violence against GNC people slips through the cracks (RIP Ms Colombia

friends: i have been struggling. a few days ago gender non-conforming icon Ms. Colombia was found dead in NYC. receiving the devastating news amidst the kavanaugh trial was overwhelming. gender non-conforming people like ms. colombia always slip through the cracks. despite the fact that non-binary & gender non-conforming people experience disproportionately high rates of sexual violence (some reports suggest 1 in 2), we are erased in the rhetoric of #believewomen(how about — #believesurvivors ).

despite the extreme physical violence we experience, we are rarely counted in statistics of trans death (especially if we are not on hormones). we don’t have data to describe the conditions of violence we experience because we are almost always misgendered by the reports. this misrecognition is part of a larger project of disappearing us.

they say that “there are only two genders,” but they don’t show you the work they do to eliminate us to create this mirage. when we are acknowledged we are constantly reduced to our entertainment value, rendered into spectacles, hypervisible on the streets & invisible in movements, campaigns. i confronted the reality of our disposability — how it so often feels like no one cares about us. i didn’t want to go outside. i didn’t want to face the harassment. something felt more sinister than ever about people gawking & laughing me. & so i stayed inside and i wept for ms. colombia & all of the unaccounted deaths, and all of the gender non-conforming people who are lost & disregarded by feminism & trans & the world. i wept for the people dismissed as ridiculous, excessive, too much. i wept for the loneliness of having everyone stare at you but no one seeing you. i wept because in the few times that we shared space i felt like ms. colombia saw me. we smiled at each other with a fundamental sense of recognition — like we were in this together. but then today i put on the most ridiculous & most excessive & most me dress. & i did it for them. & I smiled with tears in my eyes at the people who laughed at me.

& i wrote this to say: do not forget about them, do not forget about me, do not forget about us: we who are neither women nor men. RIP 💔💔

queer impossibility

the day after walking in new york fashion week i was called a faggot/freak/tranny by seventeen different people on the streets of new york city. this is a dissonance i know well: the disconnect between a runway & a subway, a stage & a street.

we talk about how social media creates a distorted perception of the lives of the people we follow (people are just sharing their highlight reel), but i think for gender non-conforming people it takes on another dimension. the harassment we endure is constant, unforgiving, getting worse. our triumphs can be translated on here, but very rarely our tragedies. how to capture chronic pain? a structural suffering? that even while writing this post on a train there are people gawking me. how to let you know yes this great thing happened to me but then i was assaulted on the way home, yes i sold out a show but then i got spat on after it, yes i have more followers online but i am still getting followed outside. 

the work i am doing here is desperately ironic: look at the image & consider what you do not see. think about everything around the photo: what did it take for us to get there? how are we getting home? do you support us even when we aren’t inspirational, beautiful, or fashionable. would you have defended me or watched idly? 

after the @openingceremony show queer theorist @sashavelour reminded us that the goal is not just having queer people recognized in fashion, but everywhere — being able to exist in a fundamental sense in public. fashion & beauty then are launchpads to something more essential — let’s call it dignity, maybe even personhood. 

this is an art form queers have been practicing since the beginning: redeploying the very technologies that erase us to emancipate us. & that might seem impossible but i remember that every day i go outside knowing that i will be hunted. but still i go. i remember that queers have always lived in the realm of the impossible. for us: it is just another opportunity to prove you wrong.

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trans body hair

one of the most painful things is when binary trans people tell me that “i am not even trying” or “not trying hard enough” because i don’t remove my body hair. “if [he] doesn’t want to be read as a man [he] could at least shave.”

really? trying??

the assumption here is that i am “lazy” & don’t experience the “real” struggle of “real” trans people. but: not removing my body hair doesn’t protect me from violence, in fact it causes it. not removing my body hair isn’t a passive action, it’s an active decision that requires constant justification amidst total & complete denigration: almost every day i receive threats to my safety both online & offline because of my body hair. i am followed, spat on, insulted, laughed at, groped precisely. because of my hairy gender non-conformity. and still i go outside & go online: brown, gender non-conforming, and HAIRY!

i know my life would be easier if i shaved & complied with society’s gender norms, but i shouldn’t have to change myself to make other people more comfortable. i am trying every day to manifest my own truth in a world that punishes me for it. i am trying to survive constant harassment, sexual violence, and physical violence. i am trying to fight for the legitimacy of gender non-conformity in a trans movement & a feminist movement that still excludes people like me. i am trying to prioritize my self worth outside of society’s patriarchal standards of beauty & desirability.

so yes i am trying very, very hard. trying to get everyone to realize that body hair is not gendered! that people of all genders have the right to look like whatever they want without having their identity be up for debate.

