The Outs showrunner and star Adam Goldman is in full-fledged boss mode while filming outside Sid Gold’s Request Room, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it piano bar off W. 26th St. in Manhattan. He readies equipment, fine-tunes lighting and framing, rounds up fellow talent Sasha Winters, Mark Junek, and William DeMeritt — and he even puts this unsuspecting reporter to work. It’s a 7pm bar exterior shoot in early November, and while it’s unseasonably warm, rush hour foot traffic abounds.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Goldman — sincere, but understandably preoccupied — asks as executive producer Vaughn Schoonmaker (of Michael Urie’s Cocktails & Classics) ushers me to the scene’s background. There, we nonchalantly redirect passersby from stepping through the shoot, so expect a “background talent” cameo from yours truly. (“Nobody gets to come to the set for free — everybody’s gotta work,” costar and Brooklyn-based photographer Hunter Canning later jokes.)

Working alongside director of photography Jay Gillespie, Goldman jumps fluidly from setting the scene, getting his lines out, and checking the take. Here, his character, Mitchell, is chatting alone with his best friend Oona’s new beau, Kevin (DeMeritt, The Normal Heart). It seems a stiff encounter. Mitchell is reliably dry, bristling slightly in response to this unfamiliar company. But when the camera’s done rolling, Goldman is a cool customer — precise, certainly, but patient, adept, and confident. The 30-year-old sports Mitchell’s trademark wide-framed glasses and one of his many cardigans (this one grey with a thick, high collar). “The one magical aspect of this show is that Mitchell never repeats a cardigan, so I’ve been gearing up,” Goldman says with a laugh.

The cast of The Outs

Erin Shipley for BuzzFeed News

It’s fast-approaching three years since we last heard from Mitchell and his brassy, blonde bestie, Oona (Winters, Eat Our Feelings). Subsequently, cast and crew are notably excited tonight, and with good reason. This is their fifth week filming The Outs’ much-anticipated second season, which officially returns as part of Vimeo’s first slate of original programming in early 2016. If you’re a millennial gay man, you know why this is a big deal.

Pegged with the tagline, “Just because it’s over doesn’t mean you’re over it,” The Outs is the story of Mitchell and Jack (Canning, Shades of Blue), longtime boyfriends who are on the, well… you know. At the series’ onset, Mitchell’s unsuccessfully dating while Jack (lean, curly-haired, and mischievous) is successfully bedding just about anyone. They’re broken up and spiteful, only speaking when it’s to unearth old grievances and land a jab (“Blue makes you look desperate.”). But through the course of its seven episodes, we see them navigate new loves and friendships while trying to regenerate something of a friendship of their own. The hit Web series set the blogosphere ablaze upon its spring 2012 premiere thanks to its candid, unconventional, and wonderfully written take on 20something gay life in the big city.

“It’s hard to say it’s huge,” Goldman says.“It’s not TV huge. It’s barely Internet huge. It’s niche huge.”

Niche, sure, but niche creeping on cult. Goldman’s audience was so fervent for more of The Outs that all episodes after its pilot were crowd funded via Kickstarter before premiering on theouts.com. Wrapping April 3, 2012, with 49 backers pledging $1,685, The Outs’ first campaign funded the second and third episodes, “Whiskey Dick” and “Moon River.” Those spots gained enough traction that its second campaign in July 2012 had 503 backers pledging $22,339 — nearly triple its $8,000 goal — to fund episodes 4–7.

“It’s hard to say it’s huge. It’s not TV huge. It’s barely Internet huge. It’s niche huge.”

Goldman had even greater success with his second Brooklyn-based project, Whatever this is., in July 2013. Starring many familiar faces from The Outs, this Web series raised $171,447 with 2,174 backers. Posing the question, “How long do you have to hate what you do before you get to do what you love?” Whatever this is. follows a down-on-their luck group of friends who work together as reality TV PAs. Its six episodes continue to showcase unique queer perspectives, namely through its protagonist, Ari (Dylan Marron of Every Single Word).

There’s little doubt Goldman’s ability to create these queer narratives is what inspired his dedicated following.

“At the time [of The Outs], every queer person on TV, for the most part, was a white gay man in his 40s in California considering adoption,” Goldman reflects while switching out for a sleeker pair of glasses. “It was The New Normal, Modern Family… [The Outs] just came at a time pre-Looking when people were starved for a representation of themselves, as we always are. That’s not to say that The Outs is representative of the entire queer community — that’s crazy. No show is representative of the entire straight community.”

It’s an important distinction to make. Admittedly, those who would find explicit representation in The Outs tend to be of a certain subset of gay: white, male, late-20s Brooklynite.

“In the case of this second season, it was more like, 'These are our core characters—let’s build the world around them with all of that in mind, trying to make that as diverse as possible,’” Goldman says.

Adam Goldman (right)

Erin Shipley for BuzzFeed News

Criticisms to that end aside, The Outs has still struck a special chord with audiences looking for a less stereotypical depiction of gay life. Though there are other notable gay web series today, it manages to stand out in part because many of its contemporaries have a weighted fixation on the gay man’s libido, for better or worse. The latest season of Eastsiders, for instance, hinges on its protagonist couple opening their relationship. With Hunting Season, it’s all in the name. And a hit with queer ladies, Be Here Nowish, explores polyamory and similar sexual territory, but more as it relates to spiritual awakening and New Age philosophy.

The Outs takes a humanistic approach to gay living. The series deals with sex, for sure (Mitchell broke up with Jack after catching him mid-coitus with another man, after all), but its characters’ sex drives take a backseat to their friendships, their jobs, their love lives beyond the bedroom. From the start, viewers get invested in more than dramatics of who’s sleeping with whom.

With Season 2, Goldman is attempting to strike gold again. Last we saw The Outs’ Brooklyn family was its seventh installment — a Chanukah Special — in April 2013. Surplus Kickstarter funds allowed the indie series to come to a satisfying, 45-minute close. After a season of heartache, Mitchell and Jack were on the platonic mend; Jack was dating and living with the adorable Scruffy (Tommy Heleringer), who just got accepted to grad school in Iowa; Mitchell and Oona, recovering from a major fallout, took the first steps toward fixing their broken friendship; and Mitchell himself was getting back in the dating game.

“It was funny because the show was really over for a long time,” Goldman says. “I was so happy with the ending and I thought it was a concluded story.”

