She's talking about the treatment of former-Olympian-turned-Kardashian-cohort Bruce Jenner, the target of much media sport of late amid rumours he's transitioning to a woman.

Addams says United States magazine In Touch's recent cover featuring Jenner with digitally-added clownish make-up is "despicable" but sadly not "uncommon".

"Bruce is being treated like a punchline," she says from her LA home. "They're using him as a figure of fun. Manufacturing that story with the photoshopped cover is very disrespectful, it's very out of touch with the times."

Addams, a transgender woman and a guest at Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, knows more than most the effect of bullying behaviour.

In 1999, her boyfriend Barry Winchell was beaten to death in his sleep in his army barracks by a homophobic fellow soldier. He was hit over the head with a baseball bat with such force that blood splattered 15 feet down the hall. Winchell was 21.

The murderer, Calvin Glover, received a life sentence, but the case also had an impact far beyond the terrible tragedy and loss to Winchell's loved ones. A review of the US military's controversial Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy followed (it was eventually scrapped in 2010). Elsewhere, in 2003 Addams and Winchell's story was the subject of in the movie Soldier's Girl, which did much to throw the spotlight on transgender issues.

Addams, also a performer and musician, suddenly found herself on a path of activism which she could never have foreseen. As well as public-speaking engagements, she consults to Hollywood. She advised Felicity Huffman on her 2005 Oscar-nominated role as a transgender woman in Transamerica. Jared Leto personally thanked Addams in his Oscar acceptance speech for best supporting actor for Dallas Buyers Club in 2013.

Her work, she says, was borne out of a drive for justice at the time of Barry's murder. Since then, while it's hard to keep reliving Winchell's story, she does so "because it honours his memory, it makes his death have some resonance for good."

She was born in 1971 and grew up in a conservative Christian household in Nashville. After a brief stint in the army as a hospital corpsman, she left in 1993 and embarked on life as a woman, having felt that she was female since she was a child.

Now at, age 43, this softly spoken, accidental poster-girl for transgender issues continues to challenge society to improve. At Mardi Gras, she's appearing at the Gender Trailblazers event, following previous activists such as Cher's son Chaz Bono. Does she see herself as a trailblazer?

"One can never see oneself in an heroic light, I don't think," she says. "People in history who I respect, who made an important contribution to the world, never did it for glory, or titles or fame or anything.

"It's always [down to] these important moments [where] you make a decision to step up and do something.  You know, I'm incredibly imperfect. Really, I'm a singer, I'm a showgirl. It's constantly surprising to me that I have the opportunity to contribute where I have in the ways that I have, and I'm really grateful for it."

Her hope, she says, is to reach a point in the future where we look back to now – where one transgender person a month is killed in the US – with horror but gratitude that it's in the distant past.

To keep retelling Winchell's story is hard. She says she's approached about it often, by well-meaning people offering sympathy, but at certain times it can be "terribly inappropriate".

"I always try to remain polite and try to acknowledge the feelings that they are trying to express but it's endlessly difficult. I do hope that someday I will have more peace on this issue." She pauses, and then says quietly, "I don't know."

Gender Trailblazers is at the Seymour Centre on February 21, see mardigras.org.au.