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spectacular hurt

the other day on a packed subway train this stranger came up to me & yelled “ARE YOU A CROSS DRESSER?” i smiled & nodded no. i didn’t want to go into it with them — i have learned the hard way that when i advocate for myself in public the harassment gets worse. so then this person started to talk to my friend next to me: “is he a cross dresser?” my sweet friend said “no she is a she” (i use “they” but in the moment this was the intervention to be made). then this person started to interrogate my friend about me: have i always known, that she knows a transgender, how she likes NYC because she gets to see different people like me. all the while she was yelling & the entire train was staring at me. i got so flushed and embarrassed i’m sure my face was as red as my dress. being made into a spectacle means that i am simultaneously made hyper visible while also being erased. i became an object — dehumanized — a subject of conversation, but not of personhood. to have someone talk about you like that — as if you’re not there... there is so much i want to say in the moment but i can’t because of the reality of violence. it makes me feel so degraded and powerless, totally ruins my day. my writing — specifically my poetry — feels like the only place i can be myself anymore. it’s where i can say “that hurt. i am alive. it matters.” it’s where i can scream, cry, demand my personhood — remind myself i am real. so i am just writing this here to say this happened; it hurt; and i am trying. trying to generate the confidence to keep going even though i am exhausted & scared.

paradoxical lives

our lives are paradoxical. we are lonely together. we hate what we love. we fear what sets us free. we hurt to heal. we find ourselves through finding other people. paradoxes are invitations to new paradigms. there are no inconsistencies here, there are just opportunities to re-imagine. it took other people seeing me in order for me to see myself. we come into ourselves by coming to one another. we need each other to get free. we need each other to get free.

Portrait by Mathew Arthur Williams (Glasgow 2018)

Conformity is not Community

the problem with categories is they have to exclude in order to work. we spend more time saying what we are not than what we are. the category has to be policed in order for it to be cohesive. this requires a constant sense of anxiety: am i enough? am i real? & a constant sense of threat: what if i fail? what if they don’t believe me? your worth is dependent on your ability to disappear.

there is loneliness to that: the isolation of being surrounded by people who call you family that you don’t even know. constantly afraid that the people who hold you close will come for you, too, say “we are not that.”

i think a lot about how much work & energy goes into maintaining the gender binary. it’s exhausting. how it restricts movement (don’t walk like that you look ___), voice (don’t speak like that you sound___), creativity (don’t dress like that you look___), romance (don’t love like that you look___) behavior (don’t act like that you seem ___) i spent the majority of my life trying to be a category because i wanted to have community. i compromised my difference because i didn’t want to be alone.

i was terrified that if i was truly myself people would leave me behind.

but then i realized that i was lonely already: identities, categories, norms, assumptions all were barriers to meaningful intimacy. they cared about a word more than they cared about me. they cared about a norm more than they cared about me. & so i gave up & i said i am “_______” ! & i became nothing and found everything. in that emptiness i found the intimacy i had been searching for my entire life: people who loved me for me not my category, worth determined by my creativity not my conformity, beauty by from my art not my erasure.

INDIVIDUALITY is NOT LONELINESS.

the more i became myself the more i found the people i had been waiting my entire life to meet.

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we connect through difference

after performing this person came up to me & said that they cried for themselves through crying for me & i was so touched. i started writing poetry to send an SOS to the world like does anyone else out there understand that something had gone very wrong? does anyone else feel this way: like everyone is just playing pretend, like you love & miss everyone even the people you never met, like you keep on being told you are too much because people are afraid of their abundance? most of the time i feel lonely & like the type of intimacy i yearn for in the world feels impossible. & when i say intimacy i mean the borders between people irrelevant — like that stranger is my potential friend, like i do not know them but i love them. but there are moments like this person tonight saying where i remember that i have found my people: the honest people. the messy people. the too-much people. the naive people. the people who can’t do small talk at parties people. the people who are trying to remember something else: a way of relating to one another rooted in kindness and transformation, humor and vulnerability, depth and superficiality (!). & so it’s hard really performing in front of crowds when all i want to do is take everyone out for soy hot chocolate and fall in love again and again as we talk about our daddy issues & how old we were when we learned how to tie our shoes & experienced our first death & skinned knee. one of the first rules of writing i teach is that the more specific you are the more universal it resonates. the paradox is we connect through difference. so i want everyone to have a microphone & an audience & a chance to scream & cry & laugh — to have people say yeah i get it the world is falling apart but you are wonderful and make me wish it wasn’t. so when i feel lonely i remember the people in the audiences: think about their heartbreak & coffee breaks & missed connections. think about their moms & their moms, and their secrets & exes. think about their indigestion & to-do lists, their Netflix cues & favorite recipe. i think about how different we are & how we are all the same. how many words we have created to pretend this isn’t the case.

