about love and family, and it highlights what it really means to have a family and to be a family and to love your family.
I feel like being vocal on social media, especially working in an industry that is very Eurocentric.
People were so cruel because of the way I existed.
Religion has played a big part in eliminating the nuance in humanity. People began to believe things before they knew them. It stopped people from listening and learning with the patience and love of the God they believe in.
I knew I had a chance to teach the world something that would help more people be safe.
Our government is not protecting us. They are exploiting us.
A lot of people are afraid to use their platforms because they don't want to lose anything they have - and that's OK. We don't all have to be activists, but I choose to do it because, really, what's the worst that could happen?
Laverne Cox, Isis King, Janet Mock, Our Lady J, Ryan Murphy, Steven Canals, the people I've met growing up, and even me - all have inspired me to see that it is possible to get far anywhere and that the capacity for positive and motivating influence is truly unlimited.
Everyone that's ever seen 'Pose' who isn't trans or doesn't have any connection to the LGBTQ community has been given the opportunity to create empathetic relationships to the characters that they would not have otherwise been able to. That's super essential in helping counter homophobia and transphobia.
I'm non-binary, but I don't really talk about it that much.
I think of makeup as more like a design, decoration, or jewelry. I mean, it's literally paint; it's art. I don't prefer to use it as concealing anything because it influences the illusion of standardized perfection.
I want to see designers capitalize on a beauty that is not only white. I need them to stop acting like beautiful black and brown women do not exist.
I don't know how to have fun.
I think 'Pose' is really a groundbreaking television show because we're telling stories about family and love through people that society has always believed were incapable of having that or being a part of that.
I wanted to go to LaGuardia High School for acting, but my math grades weren't high enough. So I didn't get to go to a school that was geared toward the art that I was interested in because I wasn't good enough at math.
I think people with varying experiences need to be creating.
If you tell a narcissist that someone is less than them in any way, they feel gratified; they feel very good about that.
As a black woman of trans experience, my position in this society leaves me really no choice but to stand for the intersectional identities I hold.
I don't like following the rules - the patriarchal rules.
I wanted a stable job, and I wanted to feel like I was grounded with my family and to have personal relationships in my life that were healing and honest and genuine.
When I'm around people having conversations about their day, I'm looking at them, like, 'What could they possibly be talking about? How are we not talking about deconstructing white supremacy right now? How are we not trying to save trans people?'
The only time I've ever felt like I needed to measure my activity and involvement in holding people accountable for being violent on social media is when I think about the things that I might lose for saying something. That's the only time I end up thinking about it.
Very often, the world of fashion depends on having the right look at the right time.
Eurocentric women are beautiful, but they are not the only ones out here that exist.
Slowly but surely, little by little, many different groups of vulnerable bodies and people have been targeted from since the beginning of time, from since the beginning of the construction of America and all the civilizations from around the world pre-colonially.
Narcissism is a strong word, but it is narcissistic to expect everybody in a culture to reflect your own image back at you.
