Brian Michael Smith is worried.
We’re not going to carry it.'
I feel very destabilized, and it’s really heartbreaking to see."
Brian Michael Smith.Monica Schipper/WireImage
Just having somebody say, ‘I will call you by that name.
I will see you for who you are trying to be’….
This was very early internet days, you know.
Brian Michael Smith on ‘9-1-1 Lone Star’.Jack Zeman/FOX
I was still using, like, AOL to find people and message them.
I had to ask Jeeves a bunch of questions [to get] answers.
It was really hard to get information.
But once I did, there was something really illuminating about that.
I discovered a lot of new language.
I’d never even heard the word transgender before.
There were a lot of slurs [and] derogatory terms that we don’t use now.
“But the roles that were available [were] like a paint-by-numbers situation.
There wasn’t much going on.
I wasn’t going to make any masterpieces with what was available to me.
And so I had this choice.
“I had the privilege of choice.
I know there are a lot of my trans and non-binary siblings who don’t have the choice.
They have to disclose every time they walk out of their house.
They have to deal with the world in a different way than I can because of how I appear.
[But we’ve all] been trans the whole time.
I never was a woman who became a man.
I was me the whole time.
And just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean that we’re not real.”
“I feel like that’s something I have a really hard time navigating,” he continued.
I’m here, I’m telling you, I’m a trans person.
You’re not, that’s okay.
You don’t have to be trans.
Let me live.'”
