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Tourmaline aka Reina Gossett

Source: iOne Digital / iOne Digital/Creative Class

Name: Tourmaline (formerly known as Reina Gosset)

Occupation: Content Creator and Activist

Location: New York

How We Know Her: She’s an outspoken activist for the LBGTQ+ community and dope content creator.

Why We Chose Her: Tourmaline has created her own lanes on all fronts, from art to advocacy.

What’s Next: An Activist-in-Residence at Barnard College, she’s busy creating content and touring the world advocating for the LGBTQ+ community.

IG: @tourmaliiine

Activism comes in many forms. Self-taught filmmaker, writer, cultural organizer and activist Tourmaline (formerly Reina Gossett) uses storytelling to remind audiences that Black queer and trans folks influence the world while living a highly visible, yet invisible life.

Activism is in the Roxbury, Massachusetts native’s DNA. Her mother worked in the Labor movement and her dad worked in the Black Power movement. Tourmaline has spent the majority of her career organizing with LGBTQ+ folks and teaching on New York’s infamous Riker’s Island, the correctional facility synonymous with for abuse and neglect. She’s a queeroe (a queer hero) in the LGBTQ+ community speaking truth to power and fighting for trans and gender non-conforming folks to tell their stories, instead of the cisgender crew with the connects and resources.

She goes innnnn on her Instagram about how David France stole her work to create Netflix’s the Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, the pioneering black trans woman (along with Sylvia Rivera) who was a central to the 1969 Stonewall Riots. On the day the Death and Life of Marsha launched, Tourmaline wrote on her IG that she was borrowing rent money. It’s a painful reminder of who gets to tell the stories and who gets pushed out and erased from herstory. Tourmaline’s work, including Happy Birthday Marsha!, Atlantic is a Sea of Bones and Salacia, centers her lens (her work includes film and video) on forgotten and overlooked trans stories. She also co-edited Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility.

Earlier this year, Tourmaline graced the cover of Out magazine, along with her personal queeroe Miss Major and other mothers and daughters of the movement.

On social: IG @ tourmaliiine; Twitter @tourmaliiine

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