Category: Midwest GenderQueer

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Gender Justice or Just Us?

Posted on by JAC

This weekend was The International Drag King Community Extravaganza (IDKE). This was IDKE’s 12th year, hosted by Baltimore’s Gender Justice Coalition – a group of amazing activists, performers, and community members who did a fantastic job with this immense event. The theme this year was “Gender Justice,” which seemed fitting considering the tumultuous times we are living in. We were joined by amazing performers and activists like Tristan Taormino and my dear friends Johnny Blazes, Miss Tamale, and Kate Bornstein. IDKE’s mood held its usual empowered electricity, but underneath the excitement of the attendees and the efforts of the organizers there was something more: the fear of extinction.

IDKE’s community of drag kings, transformers, genderfuckers, burlesque dancers, and drag queens is diverse, complex, and spread out.  The dwindling economy, personal life changes, and community politics have been chipping away at IDKE’s structure leaving us to question what IDKE is, who its for, and if it can or should continue. On the outside it may seem like its a simple issue of attendance or varying politics, but after this (my first) year on the IDKE Steering Committee it is clear that our struggles are the same as every other oppressed group. We are bullied, we are broke, we are bullshitters, and we are burnt out. But what is at risk here is more than just a conference and the best drag shows you’ll ever see. It is something more intangible, but much more important.

When I first attended IDKE it had already existed for nine years. The decade celebration brought it home to its founding place, Columbus, Ohio and in arms reach of me. I drove up to help my drag mentor, Luster De La Virgion, drag pioneer and co-founder of IDKE. I was excited but terrified – expecting a long weekend of wrong pronouns and isolation, the usual drill of being mistaken for a lesbian drag king. But when I got there I found something different, something that changed my life.

I stood shyly quiet, waiting for my spot at the tech rehearsal for the big Showcase. I saw someone across the theater and I could tell he was a transguy. I disparagingly wondered if he could recognize me… there was nothing tell-tale about my appearance and my pink hair didn’t help. My lonely desperation made me feel awkward and pathetic. I gave up on the idea of talking to him.  Then, by chance I ran into him, quite literally, when we were going through the same door. We started to talk. “I’m not a drag king,” he said, “I’m trans so for me its not “drag”, but a gender performance. I’m a trans performer, a transformer…” As he spoke I was strangely overcome, like in a movie. I had never heard those words before, or I should say, I had never heard them from anyone other than me. It was like listening to myself talk, except with more eloquence, power, and confidence than I had ever thought I could embody. I will never forget that feeling, standing there in that dark, chaotic parking lot… the feeling of recognition through the ground-breaking realization that I was not alone, that it wasn’t just me. Three years later I had grown into my own as a trans performer and was doing genderfuck drag at IDKE. Afterward a stranger came up to me. “I have to tell you,” they said shyly, “You are the first person I ever met who does what I do. You made me feel like it was ok to be me and that I wasn’t a freak.” I was so moved all I could do was say thank you, pulling back tears. I had unknowingly become the beacon that I was looking for not so long ago. I told the story to my friend who was my ‘beacon’ and as we frantically drove to manage the next event our brains slowed down, remembering. “I never feel like I could be that to anyone,” I told him. He smiled and said, “That’s what I thought when you said it to me.” Years ago, before I said it to him, he had found his own beacon person. And I am sure that any day now, the person who said it to me will hear it said back to them. They’ll be that beacon for someone searching, wanting to know they are not alone.

