Alexandra Billings arrives to the 2017 Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival “Transparent” Season 4 Screening on July 15, 2017 in Los Angeles, California.
Award-winning transgender actress Alexandra Billings says supporters of President-elect Donald Trump mass reported her profile on TikTok, leading to it being permanently banned from the video-sharing platform. Despite this, she has pledged to keep defiantly speaking about her identity and trans issues on social media.
“Since the day [Donald Trump] became Chief Cook and Bottle Washer, I noticed my numbers on the Tickety were going up. Very quickly,” she wrote in a November 15 Instagram post. “This has happened before. And ever since the DTs began the MAGA Cult has found myTikTok’s triggering. And like most cowards, they are bullies…. So instead of facing me human to human, they got together, mass reported me, and got me permanently banned.”
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“I believe these humans are lost,” she wrote. “As if someone had pushed them all collectively down a spiral staircase and they can’t seem to find their way out. And if they think my Transness is ‘too much,’ that what I am has been shoved in their face long enough, and that my community needs to go back into the closet, they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
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“They think this is somehow going to silence me,” Billings continued, “They think that somehow I’m going to remain quiet. Docile…. [but] I will also be talking about transgender rights; non-binary humans, my marriage to a cis woman, being mixed race, 62 and living with HIV. I will continue to talk about being an ex sex-worker and living in recovery from heroin, opiates, booze, and cocaine. I will talk about being both an artist and a professor of acting at USC [University of Southern California]. I will talk about teaching young people which I have done for over four decades.”
She said she would also continue to talk about “playing sports with cisgender women, going into women’s public locker rooms and changing clothes, using women’s public restrooms since 1989,” and added, “I will remind the cult that it is never us who brings up genitalia. It is them. And above all, I will talk about the transgender youth and their need for Trans healthcare and for them to be lifted up seen and honored.”
In September 2017, Billings made history by appearing in possibly the first-ever full-frontal nude scene portrayed by a trans actress in a television series. The scene occurred in the fourth season of the Amazon dramatic series Transparent.
In the show, Billings played Davina, the friend and mentor of lead character Maura, a transwoman who came out in her older adulthood. Billings was also the first openly trans actress ever to play a trans TV character through her appearance in the 2005 TV movie prequel Romy and Michelle: In the Beginning.
According to The Daily Beast, Billings was also originally cast in the lead role of the 2005 trans dramedy Transamerica but later lost the role to cisgender actress Felicity Huffman in order for producers to get more financial backing for the film.
Billings is also a cabaret singer and has used her notoriety to raise awareness about transgender political challenges, lifetime experiences and the history of trans activism. She has won the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award, the 2017 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comedy Series, one Joseph Jefferson Award and five After Dark Awards for her theater work in Chicago Theatre.
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