
CONTACTAbout UsCAREER OPPORTUNITIESADVERTISE WITH USPRIVACY POLICYPRIVACY PREFERENCESTERMS OF USELEGAL NOTICE
© 2025 Equal Entertainment LLC.
All Rights reserved
All Rights reserved
By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
We need your help
Your support makes The Advocate's original LGBTQ+ reporting possible. Become a member today to help us continue this work.
Your support makes The Advocate's original LGBTQ+ reporting possible. Become a member today to help us continue this work.
Performance artist Justin Bond has written an essay to announce a new name -- Mx Justin Vivian Bond -- and gender identity.
Bond, who once portrayed the female half of the Tony award-nominated duo Kiki & Herb, has "chosen to add Vivian to my name because I want a name that provides a balance to the traditionally male name of Justin and because it means 'to be alive.' To really be alive and live my experience of the world as fully as possible I have to give life to the parts of me I feel I was asked to kill off as a child."
Bond discusses plans for hormone treatments, writing, "So I remain on the fence but I am beginning hormone treatments not to become a woman but in order to actualize what I've always known myself to be -- a trans person. I want my body to be a declaration and physical manifestation of my transgendered spirit. When I was younger I used to refer to myself as a 'non-op transexual,' meaning I was a transexual who didn't need to have surgery to assert what I was. But I was wrong because without assertions people can only make assumptions and I no longer wish to indulge or refute the assumptions or labels other people choose to place on me, I simply want to inhabit my very clear vision of myself."
Bond also writes about the use of a new prefix, Mx, saying, "I don't like any of the prefixes currently in common usage as none of them seem to apply ... check one: _Mr. _Mrs. _Ms. _Miss. None of these work so I have adopted Mx because it implies a mix which is the least offensive and most general way I've been able to come up with to find a prefix that clearly states a trans identity without amplifying a binary gender preference, or even acknowledging the gender binary at all."
In a 2009 interview with The Advocate, Bond asked to be described as "trans-fabulous performance-activist."
From our Sponsors
Most Popular
Watch Now: Pride Today
Latest Stories
Celebrated queer poet Andrea Gibson dead at 49
July 14 2025 6:25 PM
19 photos from 1990s San Francisco show the roots of butch and femme culture
July 14 2025 2:12 PM
Ellen DeGeneres shows unexpected support for Rosie O'Donnell in Trump feud
July 14 2025 12:19 PM