Happy Transgender Awareness Week! 🏳️‍⚧️ We’ve got the feature ready for you, but make sure to check out a few of our previous (and v important) coverage on trans and queer issues like our interview with Nykita Joy; our Pride 2023 features including Grace McKenzie, these queer teachers, Cya Inhale, and Sim Kern; and this fun GRWM with Ve’Ondre Mitchell.

It’s about food… but it’s also about talking to Kay Poyer (she/her), HIV+ trans TikTokker, based in Texas. When she’s not making viral vids, she enjoys antiquing (mostly window shopping), horror movies, cooking, and giving interviews to us. 😉
 

You make funny, relatable, and informative videos online. How did you get into content creation, and how has the journey of cultivating an online community been?
I started posting on TikTok during quarantine, which was a very strange and strenuous time in my life, even barring the pandemic. After a while, posting whatever weird crap I thought of became second nature. Now, I just put a little more effort into my jokes. It’s really comforting to know that I make some people laugh on a regular basis, but it’s also a bit unnerving that people know so much about me. They remember my astrological placements and my past six haircuts… which is a bit intimidating.

Your TikTok is a treasure trove of different topics. How do you decide what you’re going to post?
I don’t really take too long to think about topics. Most of my comedy is about exaggerating opinions on unimportant things to the most extreme degree I can. It creates a lot of really interesting comment section arguments, which I do enjoy scrolling through.

Among the many things you discuss online are your musings on being a transgender woman. Since it’s Trans Awareness Week, we’d love to hear your insights on how our readers (particularly those who are cisgender) can show up for trans folks all the time?
I think the biggest thing cisgender people can do is learn to really see people as who they are, not just as a person with an identity. Learning to hold two thoughts at once, that cis women and trans women are different in so many ways, but united on so many fronts, takes a lot of self-examination. I think it’s hard to understand trans people without recognizing that, even as a cis person, your gender is just as much an identity as mine.

We can’t stop seeing this video circulate on X/Twitter these days, even though you posted it nearly a year ago. So, in the spirit of its virality, what’s a recent meal you made that you loved? 
As for that video, I swear Twitter thinks I made that one video and then evaporated into thin air. They’ll play that on a screen on my tombstone someday. Anyway, I just recently made my first pot roast, and I would share a recipe but I’m still tweaking it. It’s good, but it can always be better.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Other than that, contrary to what Twitter thinks, I am alive!