Nina Arsenault

Nina Arsenault (born January 20, 1974) is a Canadian transgender columnist, freelance writer, live artist, actress and sex-trade worker.

She was born Rodney and grew up in a trailer park in Beamsville, Ontario. She has two master's degrees. At one point prior to her transition, Arsenault was an instructor at York University, where she taught acting.

She has said her moment of truth about what she was came in August 1996 and her transition was in full force around 1998. By 2007 she had undergone over $150,000 in cosmetic surgery in her transition, financed through work in the sex trade.

Arsenault wrote a regular column on transgender issues for 36 issues of fab, a biweekly Toronto-based LGBT magazine. Her last column was in early 2007.

She has appeared on the television series Train 48 and KinK, as well as the Showtime movie Soldier's Girl.

She had a well-publicized encounter with Tommy Lee where he flirted with Arsenault for some time before discovering that Arsenault was transgender, and subsequently left in a hurry.

Arsenault appeared in a one-act play written especially for her by Sky Gilbert in November 2007 entitled Ladylike. She is also in the process of writing her memoirs, to be called The Silicone Diaries and has done a one-woman stage show by the same name.

She appeared also in The Jon Dore Television Show, appearing the episode "Manly Man". She stated the reason why she does not want to remove her male genitals:

"I work as a dancer in a club that caters to men who like "transsexuals." They want us to have beautiful breasts, you know, to be sexy like females but they want that one thing to be different."

In 2010, she performed an autobiographical play entitled i was Barbie.

In 2012, she performed for 40 Days and 40 Nights as part of the inaugural SummerWorks Live Art series in Toronto. For this performance, she spent 40 days undergoing a spiritual experience and opened the last 11 days to the public. As part of this performance, she spent two hours a night whipping herself while riding an exercise bike.

She is the subject of the book Trans(per)forming Nina Arsenault - An Unreasonable Body of Work, edited by Judith Rudakoff, published in April 2012.