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why i love workshops

it’s always hard for me to come up with names or descriptions for workshops. workshops are where we come to figure “it” out together. and by “it” i mean our heartbreak, our daddy issues, our dysphoria, our craft. i learned long ago that school often doesn’t work because we are told that the “teachers” are the “experts,” and we are told that the “personal” is irrelevant. but shouldn’t learning warrant a scream or a dance or a poem? shouldn’t learning mean we are all experts & teachers & students at the same time? workshops is where we go to talk about the things we are not supposed to talk about — to figure out how to have a body, how to love a body, how to treat a body. truth be told i am terrible at doing things alone. i couldn’t tie my shoe until thirteen, i burn pasta, i don’t take breaks & i have been procrastinating on taking care of myself for 27 years. which is another way of saying workshops are where we bring all of that to each other say, “here is where i am at. can you help me?” workshops are where we remember intimacy & make friends in a world that have digitized them both. in other words: workshops are where we resist loneliness, practice need, remember how to trust. i don’t know who i would be or hell even if i would be if it wasn’t for strangers i met at workshops who said “i do not know you but i love you, let’s try, fail, and try again.” workshops are for trying. and here i am at another airport trying to communicate how i fell in love with a group of strangers like they were my best friends for three hours on an afternoon in Cape Town where we laughed and cried and probably farted and sneezed, too. and in those three hours i didn’t feel lonely. i didn’t feel lonely.

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permission to express

today they stared. today they laughed. today they photographed. today they tried their best to make me go inside. today they pointed. today they jeered. today they whispered. today they tried their best to make me go inside. today they repressed. today they projected. today they lied. today they tried their best to make me go outside. but today i went. but today i strut. but today i held my head high. but today i remembered. but today I forgave. but today i loved. but today i went outside. .

the policing of gender non-conformity is part of a larger project of policing creative expression. taking the “art” and cordoning it off in galleries, on runways and stages. making the art finite, temporary, inaccessible. we live in a world that dispossesses us of our creativity because if we were in touch with our self- expression we might imagine something else than the status quo, we might dream beyond the parameters of the now, we might remember ways of loving & living in harmony. art is a mode of living, not just something we do. it is who we are. and so i adorn this body. and so i come to you live and in color — always in color — because i want to give us permission. not just to express, but to be. not just to express, but to be.

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gender non-conforming people are the vanguard of fashion

trans & gender non-conforming people of color have always been the vanguard of style, beauty, and fashion. it’s just that our aesthetics made it into the covers, not our actual bodies. our aesthetics are decontexualized from our (gender)queerness — whitewashed & ciswashed — to make “mainstream culture.” queer culture is not fringe, it is the mainstream darling! the ways we style & adorn ourselves are deeply and inextricably linked to our self-birthing & perseverance in a world that constantly punishes us for being. our fabulosity is a tactic to generate self worth in a world that regards us as disposable. rather than waiting for the white/cis beauty & fashion industries to acknowledge & tokenize us, fetishize us as *new* — even though we have always been there (behind the scenes as makeup artists, designers, stylists, hair dressers, mood boards, culture) — we are doing it by ourselves for ourselves!

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destruction is creation

six years ago i was living in cape town when i caught on fire & sustained second & third degree burns on my hands & feet. my blanket got caught in my space heater & i woke up in flames. the thing about crisis is it suspends time. i googled what to do when you are on fire. i crawled to the shower. i remembered to grab my keys & my wallet. i thought about my mother & god (in that order). i felt mundane things that were magnificent & magnificent things that were mundane. i did not cry until i called my mom to tell her: your child is flaming (!) i will never forget that day lying on the hospital bed at 21 years old, writhing in pain, but viscerally aware that i was alive & that that was enough. this was the winter i couldn’t dance because of the bandages on my feet (so i invited people over). this is the winter i couldn’t leave the house for work because of the bandages on my hands, so i stayed at home. & i needed somewhere to put the pain, so i wrote. every day i wrote. poems about the mountain, poems about my body, poems about yours, poems about love, poems about loss. this was the winter i could not bathe myself so i read my poems to my roommate after they sponged me. this was the winter i made friends out of strangers, along with the leftovers in the fridge. & right before i left i did one final reading. i said “this is who i am” & i read those poems to that small group in that small living room in observatory & the people that i needed they said, “you are an artist” & for the first time i believed it. & i haven’t stopped writing & the living room got bigger & now there are hundreds of thousands of strangers i cannot wait to make friends. this is the winter i learned that destruction is another form of creation — that loss creates the space for something else, the cycle, stubborn & unyielding of a forrest set ablaze only to bloom again. & so here i find myself back again six years later back in this strange city i grew to call a friend writing to you once again because i need somewhere to put the pain. i am so grateful to be alive: in other words, here is my art. come over at 5. i need you.

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