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Thomi Clinton was born on August 5, 1970 in East Chicago, Indiana and grew up in Mountainburg, Arkansas. Her father worked in farming and drilling. Montainburg was a small, religious, and predominantly White town. Growing up around the rise of the AIDS epidemic, Thomi heard taunting speeches about AIDS and being gay thrown around to spark fear. Thomi, assigned male at birth, was relentlessly bullied growing up for presenting as more feminine and being a ‘gay boy.’ Feeling isolated and terrified, she struggled with her mental health and even attempted suicide as a teen. Still, Thomi persevered and managed to find refuge in devoting herself to mastering her artwork, studying alternative religions to Christianity such as Wicca, and even got a fake ID to visit a gay bar in Fort Smith, Arkansas, to find community there.
At 18, Thomi was kicked out of the home for being gay. She moved to Fort Smith to explore more opportunities, lived out of her car, took odd jobs, got involved in opening local businesses, including a bookshop, all while pursuing her artwork on the side. She then moved to Oklahoma City and was working at an autotrader magazine, her gay erotica fingerprint art started taking off, and soon she gathered the funds to move to Los Angeles.
Thomi moved to LA in her 20s, where she started working at a photography studio and finally began to transition and embrace her identity as a trans woman. In LA, she experienced many challenges: she was sexually assaulted but denied justice or support because she was queer, she struggled with substance use, and struggled financially.
Throughout all this time, Thomi remained active in community organizing for queer folks. Back in Arkansas, she organized Gay Picnics. In Coachella Valley, she helped out at the LGBTQ+ affirming Metropolitan Community Church and impressively formed the Transgender Community Coalition to raise funds for a memorial statue for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. She faced pushback from cis gay men and lesbian women, but she continued to fight for a place for trans people in queer spaces. With impressively little support, Thomi launched the Transgender Health & Wellness Center in 2018 that provided access to laser and electrolysis, clothing, and a room for private conferences for trans folks. Thomi worked tirelessly to educate herself and fund the center. The Transgender Health & Wellness Center has since expanded to Palm Springs, Riverside, San Diego, and continues to grow through Southern California. It is the largest trans-led organization in the world and has expansive services, ranging from a Marsha P Johnson LGBT Youth Drop-In Center and LGBTQ+ social services called Healing Rainbows, which provide support for domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, as well as provide rapid rehousing and social services for LGBTQ+ people.
Outside of the Transgender Health & Wellness Center, Thomi also works with multiple Police Departments to make law enforcement safer for trans folks in Riverside County, such as creating training programs about asking folks for pronouns during processing, preparing to house trans people in jails, etc. She wraps up our conversation about her commitment to seeing the inherent good in people, her hopes for providing more support for trans people struggling in cycles of survival sex and substance abuse, and her plans to build a more inclusive world.