Firsts!

There were two firsts today.

The first, First is about a mariachi band,

How the first transgender mariachi woman makes her LGBTQ audience feel ‘special’
‘When I get onstage, I kind of feel untouchable,’ Natalia Melendez, a professional musician with Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Ángeles, told Moneyish.
Market Watch
By Meera Jagannathan
Published: Dec 17, 2018

Natalia Melendez got her introduction to mariachi music as a young kid at her grandmother’s backyard birthday party. She watched, transfixed, as her uncle and other musicians performed with the late mariachi icon Laura Sobrino.

“The whole two-hour set that they did, I didn’t leave,” Melendez, 38, told Moneyish. “I just sat there on the sidelines just watching.”

Decades later, Melendez is in the game as the first transgender woman to work as a professional mariachi musician. The Mexican-American performer, who grew up in a family full of musicians in southern California, learned the violin at age 8 and went on to play with several mariachi groups throughout her teens and adulthood. She now plays violin and sings with the ensemble Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Ángeles (Rainbow Mariachi of Los Angeles), which bills itself as the world’s first LGBTQ mariachi.
[…]
While the group strives for authenticity, Melendez said, it also plays with the traditions of mariachi music — common themes of which include heartbreak, betrayal and love triangles — by bending gender norms. “A man will sing to a man; I sing to a man; a girl will sing to a girl,” Melendez said.

The point, she added, is to make members of their LGBTQ audience “feel special.” “We wanted to give that to the gay community. We wanted the gay men to feel a man sing to them. We wanted another lesbian to feel, ‘Oh my God, this girl just sang to me. I never had that before — this is different, but it was so beautiful.’”

And the second First you all probably heard about…

In a first, transgender woman competes in Miss Universe competition
Miss Spain, 27-year-old Angela Ponce, broke barriers in the 66-year-old competition, which this year was held in Bangkok, Thailand.
NBC News
By Tim Fitzsimons
December 17, 2018

While she didn’t win the crown, Angela Ponce broke barriers on Monday in the 67th Miss Universe pageant. The 27-year-old Spanish beauty became the first transgender woman to ever participate in the international competition.

“I never imagined (I would make it to Miss Universe) because I lived in a society where everyone said I couldn’t do that,” Ponce told NBC’s "Today" through a translator. “And I didn’t have the information to realize that my dream to be a woman could ever actually be realized.”
[…]
Hailing from southern Spain, Ponce won her first pageant in 2015, just three years after the Miss Universe pageant rejected Jenna Talackova from Canada’s Miss Universe pageant because she was not a “naturally born” female. Talackova threatened legal action, and the organization — then owned by Donald Trump — relented and changed the rules to allow transgender women to compete.

It was an uphill battle: Ponce said she faced discrimination as a model and was rejected from jobs because of her gender identity. Fortunately, Ponce said her family embraced her identity and supported her decision to live openly as a woman.

Congratulations to all the Firsts, not only these two trans people but all the others who are the first to come out in their employment, the first to come out in their social group, or the first to blaze a new trail.

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This morning’s meeting went very good, as usual I was the only trans woman there at the meeting, I knew many around the table but for some I was the first trans woman they met.

The attendees were from non-profits, for-profit, and state agencies and we discussed assisted care, long term care, and home health care for the aging LGBTQ community.