Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

I don’t remember I when I first heard the word fierce used to mean something other than “angry or intense,” but I do have strong recollections of when the alternative definition really started to resonate. It was 2010 and I had just started watching the second season of RuPaul’s Drag Race after a friend had told me about the show.

As an embryonic trans woman recently cut loose from a marriage that kept my true self (and hopes and dreams) locked away at the back of a closet, I was too…