Then Vimeo came knocking. Considering The Outs and Whatever this is., they ultimately optioned Goldman’s first brainchild.

“What I can say is: Everyone’s getting laid at the start of the season.”

“I originally was like, ‘Why? What’s the point? That show’s over,’” Goldman admits. “[Then] the more I thought about it, making another season right on the heels of the first one felt kind of bullshitty to me, but waiting three years felt like an appropriate time to check in with these characters and see what they were up to. Let’s see how much they had changed.”

Change is inevitable, but good luck trying to get Goldman to tell you about it. Despite Season 2’s secrets being under lock and key, here’s what’s known: Oona and Mitchell are speaking again (and hitting Sid Gold’s for some double date food and drink); Oona’s landed a book deal for her “irreverent” and “obnoxious” wine blog, Wine Wine Wine, and finds herself in what Goldman calls a “risky” relationship; Mitchell is dating a hunky blonde named Rob (Junek) who has a penchant for song and dance; and mums the word on Jack and Scruffy, who wrapped Season 1 with a cliffhanger audiences are still biting their nails over. Lord knows not everyone’s built for long distance!

“I’m being so vague because I really like to keep that stuff secret,” Goldman says apologetically. “What I can say is: Everyone’s getting laid at the start of the season.” He goes on to say that an apropos tagline for Season 2 would be just the opposite of the last: “Just because you’re over it, doesn’t mean it’s over.”

Revisiting Sid Gold’s the following afternoon, Goldman promises a “hell-of-a day,” and it doesn’t disappoint. A sizable amount of extras joins cast members new and old for the bustling interior shoot, one Goldman says is the series’ most ambitious yet. While many grab a barstool and chow on Chipotle along the front room’s main bar, Goldman is all movement in the back. He uses his lunch break to prep for an afternoon of smooth sailing by checking in with actors, crew, extras, and press. Such attentiveness continues, too, when the cameras roll, making for a productive and thoughtful work environment that his actors relish.

“Adam’s in his element when he’s on set because his brain works like a director, like a writer, like an actor. I marvel watching him orchestrate and be able to engage on every level,” Heleringer, who plays Scruffy, tells me later by phone. (He’s mysteriously absent from this Sid Gold’s shoot, which may mean the worst for him and Jack. Justice for Scruffy!)

Erin Shipley for BuzzFeed News

Sitting in a booth across the way, however, are Winters and Canning, the former rocking a business bob and little black dress; the latter a dark blue button-up, sleeves rolled to his elbows.

“It’s been totally thrilling and unexpected. It’s awesome,” Winters, whose Web series Eat Our Feelings recently won a Streamy for Best Indie, says of The Outs’ return. “It was in the works for awhile; [Vimeo and Goldman] were talking about it for a long time. I’m always waiting for it to fall apart or not happen, but then it did! It’s go time.”

“I love that we can just get the band back together and not have to Kickstart this time,” Canning adds. “I think the name inherently suggests that Kickstarter shouldn’t be your sustainability model, right? You’re supposed to get something going and then it either flies or it doesn’t.”

Sitting between them today is quite the special guest: none other than three-time Emmy nominee Alan Cumming, who snuck away from filming The Good Wife to resurrect his memorable Chanukah Special cameo. The seasoned Scot actor is a longtime Outs devotee. He first tweeted his love for the series in September 2012, then came on to play an exaggerated version of himself in the Season 1 finale. He’s back today for a quick turn in episode four.

“However you date now, in a major city or elsewhere, your ex is still in your phone, and you’re still friends with them on Facebook, and you’re still following them on Twitter — the show is really about how people don’t fully leave your life the way that we want them to."

“I think the wit of it struck me first, the way that it manages to be so funny and insightful and at the same time not fall into using any easy clichés about the people in it,” Cumming says of his initial fondness for the show. “Most of all, I think I loved the heart of it — how tender it was about getting to know yourself and just existing in this big tough world. That is especially where it is head and shoulders above so many other shows that tell stories of young urban types.”

Of working with Goldman, Cumming continues: “I think he is such a funny, clever, and kind boy — and one of the most talented writer-directors I have worked with. On set he is always concerned and caring of everyone, but also always able to spout a pithy bon mot.”

This skill is made particularly clear while inside the piano bar. Goldman is juggling extras, cast mates, crew, and Cumming, but he keeps his cool, saying he’s confident the hours on set are paying off. “Visually, it’s going to really knock people’s socks off,” he assures, nodding to director of photography Gillespie and crediting the newfound production value to Vimeo.

With any luck, scenes of this magnitude will become old hat for Goldman after The Outs’ Vimeo On Demand premiere. Remember: it was just earlier this year that Vimeo’s first original web series, High Maintenance, was picked up by HBO. At the very least, the move to the streaming service ensures greater visibility and a wider audience. By all counts, Goldman is up for the prospect.

“However you date now in a major city or elsewhere, your ex is still in your phone, and you’re still friends with them on Facebook, and you’re still following them on Twitter—the show is really about how people don’t fully leave your life the way that we want them to or the way that they used to be able to,” he says. “As a writer, I hope that it emotionally resonates with people on that level, and [I’m] also just happy to provide another source of queer-centric entertainment for people. I feel like we need it. I wish the show had been around before — and I wish the show was done so I could just fucking watch it now. But unfortunately, we’ve got to finish making it.”

The Outs Season 2 premieres exclusively on Vimeo On Demand in early 2016.

Erin Shipley for BuzzFeed News

Baby steps.

When Madhu Kinnar became India's first transgender mayor.

Via youtube.com

When Mumbai had its largest-ever rally in support of transgender citizens.

Kinnar Maa Samajik Sanstha Trust

And when Manabi Bandopadhyay became the country's first transgender college principal.

Deshakalyan Chowdhury / Getty Images

When a Mumbai daily published India’s first gay matrimonial ad.

Harish Iyer

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You asked, they answered.

We asked the BuzzFeed Community what they wanted to know about agender speaker and writer Tyler Ford. They had plenty to ask — and Tyler had plenty to say.

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Facebook: video.php

When did you realize you were agender?

"I have always felt non-binary identified but I didn't have the words until I was about 23. I had no idea that non-binary people existed. I had no words to contextualize my experiences. So, my entire life has been spent being confused about my gender identity until I finally happened upon the words and happened upon other people like myself."

BuzzFeed/Sarah Karlan

Who inspires your fashion and style?

