My name is Kit O\u2019Connell.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a transgender enby<\/a>, usually a femme, and I use they\/them pronouns. Starting this week, I\u2019ll be covering queer and trans life in Texas for Big & Bright \u2014 The Barbed Wire\u2019s first underwritten vertical. I\u2019ll be your host as the section\u2019s newsletter writer, contributing two pieces per month. Look for pop culture takes, news features, and personal essays like this one.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t I\u2019m so excited to be a part of this new project because Texas desperately needs a place where we can tell our stories, where we can be ourselves, mourn our losses, and celebrate our victories.\u00a0<\/p>\n As I mentioned, I\u2019m originally from Connecticut. I moved to Austin at age 19 because I\u2019d fallen for a woman on the internet; after two whole visits to Texas, I packed up my metaphorical U-Haul to follow her here. Our relationship fell apart about a month after my plane landed, but I have remained unceasingly in love with Austin. The possibilities, the vibrancy of its culture, and its embrace of open queerness turned a crush into a long-term relationship with this city.\u00a0<\/p>\n I did spend a while bouncing around other parts of the state, including Houston, before I returned to Austin just in time for the kickoff of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, and its satellite branch in our city. Another inflection point for my life came one night in February 2012, as I live-tweeted the city\u2019s sweep of the Occupy Austin encampment. My coverage of the arrests, the marches, and the police\u2019s destruction of the tents led to the start of my journalism career at a now-defunct political blog.<\/p>\n As years passed, I stayed in Texas despite the hostile laws<\/a> against LGBTQ+ residents and even the death threats<\/a>. I was the editor in chief of a website about industrial hemp, then worked as the digital editor at Texas Observer from 2023 to 2024. My reporting has been profiled in the Columbia Journalism Review<\/a>. Particularly in Austin, I have found belonging in the ecofeminist pagan coven I joined, the festival where I found my first skirt at a costume swap, the Little Gay Book Club<\/a>, and so much more. As I documented in Big & Bright two weeks ago, there\u2019s everything from hiking clubs to Magic: the Gathering nights<\/a> geared towards the rainbow umbrella.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even with gay campgrounds<\/a>, it\u2019s not easy living in Texas. If you\u2019re part of the LGBTQ+ community and reading this, I don\u2019t need to tell you that. I have covered bomb threats over gender inclusive bathrooms<\/a> and written about the aftermath<\/a> of a violent anti-trans attack<\/a> at Barton Springs \u2014 and the way the community gathered afterward<\/a>. I worry, too, about the new \u201cbathroom bill<\/a>\u201d that bans transgender people from using their preferred bathroom in certain public buildings, and whether it will make random strangers accost me when I\u2019m just trying to go in peace. I\u2019m scared of the targeting of our healthcare<\/a> and worry about how I\u2019ll keep getting my E. The rise of fascism<\/a> keeps me up at night. Still, I can\u2019t escape from the feeling that this state is where I belong, and it\u2019s where my community lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n If I eventually do leave, I want it to be because I\u2019ve found that same kind of community elsewhere, not because I\u2019m driven out. As Gwen Howerton<\/a>, the Chron\u2019s transgender Texas culture reporter, told OutSmart<\/a> magazine: \u201cThis is my home \u2026 I want to leave on my own terms, not because some people don\u2019t like who I am.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Journalists and queer folks have a lot in common, including our propensity for piecing together disparate moments and making a narrative out of them. For queer people, it\u2019s usually the story of our coming out, our transition, or our journey to finding a place where we belong.<\/p>\n Belonging can mean any number of things: Seeing yourself represented in your community, feeling supported by allies, finding someone whose journey here mirrors your own. As a journalist, I\u2019m not covering the community from the outside. And I\u2019m not pretending to \u2014 instead, I understand the weight of hostile legal and policy decisions, hate crimes, and discrimination because I am directly impacted by them.<\/p>\n But I\u2019ve never had any pretense of being neutral when it comes to issues that matter to us all, including supporting LGBTQ+ rights. For that reason, I\u2019ve always been more at home in progressive publications, where I can be a movement journalist \u2014 \u201ca journalist in service to liberation,\u201d to quote the Press On collective<\/a> \u2014 while disclosing my perspective, and backing it all up with solid, fact-based reporting.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t It hasn\u2019t escaped me that the parts of the media we\u2019d previously carved out for queer voices, and the voices of other marginalized groups, are rapidly disappearing. Earlier this month, just a couple of weeks after I\u2019d finally been published in Teen Vogue<\/a>, a personal bucket list goal, Conde Nast announced it was abandoning the title as a stand-alone magazine<\/a>. The company laid off six employees, mostly BIPOC women plus the nonbinary politics editor, Lex McMenamin, who had pushed Teen Vogue\u2019s progressive news coverage to international prominence. Last month, NBC News eliminated teams that covered queer, Black, Latino, and Asian communities<\/a>. According to GLAAD, queer and trans characters are rapidly disappearing from TV<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n I would never begrudge someone for leaving a state where they feel unsafe, but the more that marginalized voices disappear from legacy outlets, the more it matters to fight for our corner instead of abandoning it.<\/p>\n It matters to have places in journalism, in media, where we belong and where we can see ourselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n I had brunch with a transmasculine friend recently, hiding from overcast skies under an umbrella at the Vegan Nom Food Court in East Austin. He laughed when I told him about that afternoon in Kate\u2019s bedroom, because he\u2019d had a nearly identical moment to mine, except with the genders reversed: Don\u2019t worry, you\u2019re just like one of the boys.\u00a0<\/p>\n It reminded me how important it is to share these smaller, sometimes overlooked parts of our journeys with each other, because so often they\u2019re actually the common experiences that bind us together.\u00a0<\/p>\n They help us remember that we aren\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n I hope everyone will enjoy what we publish in Big & Bright. But I\u2019m also glad it\u2019s a space for our stories: stories of our struggle to survive, but also about our resilience, our joy, and our journeys of self-discovery \u2014 stories other publications sometimes reject because they aren\u2019t sad or \u201cserious\u201d enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is a space where we can be our biggest and brightest, messiest and most complex selves. I look forward to sharing that with you.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Texas](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/251023_messer-queertx-scaled.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Looking](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/251110_LGBT-groups-hero-scaled.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n