to be precise.
… but let’s try to keep it simple for now
Karina was ‘born’ sometime in the 90’s. She was originally Alessandra and used to always wear long gowns to go clubbing in when she wasn’t busy being a management consultant.
It was a time when trans people were far less visible to the general public. We had our spots in Soho we’d hang out and there was a real sense of community because people were getting attacked and abused on a regular basis on the occasions they were identified as trans. Compared to now, with the over-saturation of transwomen in the media and the polarisation of opinion about something that has always existed in society together with the sheer, overwhelming stupidity of the majority of people and the undimmed genius ability of humanity to deliberately ignore and cancel anyone who dares to mention the most stunningly obvious points of relevance such as the social contagion of anything that’s anti-establishment, for example… transgenderism, most people just couldn’t read her and her friends, at least not at first. When they did there was regularly verbal abuse but that often provided an opportunity to turn things around onto these loud-mouthed ‘phobes and make people laugh at them instead of us. Unfortunately, she kept getting introduced to people as ‘Sandra’ with a fake cockney accent by her friends far too often. Even she has to credit pre-drag race RuPaul because it was seeing her on cable access TV from America that they would broadcast on channel4 in the early hours of the morning as a 6 foot 6 inch model goddess interviewing random people on the streets of New York that made her want to take up the challenge of being different, trying to make people think, feel and to love instead of hate.
Of course it was a time before ubiquitous mobile phone cameras. Regular cameras just wouldn’t fit into Chanel saddle bags along with all the powders necessary for a long night out, so decent photos from that era are in short supply and I’m not sure I want to embarrass my ex-friends and myself by posting rubbish photos here without asking anyone’s permission.
Read (a lot) more about little old me
Cut to the shit videos