"I feel like... I do? Oh, probably my mom. I grew up with a very fashionable mother. She was always playing around with jewelry and shoes and is obsessed with makeup, and clothing, and fashion. I grew up around that and got to see what's awesome and fun about expressing your personality through fashion. Other than that, I just generally look for what resonates with me. I love Willow and Jaden Smith also, they're really rad.

BuzzFeed/Sarah Karlan

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Share your favorite queer novels!

As any queer person knows, it's SLIM PICKINGS out there for LGBT representation in TV, film, and books.

(Go Emily Fields!)

ABC Family

Sure, it's gotten easier to find your standard Gay/Lesbian Best Friend side characters.

*eye roll*

NewNowNext

TeenNick

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Found art in a toilet block in Bateman's Bay, Australia.

Devi Lockwood

The community of queer women in Harvard’s class of 2014 was tight — almost claustrophobically so. By the time senior year rolled around, every Saturday night party organized by the Queer Students and Allies or outing to see Mary Lambert/Janelle Monáe/Andrea Gibson perform in Boston brought with it the likelihood of bumping into my ex, my ex’s ex, or my best friend’s ex.

Awkward turtles abounded. Sometimes I would double check with a mutual friend before going to see if a certain person I really didn’t want to run into would be there. Sometimes I just went, because Mary Lambert is worth certain sacrifices.

After one particularly difficult breakup junior year, I moved into the Dudley Cooperative House to rekindle my relationship with food. If there’s one thing I’ve come to know about myself, it’s that my stomach and my broken heart don’t mix. Food nauseates me when I am anxious. The way to get around that is to put myself in the way of deliberately positive kitchen spaces — to let food be a refuge, a source of community.

I was one of 32 undergrads living in the house. We did all our own cooking and cleaning together and rotated chores on a biweekly basis. There was a walk-in fridge full of vegetables and more dried garbanzo beans than we ever had time to cook in one semester. I learned how to make bread, to soak kidney beans, and how to have difficult conversations about things like music volume and the type of cheese that we ordered in bulk.

Senior fall, I started to date one of my housemates. She lived one floor below.

We had voiced attraction to each other the summer before but didn’t act on it — then she moved in. I bumped into her for the first time since summer break when I was wrapped only in a towel en route to the shower, and then again in the kitchen as I made myself stir-fried veggies after rowing practice. We smiled and talked about our summers and made eye contact that lingered.

One week later we celebrated the new semester with the rest of our housemates at the mixer, a party that moves from room to room.

The night started with karaoke and margaritas on a ground floor bedroom with three walls covered in tin foil. Upstairs we wrote compliments for our 32 housemates on pieces of construction paper scotch-taped to our backs. Later we played life-size truth-or-dare Jenga with planks of wood (someone completed a naked lap outside the house), spun the bottle, and, finally, had a dance-off in the driveway that ended with a noise complaint from a neighbor.

The bottle didn’t spin in our direction, but my soon-to-be girlfriend and I lingered behind our housemates in the hallway and kissed.

I loved how living in the co-op gave us shared spaces for intimacy. When I was washing the dishes in our industrial-size kitchen, my girlfriend would come up behind me and slide her hands around my hips. I melted into the soap.

I looked forward to seeing her, to doing readings for class sitting next to each other in the alcove of sunlight near the front door. I loved sorting mail into her box when it arrived on the front stoop. On Sundays we made each other breakfast with heart-shaped slices of beetroot on top and, when the weather was nice, ate outside on the porch.

In the co-op I was part of a support system that could hold me, no matter how complex and messy I felt.

The kitchen became an intimate space that I looked forward to in particular. I was in love, and we were surrounded by 32 other complex, vibrant, alive people going about their own business of cooking and living and loving and crying and writing papers and solving problem sets. If I needed to vent, someone was there to listen.

In the co-op I was part of a support system that could hold me, no matter how complex and messy I felt.

One thick April afternoon, one of my housemates came into the dining room in tears — she and a long-term partner had just ended things. This housemate and I weren’t particularly close, but the three of us who happened to be in the room at the time leapt into action. One housemate gave her a hug; the other brought a pillow and stroked her hair. I went to the kitchen to make a pot of rooibos tea to share.

“Keep on crying for as long as you need,” my housemate said. “We’re here for you.”

This is what community looks like. We give and we receive — food and advice and stories.

Graduation came and went.

The birth-to-college map I had followed for so long burned into pieces. After all these years of structure, what was next?

The cooperative house community dispersed. My former housemates moved into apartments with significant others in Somerville, Massachusetts, or went on to finance jobs in New York City or to tech paradise in San Francisco. My girlfriend and I accepted the same free housing gig in a cinder-block building in Harvard Law School. We shared a kitchen and several bathroom stalls with a hallway full of astrophysicists, none of whom I got to know by name. Our job was to hand out sheets and towels and to be on call if anyone locked themselves out of the building.

My girlfriend and I stopped kissing in the kitchen — there wasn’t any space, and what if one of the astrophysicists walked in? When one of us had a bad day at work, we would come home to a conversation with a support network of one, rather than a support network of 32. There’s only so much that one person can do.

Early on in the relationship, I held my lover in my arms and let myself imagine the sweet forevers — the apartment with a tomato vine on the windowsill — grad school, family Thanksgivings, our lives intertwined. We could tell the story of how we met as something certain, a well from which to draw buckets of comfort year after year: the perfect domestic bliss.

What happens when those forevers take flight into a Boston summer sunset, over the Copley building — gone?

I grew frustrated with her. We fought over mundane things, our voices staccato and an octave higher than usual. The cinder-block walls echoed our arguments.

Which was all a way of articulating:

I want a kind of love and safety and support that you cannot give.

Some relationships work because they work, and some relationships work because of context. Our relationship was the latter. Place determines the kinds of interactions you can have in that place. Outside of the cooperative house, outside of that temporary stability of senior year, we couldn’t be together.

Some relationships work because they work, and some relationships work because of context. Our relationship was the latter.

We broke up in a boil-over rage one Tuesday at 9 p.m.

So we’re breaking up, then. That’s it?

That’s it.

Teary and directionless, I walked outside and met an old friend. We climbed the steps of Widener Library and looked across the quadrangle of grass, purplish in the night, to the steps of Memorial Church. Convocation was held there some four years ago, back before we made a mess of things by loving one another. I didn’t know it then, but in a little more than a year, one of my rowing teammates would get married on those steps.