To me, “Gender Justice” is about responsibility. We are responsible for creating a community that is visible, socially and politically conscious, and intersectionally equal. We are responsible for making our voices heard so we may inspire others find their own. We are responsible for maintaining our own space, our own community for future generations. Over the past year as IDKE dealings began to look more and more bleak, I started to think that maybe IDKE just wasn’t meeting the communities’ needs anymore, and if that was the case, we have no choice but to let it go. But I know I still needed IDKE. I look around at the small pocket of people working to keep this important community event afloat… I just can’t believe that we are the only ones who need this space. It can’t be just us. Watching attendees at the conference, it was clear to me that people where happy, but how many volunteered to work? How many answered calls for help over this past year?  Organizers work to help our community, but is the community working to help organizers? We have to do more than take. We all have something we can give, we all must do what we can. Can we really promote “Gender Justice” if we are not actively taking part every day, each in our own way, to better our communities?  The first step to accomplishing anything is having so much love and passion that we can put faith in what seems impossible -something seemingly abound in our community. But faith and passion are not enough, we have to act. We must work to turn that faith into proof that we exist. Drag is more than a show. Drag is an artistic craft; it is a creation of our community used to carve out a visible space for ourselves, a space in which we live. As Tristan Taormino said in her keynote this weekend, now more than ever we need drag to be that visible proof that it is ok to be ourselves. I say we must take culture into our own hands and mold it into something that speaks to us, that lets us we know we are not alone. That it is not just us.

Drag Kings and GenderFuckers Invade Baltimore!

Posted on by JAC

If you’re in the Baltimore area come out for the many shows, workshops, and fabulousnesses of The International Drag King Extravaganza XXII, Gender Justice! If you’re looking for me, I’ll be the blur of pink and sparkles running around doing four shows, three workshops, and a ton of organizing stuff. Its gonna be a super hardcore blast and you should come!

Pictures of a Genderation – Gender Outlaw: The Next Generation

Posted on by JAC

I’ve never been a book person. Reading has never come easy to me, resulting in my rarely reading anything. Sure, I read signs and emails and 142 character tweets, but my brain refuses to give up my 7 year old mentality of if a book doesn’t have pictures, I’m not interested. And though I have never been a book person, I am an insatiable learner. My inability (or refusal) to read has caused a lot of problems with this, starting with bad grades as a kid and then escalating to a much more frustrating fate. It puts me at risk of being left out of my communities. Most of our breakthrough thinkers and epiphany-enduing personal stories are only found in, you guessed it, books. So what’s a dyslexic femme boy to do? Just gotta suck it up and read some shit, or better yet get a cute queer to read aloud to you Jane Austen style while you recline on a sofa with an undeserved sense of accomplishment.

I know, I know, I’m amazingly smart, but I wasn’t always this awesome. Before I was clever enough to enlist a cute reader I had to laboriously read books to myself. One of my early labors of love, and possibly the first ‘gender’ text that ever spoke to me, was Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw – not because of its theoretical or activist implications, but because of Kate’s poetic gender-fuck-you, “Its my life, I do what I want” mentality. The book may not have changed my life, but it made me feel like I wasn’t alone – something I surely already knew but had never been proven to me until then – and that changed my life.

Kate and S. Bear Bergman just edited a new book: Gender Outlaw: The Next Generation and once again I am being taught things I thought I already knew, or maybe just needed to be re-told. The book opens with a heart-warming conversation between Kate and Bear. It is like hiding behind the kitchen door while your parents talk about you, but instead of your parents in a traditional sense, its your trans-queer family and instead of talking about you specifically, its your community. And what is “community” but a broader reflection of ourselves, what we’ve done, and what we need to do? (And what else do parents talk about but what you did and what you need to do?) And though community in a sense is about us, community isn’t one thing or type of person because every community is made up of countless other communities. Its a group of intersectional identities bound together by a common identity or experience and this forms some intangible matrix that we exist in and our existence makes it visible. Now, I could make Kate and Bear very happy by expanding this borderline sci-fi reference into a full sci-fi metaphor but I am not cool (or un-cool) enough to know how (sorry darlings <3) so I’m going to talk about paintings instead. A Monet painting. Its made of millions of different sized, shaped, and shaded strokes create something recognizable. Someone may only see the greater image without seeing the individual strokes that form it, and some strokes may be more visible than others, but there are no true lines, no way to define where one shape starts and another ends or which has more impact on the finished work of art. It all depends on who’s looking and what they are looking for. That is why this anthology is so relevant to our community now. It is a collection of various strokes and swabs from the greater work of our community so that we may get a better idea of what we’re looking at when we stare into that mass of color on canvas.

