ST. LOUIS — June is Pride Month and it's a time when voices of the LGBTQ+ community are celebrated.
Jordan Elizabeth Braxton has been an inspiration and guiding light for transgender people in St. Louis and beyond.
“Being transgender is not a choice. It's who I am. It's who I was born to be,” Braxton said.
She's a drag performer, advocate for HIV prevention and sexual health, Director of Diversity and Inclusion for Pride St. Louis, LGBTQ+ Advisory Committee Chairwoman for the City of St. Louis, activist, volunteer, transgender advocate and pageant queen.
“I love helping people and I'm always a fighter. I'm a fighter and believer in people's rights. I've been advocating for HIV and STI prevention, and trans rights and intersex rights for the last 37 years,” Braxton said.
She has done a lot of work with Promo, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, and taken lots of trips to Jefferson City to speak with legislators.
“I testify against a lot of the anti-trans bills out there. And I tell them, I knew from birth, that I was actually a female and not male,” she added.
Braxton said her sex assigned at birth was male and she didn't feel right identifying as a man.
“I knew from a very young age, I told my family, ‘I'm not a boy. I'm a girl,’ but they ignored it,” Braxton said.
At that point in her life, her loved ones called her Leon and knew her as a gay man. She went through decades of her life struggling with her gender identity.
“It's called dysphoria. And I had dysphoria really bad,” Braxton said.
One thing that helped her be her true self was performing in drag as Dieta Pepsi and competing in pageants.
“First it was Leon. Then there was Miss Leon who fried chicken. And then there was Dieta, who was the performer, and all those people helped me get to Jordan. It was just a stepping stone. I tell folks, I don’t have a dead name. I have a former name. Because I had a whole career in banking and stuff before I even started doing this,” Braxton said.
Even before she was Dieta Pepsi, she almost went with a different drag name.
“I was painting my bedroom in my apartment and I found the paint in the basement of my apartment. So I was painting and it was kind of this light blue paint with a tint of green and it was very pretty. So I ran out and I said I need to go to Lowe's and get some more. I looked at the paint color and it said Odessa Blue so I thought that was a pretty name,” Braxton said.
But her Drag Mother wasn’t crazy about that name, so they started brainstorming.
“We were thinking about it and then on the table there was this glass of watered-down Diet Pepsi. So Jeff said look you’re the same color as his Diet Pepsi and that’s how the name Dieta Pepsi came to be,” she said.
She was crowned Miss Gay Missouri in 1991.
“I love pageants. I love crowns. I love everything about them. I've always been a performer. I have a degree in theater from Drury University in Springfield,” she said.
Now she's hitting the pageant stage again for the first time in more than 20 years.
“One of the things I'm most proud of is being Miss Trans Great Plains and so I'm going to Milwaukee November 7th through the 10th, to compete for Miss Trans USA, but I'm going to compete as Jordan, not as Dieta,” Braxton said.
One day her friends took her to the doctor to get Botox, but when the doctor came into the room, she said, ‘I'm actually here to put you on a diet and we need to do some blood work.’ Those results changed her life forever.
“We found out that my chromosomes, some of them are actually female chromosomes. I said, 'oh,' and she said, 'some of your hormones are also female.' So she said 'technically, you are a pseudo hermaphrodite or in clinician's term intersex,'” Braxton said.
When she was 53, she started taking estrogen.
“The moment that I took that first estrogen pill, everything became normal and everything felt right,” she added.
And at 55 she made the jump to transition socially.
“I woke up one morning and said, 'I'm gonna transition today.' I put on hair, makeup, went to work told them my name is Jordan. and guess what happened? No one batted an eye,” Braxton said.
She also told her family everything in one day.
“My brother said, 'OK, I'm gonna love you unconditionally, no matter what.' And that made me cry and everyone in my family has been the same way. Just unconditional love,” she said.
So at 62 years old she took the final step in her transition journey: surgery.
“It's called vaginoplasty. So it took me five years because I had some medical conditions that prevented that. I had some heart issues too," Braxton said.
For that surgery she needed to travel to Chicago to see Dr. Loren Schechter at Rush University Medical Center.
“I got everything prepared, went to Chicago, had surgery, I had my aftercare in Chicago, and then the rest is history. So it's been a year and a few months since I've had my surgery,” she said.
Dr. Schechter said gender-affirming care is safe, effective, medically necessary and truly life-saving.
“We know what happens when people with severe dysphoria don't receive care, self-harm, worsening anxiety, worsening depression, worsening gender dysphoria. We're here to help people to provide lasting personal comfort to align people's bodies with their identities,” Schechter said.
He said listening to people can go a long way in dispelling hatred and misinformation.
“For people who are unfamiliar with gender-affirming care, listening to people, like Miss Braxton, tell her story. And listen to what she's saying and listen to how important and how impactful surgery was for her,” Schechter said.
5 On Your Side’s Laura Barczewski asked Braxton, “If you could tell someone who maybe doesn't understand what it means to be trans, what would you say to them?”
Braxton responded, “Trans is beautiful. I have trans joy. It's just who I am. It's not anything different. Just like I ask people all the time, ‘So when you ask me what it's like to be trans, I ask you what it's like to be a female? What's it like for you to be straight? What's it like for you to be gay?’ It's no different. It's just who I am. And people should not be judged on their genitalia. They should be judged by their character and their heart and how they help people,” Braxton said.