Angela Mullins

Healthcare simply isn’t working for many queer and trans people. Exclusive research commissioned by Pink Triangle Press, Xtra’s parent company, shows that, on average, we experience anxiety and depression roughly 50 percent more than non-queer people. When broken down by our various identities, the research finds that overall health outcomes are much worse for some of us. Trans, intersex, asexual, questioning and pansexual people fare especially poorly.

I was in my formative years when Designing Women was a hit TV show. The powerful women who filled that set portrayed characters who could have been my southern aunties. I was reared by Appalachian women with deep roots in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. In 1986 America, scenes set in Atlanta, Georgia, weren’t too much of a stretch in my reality. Jean Smart as Sugarbaker & Associates office manager Charlene Frazier was especially poignant in my young mind.