My friend put her head on my shoulder, her arm around my back. Her octopus tentacle earring dug into my clavicle, but I didn’t want to move. When I dried my eyes enough to look up, the clouds looked like little islands I could hop between.

Can I do this?

Love and safety and structure seemed as far away as those clouds.

For three arduous weeks, my ex and I were still living next door to each other. I stopped eating regularly because I was nervous that we would run into each other in the kitchen. Her eyes could kill.

People complimented me as I lost weight. I felt like I was disappearing. I didn’t want to disappear — I had just forgotten how to eat.

It is virtually impossible to hide from your millennial ex on the internet, but I did find refuge. I met up with 30-year-old queers who had nothing to do with my college through the Autostraddle Boston community. They too had survived heartbreaks. We went to Shakespeare in the Park and ate crackers with pesto while sitting on checkered blankets. I slept on their couches on the nights I wasn’t on call in the dreaded dorm building where my ex slept and ate. I house-sat for a travel writer and her orange cat.

I said goodbye to Boston.

“The key is first breathing onto the scoop of the utensil, darling.”

Lindy and I sat across from each other at a rickety table on her porch. Dense vines twined around the railings. The air was dense with Southern Hemisphere summer — February 2015. I cycled here from Auckland.

“Yes! Yes, that’s it.”

The spoon adhered to my nose for half a second before falling to the porch floor. I picked it up and tried again.

It is virtually impossible to hide from your millennial ex on the Internet.

“Breathe a little more condensation onto it next time.”

Lindy took a deep sip of lemongrass tea and exhaled, long and smooth into the afternoon.

“Lindy,” I ask, “how did you and Murray meet?”

She paused, teaspoon in hand, and closed her eyes while she stuck the spoon to her nose. “At a Shakespeare meet-up, dear. Friends of friends introduced us. It was only a few years ago.”

Lindy and Murray grow fruit together on the outskirts of Whanganui, New Zealand, and distill the sweetness into kefir. Their love for each other seeps through the trees.

I gave Lindy a botched history of my own love life, because that is what you do while learning to carry a spoon on your nose. “Being a queer woman among a small community of queer women at university brings its own set of messes. It’s a relief to be so far away from all that now.”

Lindy’s spoon finally clattered to the table. We both laughed.

“It’s not a failure to end a relationship when it's its time to end,” Lindy said, matter-of-factly. “The failure is in not learning something from that. And you loved! That itself is something worth celebrating.”

My favorite question to ask couples: “How did you meet?"

Gorgeous stories bubble to the surface: “Drunk at a bar... she was stuffing french fries into a keyhole." "Our friends introduced us and it just fit." "We sat down at a restaurant and realized that we both wanted a family, that we were done with dating.”

Two love stories are never the same.

August 2015: I rode my bicycle to the grocery store in a coastal town in Queensland, Australia, to buy an avocado.

I was about to swing my leg over the top tube when a blonde woman with a Canadian accent smiled and said, “Hey, you must be on a big bike tour!”

Five minutes later I rode to her house. We stayed up late sharing stories of water births and woke up mid-morning to tend the garden, mounding dirt over potato sprouts.

We rode our bikes to a wildlife reserve and parked by a tree to walk. The path wound through a paperbark forest surrounded by swamp. Our steps covered wooden planks and stepping stones — tall cylinders of concrete — that would be almost submerged in the wet season. That August the ground was dry, dry. There was less than a foot of rainwater in the tank. We took short showers.

“Twenty years ago, I traveled from Canada to Osaka to work as a ski instructor and English teacher,” Peg said to the trees. “I lived in a 13th-floor apartment in the city. One day I opened the door and stared straight into the most gorgeous blue eyes attached to the most gorgeous man I have ever seen.”

That guy was Pete, who later said that when he saw Peg, his tongue rolled out across the floor and he had to roll it back up again before he could talk to her.

Pete had a dream two years before this chance meeting on the 13th floor. In his dream a woman was walking down the beach with a child in each hand. When he saw Peg, he knew that she was that woman.

In October 2014, the morning I left Los Angeles for Fiji, I opened up my Facebook feed. One of my rowing teammates from university, who's now in medical school, is getting married. The groom? Her lacrosse-playing boyfriend, who will soon join the Army. In their photos they look like Barbie and Mr. Athletic Savior of Our Nation. Their photos were taken on the very steps where I mourned my heartbreak last July.

My teammate is 23. My mom gave birth to me when she was 24. My best friend’s mom was married at 23.

I am 23.

Why would someone voluntarily commit to an early onset of domesticity?

For a millisecond, I was painfully jealous. I long, sometimes, for domestic stability. The longing creeps up at odd moments: when I am cycling under a viaduct in New Zealand or setting up the tent I now call home.

Here I am, floating on two tires of air, learning to love myself in motion.

I want a tomato plant. I want a sunny porch. I want four walls and a lover to come home to. I want a landline telephone and Boston snow.

To still want these things is terrifying. I am a solo female touring cyclist. I define myself in motion. I am tethered to no one but myself. I don’t want to get married. I want to be the peripatetic person, the writer, I am becoming.

My longing for the stability of a home, a garden, and a relationship is, in the end, half-baked. Domesticity is something I do desire slightly, but not enough to follow the map.

A year and a half ago I broke up with a person and a place at the same time. The finality of ending things — with my girlfriend, with a city I love — set me free.

After all this time, I’m learning to let myself yearn. I’m learning that unresolved yearnings are a truth of human life. I burned my maps, and I have more regrets, possibly, than I would if I had followed them. Burning a map opens me to more feeling, not less. But that’s OK, isn’t it? Pain is livable.

I burned my maps in search of wonder, in search of the world’s wild beauty. And here I am, floating on two tires of air, learning to love myself in motion. I am alive in the mess of being — free in the grasp of the unknown.

LGBT Australians are still waiting for law reform in a number of areas – but some nice stuff happened along the way.

When this busker drowned out an anti-gay preacher in Sydney's Pitt Street Mall.

youtube.com

When Australian businesses showed their support for marriage equality with a full-page advertisement in The Australian.

BuzzFeed

When strangers donated thousands of dollars so loving couple Lee Bransden and Sandra Yates, struggling with their finances and Lee's terminal illness, could marry in New Zealand.

Bill Hedges / Gotya Photography

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“I honestly saw a chance to help change the perspective of MY community, but I wanted to maintain my dignity,” wrote the trans model and actor.

