Thanks to your support and love (Un)heard Transmasculine People of Color Speak! has been funded through our kickstarter.com page. Now its time for us hit the road!  Transmasculine POCs we want your stories! If we get enough participants, the project may become a book!

If you are interested in being interviewed/photographed for the project please email us at transunheard@gmail.com.

FYI for people living in central Canada, they might be in Toronto July 1-3 according to the info contained on the list.

http://topsidepress.com

I’m not dead! I will probably have another blogging spurt soon….lots on my mind!

But I thought I would drop a line about how interesting it has been living “semi-stealth.” Back home, everyone who knows me knows that I’m trans. For the most part, it’s because they knew me before. But even knew people that I meet find out soon enough because I frequently like to joke around about “that time when I was in the girl scouts” or “when I was in labour” and so forth. Also, most new people I meet are some flavour of queer, or close enough, so that transngess and GQness is something that is pretty usual to talk about.

Living in a small community where there are few queers and where those who are queer tend to stay fairly quiet about it, it’s not something that has come up very often. People that knew me from prior visits know but, since they didn’t see me through the transition, memories of Nancy are far back enough to be somewhat irrelevant to them. An exception is a former lover who doesn’t really want to communicate too much out of discomfort because “OH MY GOD he had sex with a woman who then became a man, does that make him GAY?!?!” But I knew that this was going to happen before I transitioned, and I decided to transition anyway. I loved him, and still do, but chose self love over his love. So his reaction doesn’t really phase me. Other than that, my son, as always, calls me Mommy, which leads to some confusion, but most people have simply taken it in stride. The few people I’ve come out to, because it just came up, have taken it in stride as well. So…no big deal really.

Now, I don’t really care if people know. But since I don’t bring it up unless it comes up (like if someone actually asks me why my son calls me “Mommy” or the time someone actually mentioned a film by one of my trans idols, Lazlo Pearlman), I don’t wind up bringing it up very often. So most people in town believe that that A) I’m a guy, through and through – as opposed to a blend, which is how I actually feel and identify with people that matter – and that B) I’ve always been one. It’s a strange feeling for me, because I’m not into being stealth at all and I’m not used to people just assuming that I was once a little boy.

I am quite surprised that gossip hasn’t gotten around more…or maybe it has. Two of my students were conversing in their own language one time and I heard the term “sex change” pass between them but they didn’t look at me. So it might be that there have been rumours, but since people (students, their parents, colleagues) like me well enough, it didn’t wind up mattering.

Who knows. I still have a few months left here so all kinds of things could happen in the meantime. We’ll see.

It contains a sample letter and an easy “copy-pastable” list of Canadian senators who will soon be deciding the fate of Bill C-389. If you didn’t already know, this bill would ensure rights for trans people in Canada by adding gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination in the Canadian charter of human rights. (More on this issue here.) You are free to write your own letter of course but if time is short and words fail you, 2 minutes of your time is all it takes to copy and paste this sample letter and list of senators into your email and click send.

Right now, the people who have the government’s ears are the extreme right-wing nuts who think that all trans people are pedophiles out to get into the showers of little girls. So if we don’t speak up “en masse,” this bill will die and who knows if trans people will have official rights in Canada any time in the next 50 years.

Thanks in advance for any little thing you can do to help!

If it does go through, then trans people of all flavours of trans should be protected by law in Canada. Will this fix everything? Probably not. Same sex marriage (not gay marriage, since being married to a person of the same sex would not make a bi person gay, thank you very much) has been legal in Canada for years now and yet there is still homophobia. So it would stand to reason that making discrimination against people based on gender identity and gender expression illegal would not eliminate transphobia.

And even if transphobia gradually declines over time, we have to remember that trans people of colour, First Nations trans people (some of whom might identify as Two-Spirit individuals,) trans people with disabilities, trans people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, trans people without status, trans people with an intersex experience,  trans sex workers and elderly trans people will still be targets of marginalisation and discrimination. If we truly want equal access to dignity and well-being for all trans people, we need to keep in mind that we have to work against ALL forms of oppression.

Bill C-389 is a step in the right direction for sure but it is not the end of the struggle against oppression. It is certainly worth celebrating its progress, however, and worth applauding the efforts of the people who worked hard to get this bill through. My warmest thanks goes out to them as well as a pledge to continue to work against oppression at the sides of all those who want to help shape a society that is anti-oppression.

I may get flamed for this, but given the exposure of trans folk in the media these days, I’d go out on a limb that we’re eventually in danger of falling into the trap of “trans privilege.” Yes, there is still loads of oppression against trans people. And there is still loads of oppression against gays, lesbians and bisexuals. Among these oppressions is the tendancy for mutual debasement and erasure. As a bi person, I was confronted several times at Pride events by gay or lesbian people who claimed I did not exist. As a trans guy, I’ve been told that “they would have to think about it” when I enquired about the inclusion of trans men in an activity group for gay and bisexual men. Bisexuals and transsexuals have long pointed out how some (not all, obviously) leaders in the “gay and lesbian” movement have contributed to our erasure by saying things like: “You give us a bad image,” “You’re just confused, come see us when you make up your mind” or “Wait your turn, society is not ready for you yet.”  But when I hear some fellow trans folk claim that we are the most oppressed group, the last taboo…I shudder. Because there are still groups of people with less visibility. So much less that people don’t even believe they exist!

Sciatrix gives an excellent description of what invisibility entails for asexual people:

When I say asexuals are oppressed by invisibility, I don’t only mean that the usual state of things is, right now, for asexual people to grow up without even the simplest words to describe what they are, even to themselves. I don’t only mean that for asexuals, it is not uncommon to expect to spend our lives lying about what we are, or hiding. I don’t only mean that seeing the word “asexual” outside of our own spaces, used in the sense of sexual orientation, is cause for minor celebration even if it’s a bad definition.

I mean that when you try to break that invisibility, mainstream culture comes down on you like a ton of bricks. “You can’t be asexual, you must have diabetes or autism or some kind of hormonal disorder.” “You can’t be asexual, that doesn’t exist–everyone wants sex.” “You can’t be asexual, you must have some kind of specific mental disorder instead.” “You can’t be asexual, all you need is a good raping.” When “do you reproduce like an amoeba?” is among the better responses one can get, I have a hard time believing that asexual invisibility persists only because of a temporary ignorance.

I don’t want to get into a game of oppression olympics here. I just want to stress the importance of mutual awareness, respect and solidarity among people who are marginalised for our orientations and identities.

As someone who has had to deal with the struggle for visibility within a movement for years, I am making a vow right now: I will work hard to keep from contributing to the erasure of other groups that are marginalized because of my society’s ideologies concerning sexuality and gender. When I am invited to give talks pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms or for professionals in different fields, I will make greater efforts to speak out against the invisibility and oppression of 2 spirit people, asexual people and intersex people. Whenever possible, I will invite people who live these realities and identities to come and speak for themselves when I organise speaking panels and other events centred on sexual orientation and gender identity in addition to inviting people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender or genderqueer. I will continue to try to educate myself by reading blogs and articles written by many different voices. I will do all this because it is something I should be doing.

If I’m making this vow public, it’s not for praise. It’s because I’m open to hearing other ways that I could improve in this regard. I’m open to being called on my privilege and assumptions. I’m also open to suggestions for reading material.