We Talk All Things Intersectionality on ‘Living Y Ready’

Intersectionality. What does it mean to you? 

According to the internet, it’s the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. 

But regardless of the broad definition of the term, intersectionality is lived through the lives of many LGBTQAI+ individuals and their unique experiences. On this week’s episode of Living Y Ready, our mental health expert, Dr. Hilda Sandoval sits down with two brave trans women who open up about transgender recovery, stigmas around an HIV diagnosis, and family support. 

Jennifer Rodríguez, a transgender recovery activist, and founder of the Trans Recovery Center opened up about how she turned to substances at first. “The turning point was being at the lowest point in my life, using drugs and dying eventually. I had a negative outlook and I’m grateful that, today, I have a positive outlook.”

Mallory Robinson, who’s a trans-HIV healthcare advocate for LA, had a similar, yet unique experience with her family’s reaction to her diagnosis.

“It was so important for me, being diagnosed in 2011, just trying to figure out what that looks like, especially coming from an afro-Caribbean background, we are Southern Baptist. How do I disclose it to extended family members, and how to navigate it in school?” 

Mallory shares that there is a stigma about going to a Christian college in the South and fighting with an idea of what “normal looks like,” she adds, as she remembers that it was difficult for her to learn how to live with a diagnosis she couldn’t understand. “My mother was having a conversation with my father and said ‘I wonder who’s gonna love our child?’,” she adds.

On this episode of Living Y Ready, we discuss mental health, recovery, and positive habits of people living with HIV. We hear from trans people and people of color with an HIV diagnosis who are navigating self-love and so much more. You don’t wanna miss it!