Kai Cheng Thom

Jan 10, 2025 | xtramagazine.com | Kai Cheng Thom

There was a brief, extremely odd moment in the mid-late 2010s when it seemed like being a trans girl could also mean being an It Girl—for a split second in the violently transphobic history of the modern world, trans women were “in” (to a limited extent in specific social circles), and our faces could even enhance the market value of major brands.

Dec 6, 2024 | xtramagazine.com | Kai Cheng Thom

Like most trans women, my day-to-day life is rather more mundane than the media of decades past might have led one to believe: I get up in the mornings early enough to get ready for work, but not early enough to prepare a healthy breakfast. I procrastinate on chores and emails by watching inane television. I try to get 10,000 steps a day, but fail more often than I care to admit.

Nov 4, 2024 | xtramagazine.com | Kai Cheng Thom

The world we live in is on fire at every level: On the grand scale, there is genocidal and colonial violence and warfare, environmental crisis and enormous socio-economic instability. Meanwhile, trans people have become the targets of a renewed moral panic spearheaded by some of the wealthiest, most powerful people on the planet, resulting in the introduction of legislation intended to strip us of our human rights at local and federal levels in multiple countries.

Oct 1, 2024 | xtramagazine.com | Kai Cheng Thom

It’s 2024, ten years past the so-called “trans tipping point,” and while we’ve made gains, it is a widely acknowledged reality among most trans communities that the situation around our civil rights has severely devolved in the past decade. Today, trans rights are the subject of an international moral panic and anti-trans legislation has been introduced in several countries around the world, including both the U.S. and Canada.

Aug 27, 2024 | xtramagazine.com | Kai Cheng Thom

Last month, infamous billionaire Elon Musk and equally infamous provocateur Jordan Peterson recorded a video interview in which Musk claimed that his 20-year-old trans daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, was “killed by the woke mind virus.” With this dramatic turn of phrase, Musk implied that his daughter had somehow been unduly influenced into gender transition by a nefarious ideology intent on manipulating vulnerable youth.