Kat Blaque is an American

YouTuber A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006. Influence Influe ...

and activist.

Early life

Blaque was born in

Lynwood, California Lynwood is a city in Los Angeles County, California. At the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 69,772, down from 69,845 at the 2000 census. Lynwood is located near South Gate and Compton in the central portion of the Los Angeles ...

and raised in

Walnut, California Walnut is a city in the eastern part of Los Angeles County in the U.S. state of California. At the 2010 census, the city had a population of 29,172, and in 2019 the population was estimated at 29,685. The greater Walnut Valley is located betw ...

. She is adopted. In middle school, Blaque began to question her

gender identity Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the ...

and started to identify as genderqueer. She began identifying as a

trans woman A trans woman or a transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity, may experience gender dysphoria, and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and s ...

in college. Blaque graduated from the

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

in 2012 with a BFA in

character animation Character animation is a specialized area of the animation process, which involves bringing animated s to life. The role of a character animator is analogous to that of a film or stage actor and character animators are often said to be "actors wit ...

Career

YouTube

Blaque started video blogging in December 2010. Her YouTube channel ''Kat Blaque'' is focused on discussing race, gender, and other

social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, Equal opportunity, opportunities, and Social privilege, privileges within a society. In Western Civilization, Western and Culture of Asia, Asian cultures, the concept of social ...

issues. Blaque has described herself by saying, "I'm a woman, I'm black, I'm curvy and I'm trans. There are a lot of things that I deal with. When I talk about those things, I am literally talking about my embodiment of these intersections." In 2017 Blaque started a weekly YouTube series called ''True Tea'' where she answers questions that viewers send her about racism,

transphobia Transphobia is a collection of ideas and phenomena that encompass a range of negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards transgender people or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence or anger to ...

, black culture and several other topics. Blaque has made guest appearances on several other YouTuber's videos such as the BuzzFeed video about

gender pronouns Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take di ...

. She has also collaborated with YouTubers such as Franchesca "Chescaleigh" Ramsey and Ari Fitz. '' The Advocate'' reports that "Her YouTube videos are shown as educational tools in classrooms".

Illustration

In 2015, Blaque also teamed up with fellow artist and YouTuber Franchesca Ramsey to animate Ramsey's story "Sometimes You're A Caterpillar". This short film addresses privilege and has since been shared on several sites, including Everyday Feminism,

Upworthy Upworthy is a website dedicated to positive storytelling. It was started in March 2012 by Eli Pariser, the former executive director of MoveOn, and Peter Koechley, the former managing editor of ''The Onion''. One of Facebook's co-founders, Chris ...

, Mic, and MTV.

Other ventures

Blaque has contributed to websites such as Everyday Feminism and the Huffington Post's Black Voices section. Blaque participated in a panel on writing

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...

characters at

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United State ...

's 2015

Comic-Con A comic book convention or comic-con is an event with a primary focus on comic books and comic book culture, in which comic book fans gather to meet creators, experts, and each other. Commonly, comic conventions are multi-day events hosted at co ...

and was the keynote speaker at the

University of Toledo The University of Toledo (UToledo or UT) is a public research university in Toledo, Ohio. It is the northernmost campus of the University System of Ohio. The university also operates a Health Science campus, which includes the University of ...

's LGBTQA History month celebration.

References

External links

* * Other YouTube channels: *
Kat Blaque 2.0
*
ART BITCH
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blaque, Kat African-American activists 21st-century American artists 21st-century American women artists 21st-century American women writers 21st-century American writers Activists from California African-American feminists American feminists American women bloggers American bloggers American YouTubers Animators from California American anti-racism activists California Institute of the Arts alumni American female YouTubers Internet activists Intersectional feminism LGBT African Americans LGBT animators LGBT feminists LGBT people from California LGBT rights activists from the United States LGBT YouTubers Living people People from Lynwood, California People from Orange County, California People from Walnut, California Sex-positive feminists Transgender women Transgender rights activists Transgender writers Transfeminists American women animators Patreon creators Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century LGBT people