Katrina Rose

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.

I first met Katrina Rose when she and I transistioned in Houston back in the mid 90's. I was the lone African-American member of TATS (Texas Association for Transsexual Support) the local transgender group and feeling a little isolated in it until Kat and my Latina homegirl Alexandra joined.

We bonded almost immediately. As I've mentioned I like having intelligent people around me and Kat definitely fit the bill. She was attending law school at the time and loathes hypocrites as much as I do. We also loved discussing history, politics and other real-life subjects that often put us at odds with some then members of the TATS group who were more concerned about getting SRS and going stealth.

Kat's also a gifted writer, photographer and painter. She wrote a column for several years in a local GLBT newspaper while I was doing my radio show co-hosting with Jimmy Carper on KPFT-FM at the time. It's kind of an interesting twist in our lives that now I'm the one writing the newspaper column and she's doing radio.

We're an unbeatable team when we're partnered together at Trivial Pursuit. We used to beat up on our fellow TATS members so badly that they wouldn't allow us to play on the same team after a while. ;) I also admire the relationship she has with her mother.

Kat's now happily married, working on her doctorate and does a podcast radio show these days when she's not cracking books, teaching classes, attending law conferences, teaching seminars and writing scholarly legal articles.