A Spokane software developer has unveiled an app aimed at transgendered people who are in the process of changing their genders. Robbi Katherine Anthony and her colleagues in the U.S. and Mexico have begun to raise money to bring it to market.
Anthony says she and her business partner were in Austin, Texas recently at an LGBTQ weekend startup event when they began developing their app. They call it Solace. It’s a checklist for men and women who are making their transitions, but have questions.
“For someone like myself, I want to start hormone replacement therapy, which is really instrumental in terms of transition. You get the right chemicals in you and it starts changing you," Anthony said. "I don’t have the know-how in terms of how to approach that and it results in me kind of being in this middle state.”
When you sign in to Solace, you’re directed to give your name and gender.
“I find this exciting because it might be the first time someone puts down their real name. Then they select their pronoun; for myself, she and her," she said.
And then they start making their to-do lists.
“They can start checking off things they might want to add to their transition because a transition is kind of like a snowflake, no two are ever alike," Anthony said. "So we’ve got legal issues, like updating the gender marker on your driver’s license, medical things, like hormone replacement.”
Anthony says Solace allows people to track and add to their goals, click links that direct them to information they’re looking for and even read news of specific interest to transgendered people.
“It’s not the most technically complex application in the world, but it is incredibly meaningful," she said. "The thought is that if we can help people get unstuck from transition, we can start working to lower the metrics of how many people are in intense poverty or facing more discrimination or even the number of trans people that take their own lives. We can drive that number down.”
Anthony and her partners are now in the fundraising stage. They’re looking to attract $40-to-80-thousand dollars in private investment to help them refine the app and get it to market in six-to-eight weeks.