Who's Your Venus?

Doing the quiet math of born and chosen family

There’s an important scene in the new film I’m Your Venus where two families of the late ballroom icon Venus Xtravaganza sit down across from one another—perhaps for the first time. One, her birth family, the Pellagattis—a trio of rough and tough Italian-Puerto Rican brothers. The other, her chosen family, the Xtravaganzas—the legendary ballroom House. It’s a convergence of two universes that might never have collided, if not for the sharp loss that cut each so deeply.

Venus, a star of the iconic film Paris Is Burning and a fixture of late-80s ballroom, was tragically murdered in 1988 at just 23 years old. It’s been over 30 years since she was taken from both families, in a case that—like so many involving trans women of color—has gone cold. There’s a palpable tension between the two sides that feels brand new, with the tags still on. Their initial meeting, and the journey that follows, is a cautious and emotional tug-of-war that somehow still manages to build a bridge—for catharsis, reckoning, and a deeper understanding of who Venus was, and the lives she led. Not because she chose to, but because she had to.

For queer and trans folks, chosen family fills a void where the ones we’re born into sometimes cannot. At its most necessary, it’s a full-on swap. A replacement. At its quietest, the chosen gain access to details, secrets, dreams, and desires too precious to scatter about. It’s a quiet math we do, dividing the fullness of our lives into chunks: a birth parent may get a little, a trusted auntie perhaps a bit more, a few cousins are offered a slice. Chosen family is where the math stops—and the entirety of ourselves is expected, demanded, and celebrated.

In 2020, I lost one of my chosen. Even in the throes of a COVID-stricken world—death counts ticking upward, grief squeezing through the cracks of every closed door—I was somehow still shocked. In many ways, I still am. My friend was taken by that which lurks in the darkest corners of our community. One of the many piles of dirty laundry we sneak off to do at our chosen families’ houses. These piles, stained with indulgences and survival tactics, build up and engulf us—while we are simultaneously being borrowed from and fashioned after by everyone on the outside. It’s a miracle if any of us leave this earth without feeling robbed—of our dreams, our loved ones, our culture.

As I sat on the couch watching his funeral on a YouTube livestream, my mother wept. She knew how much he meant to me—how formative we were for one another, queer kids growing into adults—and she couldn’t understand why I wasn’t one of the few invited to attend. Meanwhile, it never crossed my mind that I would be. The speeches, scriptures, and songs circled around parts of his life—and crossed out the parts we thrived inside of.

I miss my friend all the time. It’s an ache that hums beneath the soundtrack of the day to day. As I watched Venus’ families come together, that hum got louder. When they took to the ballroom—and later, to the streets—to honor her legacy at the film’s close, it was the chosen who invited the born in. Inside the bubble of chosen family, life still feels better. The drinks taste stronger, the music bumps harder, the laughs come easier—and when we close our eyes, everything we fear might be taken feels inalienable.