Transgender Pinay Meredith Talusan is LGBT staff writer for BuzzFeed


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A Filipina faced bullying and discrimination in the past because she happened to be an albino and a transgender woman.

Meredith Talusan found her voice in social media as a writer, editor, and an advocate. When she came out as a transgender woman last year, she felt discriminated and she even faced eviction from her campus housing, at one point.

She then took to social media to share her trans issues and experiences.

“When I complained at Cornell (University) tungkol dun sa sitwasyon ko sa Telluride House, everybody, even people who were sympathetic to me, said na you’ll have a hard time getting a job dahil you will be known as the person who complains a lot,” she said.

But Talusan proved critics wrong.

Last week, she was hired as a full time LGBT staff writer for BuzzFeed. Talusan is the organization’s first openly transgender woman staff writer.

With a global audience of more than 200 million, Buzzfeed now provides Talusan a bigger stage to share breaking news, entertainment, and videos about trans experiences across the web.

“I don’t know of any other news organization that has that type of position, hindi lang LGBT, pero specifically about trans,” she said.

On her first day at work, she filed her first story. It’s her take on US Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton’s “trans panic” defense in the murder case of Filipino transgender Jennifer Laude.

“I will be writing personal essays and criticism, analysis. Talagang it gives me an opportunity to delve very deeply into trans issues and to be able to communicate aspects of trans experiences,” she said.

Talusan grew up a boy in Bulacan, Philippines before she came to the US when she was 15. She went to Harvard University as an undergrad and then to Cornell University for her masters in creative writing and doctorate in literature.

Somewhere in between, she says, she transitioned into a woman.

Talusan said she counts fellow transgender Filipina Geena Rocero–a trans rights advocate and model–as her biggest idol.

“Geena is actually the reason why I’m here, dahil when I saw her Ted Talk, that was when I said to myself — if Geena can do it, why don’t I try to do that myself?” she said.

Today, she calls the BuzzFeed office in midtown Manhattan a second home, being one of the most diverse newsrooms in the US.

With an Ivy League education and a trans experience that spans from the Philippines to the US, Talusan said the Web is now her stage for trans advocacy, thanks to her new found voice through BuzzFeed. (Read more on Balitang America.)

Text: Don Tagala, ABS-CBN North America News Bureau

This article has been re-published with permission from ABS-CBNnews.com.



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