Model Amiyah Scott was cast in Season 8 of The Real Housewives of Atlanta as a "friend" of the Housewives. She would have been the first trans reality personality on the Bravo show.

Instagram: @kingamiyahscott

But it seems like maybe that's all viewers will get. Scott opened up about her experience filming with a message on Instagram:

Instagram: @kingamiyahscott

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“Stop thinking about Natalie Dormer while you’re on a date.”

Go on more first dates:

saafin.tumblr.com

And second dates too:

that-crazy-short-girl.tumblr.com

Stop thinking of Natalie Dormer on said dates.

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“You’ve gone through so much trouble to be a woman. Don’t be a stupid one. Be a smart one.”

Corey Maison

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It’s been a long year.

2015 was a BIG year for marriage equality in Australia. Here's what the hell happened.

Torsten Blackwood / AFP / Getty Images

The year kicked off with prime minister Tony Abbott in charge.

Stefan Postles / Getty Images

A long-time opponent of same-sex marriage, advocates knew chances of legislating under Abbott were slim.

He had shown no signs of granting a free vote on the issue to government MPs, meaning frontbenchers would face losing their jobs if they voted in favour of same-sex marriage.

Marriage became a hot topic early when back in March, channels Nine and Seven screened an anti-marriage equality advertisement on the night of the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade.

youtube.com

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It’s close to midnight in early December on Waterfront Road in Olongapo, Philippines, which stretches along the water's edge where U.S. military vessels dock. Dimly lit by yellow tungsten lamps, women’s figures in tight clothing — short dresses or body-hugging jeans — walk down the street, shadows covering their faces. The women tend to travel in small groups of two to six, as do larger figures that come into sight less frequently: foreign men, as it turns out, mostly white, a few black. There are rows of tiny lights on the ocean tonight, from a couple of U.S. military ships in the distance.

At the Olongapo Hall of Justice the afternoon before, U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton was sentenced to six to twelve years in Philippine prison for killing Jennifer Laude, a trans Filipina sex worker, in October 2014. His sentence was downgraded from the usual 20 to 40 years for homicide under Philippine law, in part because Laude failed to disclose to Pemberton that she was trans.

The courthouse is two miles north of Waterfront Road along Rizal Avenue Extension, which turns into Manila Avenue after a bridge over the Kataklan River, but not before passing a roundabout that leads to Magsaysay Drive. There, in a motel near the end of the block, is where Pemberton choked Laude to unconsciousness, then dunked her head in the shallow water of a toilet until she died.

There’s a hush after crossing the river now, as narrow streets full of people give way to broad avenues and wide sidewalks. This area used to be part of the Subic Naval Base, a major U.S. military facility that was closed in 1992, after a volcano eruption that resulted in widespread damage coincided with a wave of Philippine nationalism. The base was then converted into a tax- and duty-free commercial area called the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, with its U.S.-built facilities repurposed for commercial and business use. U.S. service members used to be able to roam around the area outside the former base during their leisure time, where a large number of bars, massage parlors, and other establishments that catered specifically to their needs awaited them. But since Laude’s death last year, the U.S. military has confined service members to the Freeport, and its long stretch of bars and restaurants, right next to the ocean.

“Why would I tell a man I'm trans? I need to say I'm a real woman or they wouldn't want me.”

Now, a young woman, with hair halfway down her back, walks alone on Waterfront, in tight jeans and a shirt with quarter-length sleeves. Her figure is slim and taller than most of the girls on the street. At the very end of the road, off to the side, is an area that the city has fitted with fluorescent streetlights but has yet to be developed. “I take my customers there,” the woman says in Tagalog as she gestures toward the darkness beyond the road, “or we do it in their cars.”

Rose Ann claims she’s 17, but her voice hasn’t noticeably dropped. Her skin is dark, her face long and delicate, with a slightly upturned nose that gives her both a distinctive and proud appearance. It’s doubtful that anyone would identify her as any different from other young Filipina girls, except maybe that she’s taller and thinner than the norm.

When asked if she knew Jennifer Laude, Rose Ann says that Laude once told her she was beautiful and asked her to hang out with her crew, but she felt too young and intimidated by sex work. She saw Laude at local hangouts every once in a while, but did not speak to her except for that one time. Rose Ann recalled that single interaction with the beguiling transgender woman who was dark like her after she'd heard from a friend that she died.

Even though Pemberton killed Laude after finding out that she was trans, Rose Ann insists that she needs to keep her transgender status from U.S. service members who pay her for sex.

“Why would I want to tell a man I’m trans?” she asks, aghast. “I need to say I’m a real woman or they wouldn’t want me.”

Other trans sex workers, along with many locals and members of the LGBT community, confirm Rose Ann’s account: Trans sex workers in Olongapo keep their status secret from service members as a matter of course. These workers have operated in Olongapo even after Laude’s death, taking businessmen from Korea, China, and other countries as customers when U.S. ships were prevented from docking there. In the verdict’s aftermath, local officials and residents are eager for U.S. troops to come back and bring money into the city as they once did. The mayor's office has convened a task force to prevent violent incidents involving trans women and U.S. military service members from occurring in the future, which encourages trans sex workers to disclose their trans status early on. But, because disclosing would inevitably lose them clients, there’s little sign of meaningful change to the conditions that led to Laude’s death at the hands of an U.S. military service member.

For her part, Rose Ann exhibits a confidence beyond even her stated age. She asserts that what happened to Laude won’t happen to her.

“I evaluate their character,” she says, her chin jutting out defiantly as she discusses her customers. “I only go with the gentlemen, and I only give blow jobs. I don’t let them touch me down there.”

But Rose Ann also occasionally goes to motels with customers, where other trans workers have reported finding it more difficult to hide their status, as Laude did the night she died. Rose Ann says she makes sure to be near a phone so she can call in case there’s trouble.

According to a number of other trans women who saw her at the bar the night she and Pemberton met, Laude also took this precaution, and even made sure to bring a friend whenever she had a customer. On being informed of this, Rose Ann expresses a fatalism common in the Philippines, a country that is both deeply Catholic and prone to superstition.

“It was simply Jennifer’s hour,” Rose Ann says. “That was why she died.”

Julita Laude with a picture of Jennifer.

