Bustle’s Class of 2022 LGBTQ+ celebs, who each picked a superlative, tell us what they want to say to transgender students everywhere to uplift them.
“For The Girls” singer Hayley Kiyoko is “truly horrified at the blatantly hateful attacks on trans youth” — and you should be, too. In 2022 and 2021 alone, state legislatures in America introduced more than 300 anti-transgender bills that would limit or even criminalize gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth, bar them from using bathrooms that match their gender identity, allow discrimination motivated by religion, and prevent students from playing sports in schools.
For Bustle’s 2022 Pride Yearbook, we asked LGBTQ+ celebrities to tell us how they feel about the ongoing discrimination against transgender students and what they want to say to students who feel discouraged in today’s political climate. Queer As Folk reboot star Johnny Sibilly emphasizes that “trans rights are not up for discussion or debate,” while RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14 winner Willow Pill says, “These politicians need to be fired for violating human rights.”
Eva Reign, star of the Billy Porter-directed Anything’s Possible, suggests students who feel hopeless look to the past. “I urge all the trans kids out there to read up on your history,” she says. “Once you know where you’ve come from, you can envision a clearer path toward where you want to go. Things are pretty horrendous at the moment. There’s no denying that, but I know better days lie ahead.”
Below, read each celebrity Q&A to see what else they said about trans rights, learn what their go-to songs were when they were in high school, and discover their current self-care routines.
— Brian Anthony Hernandez, Senior Celebrity News Editor
Designer: Margaret Flatley; Contributing Editors: Jessica Noah Morgan, Sam Rogers;
Contributing Writers: Sam Ramsden, Jake Viswanath, Alyssa Lapid, Hugh McIntyre
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