Trans Journalist & Advocate Monica Roberts Has Passed Away
Trans journalist and advocate Monica Roberts has passed away at age 58.
Roberts was best known on the internet for her award-winning blog, TransGriot, a website that covered trans news before there was much trans representation in major TBLG (her preferred order for the letters) publications.
Raquel Willis, the former executive editor of Out magazine, tweeted that Roberts was a “powerful force for Black trans journalism.”
LGBTQ Nation contributor and Transgender Day of Remembrance founder Gwen Smith said that Roberts was an influence on her and “made me a better activist and a better person.”
Roberts was working as a gate agent at the Houston International Airport in 1994 when she realised, “In order to be the best person I can be, it was necessary for me to transition.”
As ‘LGBTQ Nation’ reports, in 1999, she co-founded the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition. She moved to Louisville and served on the board of Kentucky’s Fairness Campaign, a TBLG organisation.
In 2006, Roberts started the TransGriot blog.
“I will introduce you to and talk about your African descended trans brothers and trans sisters across the Diaspora,” she wrote in TransGriot‘s mission statement, “reclaim and document our chocolate flavoured trans history, speak truth to power, comment on the things that impact our trans community from an Afrocentric perspective and enlighten you about the general things that go on around me and in the communities that I am a member of.”
She was honoured on Queerty‘s Pride 50 list this year, designating Roberts as a “media star helping save America,” while describing her blog as “required reading for anyone who wants to truly understand LGBTQ life in America.”
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