Meredith Talusan / BuzzFeed News

Jennifer’s mother, Julita Laude, does not live in Olongapo, but in the far-flung province of Leyte. She took a ferry and a bus for more than 20 hours to see her daughter’s killer get convicted. She spends a quiet afternoon in her daughter Michelle’s apartment following the verdict, after enduring a battle with Pemberton’s camp the previous night about where the Marine would be detained following his conviction. That fight ended when Judge Roline Ginez-Jabalde ordered Pemberton to be housed at a military camp near the capital, separate from other Philippine prisoners but under local guard.

Julita sits on a brown floral-print couch in Michelle's modest one-bedroom duplex. Despite the conviction, she is far from satisfied, not just because of the short length of Pemberton’s sentence, but also because of the judge’s decision to keep Pemberton away from Philippine jail.

“It’s like if I wore the mask of a younger woman then he killed me when he found out that I am old.”

“We already know he’s a killer, and he still gets special treatment,” she says, her eyes welling up with tears. She also confides that there has been strife between her and Jennifer’s eldest sister, Marilou, over Julita’s decision to use some of the money from Jennifer’s bank account to pay for renovations on her house in Leyte, where she lives with her second husband. She’s concerned about how the money from the judge’s verdict, about 4 million pesos, or around $100,000 – a substantial sum by Philippine standards – would affect her relationships with her children.

Julita’s face shifts from sadness to anger as she recalls another aspect of the case: the judge’s decision that Jennifer’s failure to disclose her trans status was a mitigating factor, which led to Pemberton’s lighter sentence. While Judge Ginez-Jabalde ruled that “[t]here is no lawful aggression that justifies [Pemberton] to defend his honor,” throwing out Pemberton’s claim that he acted in self-defense when he choked Laude, she also wrote, “The mitigating circumstance of passion and obfuscation is present in this case.” The family’s head attorney, Harry Roque, later expressed his anger over this part of the verdict, asserting that Pemberton’s action was “a hate crime against the LGBT community.”

“It’s like if I wore the mask of a younger woman then he killed me when he found out that I am old.” Julita says. “The judge wants to say it’s my fault. It’s just not right.”

Laude’s German fiancé, Marc Sueselbeck, is also incensed at the verdict. He heard about Pemberton’s conviction only from Laude’s family, as he is banned from entering the Philippines following an incident where he scaled a local military camp fence and was deported. But more than being angry, Sueselbeck is not entirely convinced that Pemberton’s testimony is true.

“Only two people know what happened in that room,” Sueselbeck says over video chat from his home in Duisburg, Germany, as he smokes a cigarette. “One of them wants to protect himself, and the other one is dead.”

Marc Sueselbeck

Meredith Talusan / BuzzFeed News

One detail that Sueselbeck finds particularly galling is the fact that a U.S. forensics expert testified to finding the same lubricant on Pemberton’s penis as was found on Laude’s anus, indicating that the two engaged in anal sex. Yet there is no mention of anal sex in Ginez-Jabalde’s verdict, as the court seems to have accepted the Marine’s testimony that he found out about Laude’s status while she was performing oral sex on him.

“It’s possible Jennifer didn’t even want to have sex and he raped her,” Sueselbeck says of Pemberton as he expands on his own theory of how Laude died. “He might have known who she is even before they had sex, and killed her because he couldn’t accept being rejected by a transgender woman.”

Jennifer’s former roommate Jamille was in Olongapo for the verdict but chose not leave her apartment, to avoid the chaos, and could be reached only by video chat. She was with Laude the night she died and claims to have had Jairn Rose — Pemberton’s friend who testified in court that Pemberton told him he might have “killed a he/she” — as her customer.

Jamille, too, is dissatisfied with the verdict, and believes that Pemberton should have been convicted of murder and not homicide. “America is still the favorite,” Jamille says, a reference to the longstanding belief in Olongapo that U.S. citizens get special treatment in cases involving Filipinos, even in the Philippines. “And there is still discrimination. If Jennifer were a real girl, the conviction would automatically be murder.” (In the Philippines, it's still common to refer to cisgender women as "real" in contrast to transgender women.)

As for Laude’s responsibility in disclosing her trans status, Jamille believes that Laude is partly at fault for not telling Pemberton she’s trans, but doesn’t believe this should have been a factor in lightening his sentence.

“Yes, it is our fault that we do not tell men we are not real women, and it is also our fault that we do this type of work,” Jamille says. “But that doesn’t matter when life or death are at stake. At least Pemberton is alive; he’s in jail, but still alive. Jennifer is dead. He should be jailed for life.”

Inside the Ambyanz Nightlife Discobar where Laude and Pemberton met.

Meredith Talusan / BuzzFeed News

Whether or not trans women’s failure to disclose should be a factor in cases where they become victims of violence, there’s no question that the practice leaves the workers in Olongapo vulnerable. Trans workers themselves have claimed that they’ve been threatened or beat up when service members find out they’re trans — and have been discouraged from pressing charges by local police, who have been instructed by national police authorities not to discuss the Laude case with reporters.

However, many local residents are eager to move past the Laude incident altogether. Locals have even accused the Laudes of being selfish by not settling the case early. By having gone to trial, the liberty privileges for U.S. troops remained suspended, which in turn has directly led to hundreds, if not thousands, of locals losing their sources of income.

“Transgenders are respected in the beauty parlor business and the fashion industry. They shouldn't end up in situations where they pretend to be a real woman.”

The city’s designated spokesperson on the Laude verdict, Olongapo City Councilor Aquilino Cortez Jr., emphasizes that the city has lost an estimated 20 million pesos (about $425,000) as a result of the U.S. suspension of off-base leisure activity in the area, as the absence of servicemen has led to loss of business from establishments as humble as corner stores and as large as retail brands in the local malls. Speaking outside his City Hall office, with his confident English and polished manner, Cortez echoes local sentiment in his eagerness to assert that Olongapo is ready to move on — starting with normalizing relations with U.S. troops.

“We expect that liberty will resume now that Pemberton has been convicted,” Cortez says, using the military term for service members’ leisure time off-base. “We are working to address safety concerns when people like Jennifer Laude come into contact with servicemen.”

Outside Ambyanz.

