Transsexual Lesbian Dominatrix, World's First BDSM Crisis Actor
written by the Moon Houston
A crossword puzzle with various clues relevant to the show and show lore.
As a card carrying, certified journalist, I must first inform you that this article is overflowing with bias as I am its director. But I must also inform you, it’s a good fucking show.
It’s a Trans Sexual Life! is a play on the Christmas / ABC Family classic film, but it’s much more than that. In Rose’s words, it’s “sort of surrealist self-portrait in the form of a stage play. It's a story about a struggling BDSM crisis actor who wakes up in an alternate reality where she never transitioned.” Part auto/biography, part satire, “I started writing It's A Trans Sexual Life! as a way to process a very specific grief and collection of traumas related to a lifelong suppression of my sexuality. [...] ”
I read the script and it was good and funny and cool and made me go woah WOAH, but I could’ve bailed after that. I agreed to direct the show because of Persephone’s story herself. She gave me some history lessons that made me understand her point of view, her artistic eye, she told me some of her backstory, her “deep lore” as we call it, and how all this inspired the show. Her story, however, is not an isolated incident. “When I first came out of the closet way back in 2005, it was still commonly believed amongst psychiatrists that Trans Womxn had to be gay men as a prerequisite for a "gender identity disorder" diagnosis. But I've never really been sexually attracted to men. I've always been into other chicks. So I had to walk this really fine line between being able to physically express myself as female (in terms of HRT and getting my legal documents corrected) while also having to bury my unquenchable, sapphic lust. It was like comphet times 2, or maybe comphet squared.”
As a lesbian historian myself (card carrying), I really understood this perspective. Our conversation could've been a podcast, but I’m sure we'd end up on some blacklist or hunted by some group. (At this point, if you’re not on a list, are you even living life?) “Anyway, long story short, along the journey to fully accepting myself and embracing my Gender and Sexual Sovereignty, I've Transitioned and Detransitioned and Retransitioned and been on and off hormones so much, I tried out a bunch of new experimental genders, including some that I made myself, and I spent four years in a sex cult that cloaked itself with a veil of "Feminine Empowerment." It actually turned out to just be grooming us to fulfill the patriarchal fantasies cisgender heterosexual white dudes. I think part of writing this play has kind of been my way of trying to make sense of all that.” Persephone Rose is quite the character, on and off the stage. She’s fun and insightful and, as you can see, has some deep lore, so it wasn’t a hard decision to say yes to being her director, and it’s not hard to see why.
There’s that infamous tumblr post of a TERF saying trans people shouldn’t exist because God made you whatever you were made, to which someone replied that God made wheat but didn’t make bread. (Excuse me, I remember so much and at the same time remember nothing. You remember the feeling not the exact words that were said, right?) Persephone Rose embodies this through and through. When asked the best thing about being trans, Persephone Rose says, “We get to defy the laws of gods and men every time we take a shit. I just think there's something really powerful about that.” Beautiful. Inspired.
Rose recommends It’s a Trans Sexual Life! for people who are or enjoy:
crossdressers
sissies
and, by association, femboys
Persephone Rose’s Amazon bestseller, You're A Girl Now Suck It: Self-Help for Sissies
The Matrix Resurrections by the Wachowski Sister whose name starts with L
Ready Player Two
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
A Queer and Pleasant Danger by Kate Bornstein
and Houston (that’s me!) recommends the show for people who have:
mommy issues
daddy issues
complex relationships with your favorite pieces of media as a child
had to be some version of pushed, pulled, yanked, or dropkicked out of the closet
(this one is specifically for me)
dated people of “the opposite sex” and then later found out they transitioned
bonus points if this has happened more than once
the moronic idea that they could outsmart being sucked into a cult
and last but not least,
dommy issues
It’s a Trans Sexual Life! will be at the Hudson Theater alongside I Don’t Get It on Sunday, April 12, 2026, showtime at 4 pm. Tickets available at https://joywholived.com/events/i-dont-get-it-and-its-a-trans-sexual-life-two-trans-tales.