Against Me! front woman launches new web series

Punk band Against Me! has come a long way since 2012. First, Laura Jane Grace, formerly Tom Gabel, came out as a transgender woman. Second, the band lost two members, bassist Andrew Seward and drummer Jay Weinberg (who quit over Twitter, mind you). Now the front woman is spinning her choice – a choice to be happy and feel complete – into a message.

Laura Jane Grace is launching a 10-part documentary in partnership with AOL Originals series called “True Trans With Laura Jane Grace.” The web series will center on the punk vocalist jetting off around the world to meet with other transgender men and women who can relate to the hardship of gender dysphonia.

The series intends to put a spotlight on other Transgender people, who are largely misunderstood by society and often not represented enough in the media.                                                                                                    

“True Trans” will air Oct. 10 on AOL to honor National Coming Out Day. It took Grace until she was 31 years old to officially come out as a woman and there are many others besides her who struggle with identifying behind closed doors.

Against Me! acts on what any good band hopes to do: breaking barriers and shattering the stigma.

A woman can have a deeper voice and a man can have a higher speech. It’s just an engrained stereotype, a stereotype Grace intends to break by choosing not to alter her singing voice back when she announced she would be identifying as a woman.                                                                              

Laura Jane Grace is taking on a role that goes infinitely beyond making music by putting on this web series. As an area that is still fresh and gray, it’s a stellar move because Grace is such a noticeable example of a changing society. She comes from a high-profile punk band with more than a decade of credibility for being killer and is out, and people, or at least a lot of people, are completely okay with it.

Billboard records even say that “Transgender Dysphoria Blues” is the band’s highest charting album. In fact, I can tell you that when Laura Jane Grace joined Joan Jett on stage at the Alternative Press Music Awards (APMAS), I didn’t hear anyone sigh irritably or mouth off unclever profanities at the vocalist. Maybe because it was too loud, or maybe because this is a new age where gender change isn’t gossip, it’s bliss.

“You can classify someone as Trans, gender queer, or whatever you want, but what it comes down to is, they’re just people,” Grace said at the end of the series trailer.