As one of the founding Dirtybird artists, Mz Worthy has been in the spotlights and strobe lights of clubs and festivals for more than 20 years. But she never felt entirely comfortable there.
Dealing with gender dysphoria for much of her life, in December of 2020, Mz Worthy — who has performed as Worthy since the early days of her career — announced via social media that she was trans. Today (January 26), she launches a new chapter of her life and career as Mz Worthy.
This celebratory moment appropriately comes with something to dance to. Mz Worthy’s first track under this new name is “Love & Give,” a more than seven-minute tech house heater that bounces along with serious swagger and is out today via Dirtybird. Hear the song below. Now more comfortable performing than ever before, the artist known to family and friends as Kristy Willims has also announced a string of tour dates that include February’s Dirtybird CampINN in Florida, a set at Chicago’s renowned Spybar and other prestigious clubs in New York, Las Vegas and throughout California. On January 25, 2023, she will continue her emergence as Mz Worthy via a face feminization surgery that she’s currently raising funds for.
Here, in her own words, Mz Worthy reflects on coming out as trans and the wave of support she’s received within the dance music community.
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It’s October 2021, and I am in front of a full crowd of about 1,000 people at A Club Called Rhonda, a pan-sexual party at the Great Northern in San Francisco, playing for the first time in a dress.
If you had told me in June the year before that I would be out in public in a dress and not completely freaking out, I would have said you were crazy. It was on July 4th 2020, the day I now call My Independence Day, that I started to have the giant, life-changing realization that I was transgender.
On this day I confessed to my daughter’s mother, Brittany, that I had been getting dressed up as a girl in hotel rooms while on tour since we had first started dating almost a decade ago. It was one of the scariest things I had ever done, fearful of how she would react. But she calmly asked me a number of questions such as “How long have you been doing this?” I told her this was something I had been doing as long as I could remember. As a young child, I would secretly get dressed up in my mom’s clothing and put on some of her lipstick. I had no idea why I had this urge to do this. After I told Brittany my history, she said, “I think you might be transgender.”
At that moment it was as if a torch had been lit, and I finally started to see. In the following weeks, I started putting all of the pieces together from my past and recovering memories from my childhood, and the facts all pointed to me being transgender. No wonder everything always felt so incredibly off for me. I am trans.
During the following months of coming to terms with myself and starting hormone replacement therapy (HRT), I was committed to still performing my weekly DJ show on the Dirtybird Twitch channel. Every time I would go live, I had such a strange feeling come over me. I was wrapped up in my head, wondering if people could tell that I was transitioning. I had shaved off the beard that I had for most of my adult life and I started laser hair removal on my face. I was painting my fingernails and dressing more androgynously/fem. That fall, I felt even more self-conscious when I began to perform at socially distanced shows. At one show, a girl commented on how nice my painted nails looked. It felt so validating, but also a bit scary too. Did they know? Could they tell?
I decided at the end of November of 2020 that I could not keep this secret anymore, and decided to come out. I was so sick and tired of being hidden. My gut was screaming that it was time to tell all of my fans — but a part of me was terrified I would lose everything. One of my biggest fears over the years was that someone would discover I dressed as a girl in private and blackmail me. Much of this stress came from growing up in a conservative environment, and being conditioned to believe that my feelings and behaviors were wrong. This is partly what I believe subconsciously led me to the dance music world to begin with. A place that welcomes in the misfits.
By the time I decided to go public with being trans, I had already come out to a lot of my close DJ friends, like Justin and Christian Martin, Claude VonStroke, Ardalan, Option4 amongst others, and each of them accepted me and were supportive of me as I came out. I had also made friends with fellow trans DJs like Longstocking, Baby Weight, and Octo Octa, and asked for their thoughts on coming out and how to navigate this change.
On December 8th, 2020, I sat at my computer around 9 a.m. The week before, with the help of some friends, I put together my coming out post. That morning I pasted the text and uploaded my picture to go along with the post. I vividly remember staring at the “enter” button for minutes and working to get up the courage to hit it. I finally swung my finger down, hit the key, and ran across the room, my heart racing. I had done it and now everyone knew. My phone started going crazy, and the love that I received was nothing short of amazing. All of my worst fears disappeared, and a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders.
As the months moved on, I faced new challenges. I started flying to gigs again, which caused me issues at airports over being misgendered, since my ID had my old name and photo on it. I was in an in-between stage where I did not know what bathroom was safe for me. Luckily, I have found most airports now have gender-neutral bathrooms.
I have found a new freedom while I am behind the turntables with my music, and a new love for performing as a DJ. I feel like in the past I was only 25% there mentally, and now I am 100% there, totally present as I engage with the crowd. In the studio I have been finding myself evolving too. I have found myself becoming happier with the music I have been making, since I can feel it in a way I wasn’t able to before. I feel an overall flow with music in production and DJing that wasn’t there before.
Even still, I can’t help but have a bit of fear when I see my fellow DJs for the first time since starting my transition. But everyone has been supportive and made me feel welcomed and loved. One of my first validating experiences came after seeing Chris Lorenzo play one night. He wrote to me the next day to apologize for using the wrong pronoun while speaking to me, which he mentioned his girlfriend had pointed out to him after we parted ways. I did not hear him use it, and even when it does happen, I know it is not intentional — but it was so thoughtful to get that message, and helped me feel understood and accepted and seen for who I am now.
That is just an example of the level of respect that I am finding fellow DJs have for me and other LGBTQ+ people. I am so grateful for this entire dance music scene and the support they have given me.
I had always seen the dance music scene as a place where all people are accepted since I stumbled into my first rave in NYC back in 1997. The roots of dance music have grown out of the LGBTQ+ clubs in the ’70s and ’80s, and so I hoped for acceptance. But I wondered how things really were now as I vacillated on my decision to come out. There has been a lot of “bro culture” coming up into the house music world that was not there 10 years ago or anytime prior to my knowledge. As I started to pay more attention to lineups and DJ rosters, it became more apparent to me how few women and especially trans-women were being booked and represented. I realize now how blindly naive I was to the inequities of the social imbalances in the music industry when I was unconsciously presenting as a cis-white male.
Mz Worthy
As a society, and as a scene, I believe we are ready to see more trans DJs on stage and receiving the spotlight. In retrospect, I feel like I came out during a unique moment in history with the pandemic and so much discourse about social inequities at the forefront of the media. As a society, it seems like we’re not shying away from uncomfortable conversations like we used to. And as a scene, we aren’t afraid to take as many “risks” to help build community. It’s truly beautiful to see.
I can’t help but ask myself, would I have been treated differently had I come out years earlier? Even by the dance music community? I’ll never have that answer, but what I do know, is that at this point in time, while I am still grappling with dysphoria, internal fears, and the growing pains of changing genders, I am so impressed with and grateful for all the ways the dance music scene has shown me love and supported me in the evolution of my career in this new incarnation of myself.
I am proud to be myself now. To be a visible member of the LGBTQ+ communities. Throughout my life, I never saw anyone transition around me. This is why it has been so important for me to be open and transparent about my own experiences. Self-discovery and coming out is a lonely process (arguably more than ever during a pandemic). It’s important for others to see they aren’t alone. And I hope that the visibility of myself and others — such as Octo Octa, Eris Drew, and Honey Dijon — can give folks the confidence to go for it, and see that this scene is still inclusive of everyone.