Meredith Talusan / BuzzFeed News

Cortez is not perturbed about the downgrade in Pemberton’s sentence as a result of Laude’s failure to disclose her status. He believes that any sentence, however long, is already a win for the Philippines, because, if Pemberton’s conviction holds up after his yet unscheduled appeal, it will be the first time that a U.S. service member would be successfully convicted of a crime against a Filipino citizen in a Philippine court. Another Marine, Daniel Smith, was convicted of raping a local woman, Suzette Nicolas, in 2006, but his conviction was overturned on appeal in 2009 after Nicolas recanted then left for the United States. The Smith case led to widespread speculation that U.S. authorities compelled Nicolas to recant in exchange for a U.S. visa.

According to Cortez, the mayor’s office does not officially condone prostitution but is resigned to the reality that “it is everywhere.” A 2010 Philippine Senate Bill estimated that as of 2005, as many as 800,000 Filipinos engage in sex work — nearly 1% of the population — and the industry is concentrated in cities with large numbers of foreigners like Olongapo.

“I advise people to try to be honest with servicemen,” Cortez says, “like the culture in Thailand where it is known that when men come into contact with transgenders, they are who they say they are.”

Cortez bristles at the accounts of trans women who say they have few options because service members wouldn’t go with them if they knew they were trans. These women also claim that they can’t get jobs outside of sex work unless they dress as men, because local industries do not allow male-assigned individuals to dress in women’s clothing. In a communication to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, a national transgender rights group reported that corporate and government offices in the Philippines have “no cross-dressing” policies that target transgender women.

“If it were me, I would have killed her, too.”

“I don’t understand this. Transgenders are respected in the beauty parlor business and the fashion industry,” Cortez says, indicating two sectors where trans women are reported to be able to dress in women’s clothes (though Laude’s family claims that salon owners also forced her to dress in men’s clothes). “They shouldn’t end up in situations where they pretend to be a real woman.”

Other locals express a mixture of sympathy and rejection when it comes to the presence of transgender sex workers in Olongapo. A souvenir vendor on Waterfront Road, Jerry Calubuhay, says that he is indifferent to the Pemberton verdict and wishes only that full liberty would resume so that ordinary people in Olongapo can have income.

“I’ve never been in a situation where I find out that someone I am with is not a real woman,” Calubuhay says. “But of course you would react if that happened to you. You would think of your family and friends and how shameful it is that you are with a transgender.”

Taxi driver Ronald Troops Jr.

Meredith Talusan / BuzzFeed

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

Hello, hi, pull up a chair. We need to talk about fictional lesbians.

It's an epidemic sweeping the nation and, frankly, ruining lives.

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Oh, it's fine, you say? You can stop anytime, you say? Nobody is FINE.

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Because we saw this, we have been changed for good.

Daniel Robinson has watched his fiancé, Josh Daniel Green, dance as a flying monkey in Wicked on Broadway 10 times since he got the part a year ago.

Daniel Robinson

And at Wicked's recent Christmas Day performance, Robinson put on a monkey suit for the first time — to surprise Green with a proposal in front of his castmates.

Robinson got fitted into one of Green's old suits and slipped into it during intermission, he told BuzzFeed Life. He then hid backstage — and miraculously avoided Josh — for the rest of the show.

Daniel Robinson

As the cast gathered for a postshow group photo, Robinson sidled in next to Green, totally incognito with his monkey mask on.

Robinson said that another monkey was the only cast member who knew about the proposal beforehand, and agreed to hide in the back so that Green didn't suspect anything.

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Robinson then took an unsuspecting Green by the arm to really get the ball rolling.

LOOK HOW SURPRISED HE IS!

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I see you shiver with antici…pation.

20th Century Fox

Fox has announced new casting for its upcoming televised production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which will air this fall.

The cult musical began as a live show in 1973 and was adapted as a film in 1975. Although the movie wasn't much of a success when it was originally released, it found a new audience in midnight showings across the country and continues to enjoy an active fandom more than 40 years later.

Here's a look at the next generation of actors stepping into those formidable fishnets...

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“How many buttholes have you seen?”

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“We all know how difficult it is to love the way that they do in this country.”

Filipino-Australian couple Ann and Rica travelled to the island of Boracay in the conservative country of the Philippines to hold their wedding ceremony.

While same-sex marriage is illegal in both the Philippines and Australia, Ann and Rica are legally recognised by the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Australia as being in a de facto relationship.

Members of the LGBT community in the Philippines face stigma, and the loving couple find it easier to live in Australia as a same-sex couple than in their home country.

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The couple weren't sure if wedding suppliers in the Philippines would accept same-sex clients.

However, once they started liaising the suppliers gave them nothing but "unwavering support, encouragement and love."

Oly Ruiz / Metrophoto

Ann and Rica also spent some time researching to find a church that would officiate their wedding.

They stumbled upon the Metropolitan Community Church that was based in Quezon City who were open to any religious denomination and focused on services for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups. At home in Sydney, Ann and Rica are part of the Catholic community and regularly attend church.

Oly Ruiz / Metrophoto

Despite the Catholic church's unwavering stand against same-sex marriage, Rica shared with BuzzFeed that God and the church still play an important part in their relationship.

"Our faith is part of our foundation in love. God is our anchor always bringing us back closer."

Oly Ruiz / Metrophoto

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“Why is he even commenting?”

A leading transgender advocate has blasted Australian entertainer Barry Humphries for his comments labelling transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner a "mutilated man" and a "publicity-seeking ratbag".

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Humphries, 81, is best known for bringing colourful characters Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson to life.

In an interview with the UK'sTelegraph, Humphries said he agreed with prominent Australian feminist Germaine Greer on transgender women, saying they are "mutilated men".

"Self-mutilation, what's all this carry on? Caitlyn Jenner – what a publicity-seeking ratbag," he said.

Humphries went on to complain that "if you criticise anything you're racist or sexist or homophobic."

In the same interview, Humphries said he prefers to avoid publicity in the "age of ever-increasing political correctness" and "allow his creations do the talking".

Sally Goldner from advocacy group Transgender Victoria told BuzzFeed News that Humphries is "from the same school of cheap publicity as his friend Germaine Greer".

Barry Humphries in costume as one of his favourite characters, Dame Edna Everage.

Tim Whitby / Getty Images

"He's a very good actor and entertainer, but how does that make him an authority on transgender issues? Why is he even commenting?" said Goldner.

"He has no expertise in this area. Just because he performs a certain role doesn't mean he has any knowledge of trans issues."

Goldner added that when people like Humphries and Greer speak out against transgender people, it distracts from large issues facing the community.

"The issues we need to be talking about are accurate documentation, adequate health and medical care, the strongest possible protections from discrimination, and funding for organisations to prevent this sort of prejudice," she said.

