In February 2015, Sydney comedian Jordan Raskopoulos – one third of award-winning comedy group Axis of Awesome – shaved off the Jack Black beard that had featured sporadically through the band’s 10-year history.

In a video posted to Facebook this morning, a year after the shearing, she announced why it was never coming back: “I am transgender. No shit. That’s right, I’m a girl. I am transgender.”



It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of an announcement like that, and the strength it would take to make. A few hours after being posted, the clip had already been viewed over 20,000 times, and shared by Buzzfeed, Fairfax and Pedestrian with headlines describing it as “incredible”, “suitably awesome” and “powerful AF”.

Making the most of its potential for virality, Jordan had used the opportunity not just to announce her transition, but to answer some questions about gender dysphoria, the transition process, and how it will – or rather, will not – affect her work with Axis of Awesome.

“Being trans does not mean you need to give up on your life, or your friends, or your family, or your career, or your achievements,” she says, in the clip’s take-away message. “I’m going to continue doing exactly what I was doing before. And I’m going to be fucking awesome.”

As Raskopoulos tells Guardian Australia, the decision to transition followed a lifetime of dysphoria. “Growing up, I never felt right as a boy,” she says. “I was often very jealous of girls around me and wished that I was one of them. This feeling continued through adolescence into adulthood but, with no real frame of reference, I figured that’s how everybody felt sometimes ... As I grew older I found different ways of rationalising that feeling away, in spite of how obsessively I engaged with trans-related media.”

It was on a 2014 Axis of Awesome tour through the UK that it all came to a head. “There was a lot of driving on that tour, and most of my time was spent in the back of the tour van with my smartphone and my own thoughts,” Raskopoulos says. She started reading academic papers about trans journeys, and what they have in common.

Jordan Raskopoulos of Axis of Awesome: the public response has been ‘overwhelmingly positive’ so far. Photograph: Supplied

“Every trans narrative is different, [but] there were things in those papers that rang through to me. It summed up my own relationship with my gender through my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. [One] paper went on to describe what life was like for people like me who didn’t transition, and it involved misery and suicide. It was like seeing a portal into a potential future. A future I needed to avoid.”

While Raskopoulos came out to her family, friends and bandmates last year, and has appeared on stage as a woman at a handful of small comedy shows over the past few months – “I was kinda surprised by the lack of reaction, one way or the other. People at those shows were pretty cool” – this morning’s video announcement represents her official coming out to Axis of Awesome fans. Raskopoulos, who has also appeared on Good News Week, Thank God You’re Here and the Ronnie Johns Half Hour, says the public response has been “overwhelmingly positive” so far.

“It was important for me to make this announcement in a way that reflects my art. So the video is a little bit funny, and comes alongside the announcement of a new album and tour. It’s important for me that my story is about my continuity as a performer and an artist, as much as it is about me being transgender.”

Some material in Axis of Awesome’s new live show will deal with Jordan’s transition, and their new album, released today, features a cover of Transgender Dysphoria Blues by Against Me!, whose frontwoman, Laura Jane Grace, came out as a transgender woman in 2012. But Jordan says her story hasn’t taken over their comedy: “An equal amount of show time is allocated to a song about an octopus.”

Still, while she has the same name and sings with the same voice, the transition will have some consequences for her work. “I’m thoroughly aware of the disparity between opportunities for male and female comics. I am cognisant of the fact that many of my achievements so far have been because of my access to male privilege, and I think that it’s important for me to acknowledge that.

“I’m certainly not going to be any more or less funny now that people know I’m a woman, so I don’t need to prepare for that. What I do need to prepare for is good ol’ misogyny.”