"I think I would convey a huge level of frustration from the trans community that all these people, Greer, Humphries, others, think they know what our lives are about, think they can control our lives and tell us who we are."

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Hal Rogers and Mitch McConnell

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SAN DIEGO — In the waning days of 2015, congressional Republicans agreed to essentially end their decades-long opposition to federally funding state and local needle exchange programs, slipping a repeal of the ban into the end of the year omnibus spending measure with virtually no fanfare.

The decision — purportedly spearheaded by House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers and backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, both from Kentucky, as well as West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who is on the Appropriations Committee — came in response to a massive HIV/AIDS outbreak in Indiana, as well as their home state’s decision to implement its own exchange to combat growing heroin use.

Rogers and Capito spokespeople did not return requests for comment, but a McConnell aide acknowledged that Rogers pushed for it and that McConnell ensured the language got in the bill.

“If you’d spoken to me at the beginning of last year, I’d have said we’re playing the long game, can we even identify a single Republican to champion this,” said Michael Collins, Deputy Director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

HIV/AIDS experts and activists hailed the decision. The “partial” repeal passed by Congress in late December will allow exchange programs to pay for “staff, the vans, the gas, rent, everything but the syringes. It’s basically a giant work around” to conservative opposition to needle exchanges, said Dr. Steffanie Strathdee, Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences at the University of California at San Diego.

“It will take a lot of [financial] pressure off these groups,” Strathdee added.

Collins agreed, noting that “the actual syringes cost almost nothing,” but that in keeping the ban on funding needle purchases Republicans aren’t technically running afoul of the largely unfounded belief that giving needles to drug users can encourage further use.

Originally implemented in 1988, the ban on needle exchanges came as much of the international community — as well as researchers like Strathdee — were becoming increasingly convinced that these sorts of programs could help reduce the rate of transmission of infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis amongst intravenous drug users.

The lack of federal funds significantly retarded the growth of state and local programs in the 1990s and 2000s, as state houses and local governments faced increasingly tighter budgets. That, according to Strathdee, in turn hampered efforts to test vulnerable populations for HIV/AIDS and TB, since exchange programs often double as testing centers.

But by 1998, after a decade of growing scientific research supporting the programs, the Clinton administration appeared on the verge of coming out in support of federally funding needle exchange programs. That April, then Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala was planning to hold a press conference announcing the decision to back lifting the ban.

On April 22, then Rep. Denny Hastert — who would go on to become Speaker of the House and, ultimately, plead guilty to fraud charges related to allegations he sexually abused underage boys as a wrestling coach — took to the House floor to denounce the upcoming announcement by Shalala.

“I think we have a bad message, certainly a bad message to drug addicts to all of a sudden say it cannot be too bad. The federal government is giving me the paraphernalia to put these drugs in my veins,” Hastert said.

“And certainly the message to parents," he added, "and I think as a parent myself, and a teacher, the worst thing that I would ever want to happen is to think about my kids using drugs … Yet, the federal government is actually saying, oh, by the way, if you need free needles to use drugs, you cannot use drugs. That is bad. That is illegal. But if you want the free needles to use them, here they are.”

As part of his floor speech, Hastert entered into congressional testimony a key paper written by Strathdee on needle exchanges in Vancouver — despite the fact that the paper concluded the programs are viable programs that should be encouraged.

According to an April 23 Washington Post report from that year, during a flight from Chile to the United States on Air Force One, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey pushed Clinton to abandon a push to repeal the ban, insisting it would be too politically risky.

Clinton ultimately agreed, and Shalala ultimately announced that while scientific evidence showed needle exchanges did indeed reduce transmission rates, federal funds would continue to be withheld.

A disposal container is filled with hypodermic needles that were exchanged at a clinic in Portland, Maine.

Robert F. Bukaty / Associated Press

After Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006 and President Obama won election in 2008, activists and Democrats moved swiftly to repeal the ban, and in 2009 it was ended.

Almost as soon as federal funds began being used for exchange programs, however, it was ended. After retaking the House in 2010, Republicans made re-enforcing the ban part of their year one priorities, and the ban was once again put in place.

But by this summer, the political winds had once again shifted. Collins said the Indiana HIV/AIDS outbreak and the Kentucky’s exchange program — as well as the heroin epidemic that has swept through much of the Midwest over the last few years — helped thaw GOP opposition to the programs. Indeed, while Rogers and McConnell had long been strident opponents to funding exchange programs, Collins said, “Mr. Rogers and his staff decided they weren’t ready to fully lift the ban, but they were willing to do a partial lift.”

McConnell, meanwhile, committed to ensuring the language was in the Senate’s appropriations bill. Combined, the two Bluegrass lawmakers were able to ensure the repeal made it through December’s difficult omnibus process.

On Dec. 21, the Centers for Disease Control quietly announced that federal funds could begin flowing to exchange programs. In a statement on the CDC website that went unnoticed by most health officials until this week, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention Director Dr. Jonathan Mermin said: “Congress has given states and local communities, under limited circumstances, the opportunity to use federal funds to support certain components of syringe services programs. These programs provide sterile injection equipment and may also link individuals to services including HIV and Hepatitis C testing and care for those infected, substance abuse treatment, and overdose prevention.”

For Strathdee — who’s research was used to implement a ban she opposed — the repeal is something of a personal victory. “I’ve spent the last couple of decades trying to undo this … when your research is deliberately misused, it really hurts,” Strathdee said.

Breaking up is hard enough…

Dating can be hard, especially when you're seeing someone with an adorable dog!

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You might fall harder for the dog than your actual bae.

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And breaking up is double the tragedy...

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...That could leave you in a pit of dog-less despair!

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All. The. Feels.

Yash Raj Films' digital platform Y Films just launched India's first transgender band, the 6 Pack Band and it is phenomenal.

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The band comprises of six transgender singers who are bloody talented.

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Today, the band released its first song "Hum Hain Happy" and singer Sonu Nigam teamed up with the gang to show support.

The song is cover of Pharell Williams' single Happy.

Twitter: @Y_films

Anushka Sharma gives a voiceover at the beginning of the song where she talks about how the transgender community is often ridiculed in Indian society.

In the voiceover Sharma says, "In India, the 'hijras' are a community almost in exile. Standing out at traffic signals after failing to blend in. Knocking on our windows in the hope for some kindness and perhaps a smile."

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