Recently, I have been especially frustrated with the barely moving, politically stunted and socially constricted suffocation that is my Midwestern hometown’s “gay” community. This book reminded me that I’m not out of my wits, not just in reference to my genderfucked femme trans-radical queerness. It also focuses on socio-political state of our community through its presentation of multifaceted political consciousnesses of privilege, language, power, race, class, and accessibility. It discusses who we are in our differences and similarities, what we are doing now, and what we need to do to better the future. Sometimes the only push we need to keep going is to see that we are not the only one who is fighting, who is living a life like ours while also working to enable others to do so in their own right. I can’t tell you this book will change your life, but it may remind you that you’re not alone. And if you’re like me, and not a book person, they got us covered. The book has pictures.

Tools of Our Own Demise

Posted on by JAC

My community continues to throw me curve balls. Recently I was given an account of a rather discouraging discourse that took place on stage at a local show. The emcee, who is a transguy, told a story about another man flirting with him and concluded his story by asserting his straight identity and saying “I’m not gay trans, I’m just trans.” The audience laughed.

A pleasant reminder that just as gays have less rights than straights, gay trans folks have less rights than straight trans folks. The amount of internalized homophobia and transphobia here is staggering. “I’m not gay trans, I’m just trans.” Translation: “I’m not one of those gay transguys. I’m just you’re good o’l normal transguy.” Or maybe “gay trans” was meant to be a combination of gender and sexuality in one identity making ‘gay trans’ a different identity than ‘trans’ aka ‘straight trans.’ Not only would this create a problematic concept of normalcy based off of straightness, it also mirrors the all too familiar “I’ll prove I’m not gay cause god forbid you think otherwise.” Can anyone say hierarchy? As usual the straight people go on top. Trans or not, lets keep reaching for that privilege! Never mind who you crush on your way up.

My criticism does not come solely from an outsider’s perspective. I was straight once. When I first came out as trans I identified as queer in the general sense, but since I was a guy dating women I felt that to actualize my maleness and to pass I needed to be straight. And ‘straight’ was about more than sexuality, it was gender expression too. It meant portraying a specific masculinity that used misogynistic and homophobic language to underline how straight I was. I found myself impulsively attempting an uncomfortable role that went against my feminist principles. But “straight” continually failed to speak to my reality leaving me feeling like a fake, and eventually, like a failure at being a man. All and all, my straight period was very short because my exhaustion lead me to recognize my folly- that and I’m just too self-righteous to be anything other than what I am. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t transguys who are straight, or that its bad to be straight. There are tons of awesome straight guys, I’m just not one of them. (To clarify: I am not stating that the label(s) you choose have to define your actions based on the dictionary. I say own the labels that speak to you – i.e. someone can identify as lesbian but not solely date women, someone can be queer and heterosexual, in my own case I call myself gay frequently but I do not only date men.) I say all this to state how I can understand the motivation, the habitualness of using language that is oppressive in order to show off one’s masculinity. It is not wickedly meant, but it is no less harmful to all involved. This “no [trans] homo” mentality harms us not only in a grander sense of societal oppression, but also more directly in our own mentalities. It forces ourselves into gendered stereotypes that art problematic and hurtful. Think of how people replace the word stupid with gay, loser with cocksucker, and wimp with fag. Is it no wonder people struggle to come out as queer. Similarly, when trans folks make homophobic comments it has the exact same effect. In reference to this case: There are tons of straight transguys and there are also tons of transguys who are playing it straight just like I did because they are afraid that without being ‘straight’ they won’t pass, can’t be a real man, or people will not accept them.

We all seem to understand that our community continues to suffer in our society, and yet the oppressions of the non-queer community isn’t enough. We continue to put each other down. Intention is important, but intention is not everything, especially when in positions of high visibility. In this case I am certain the emcee only meant to crack a joke, but I don’t appreciate my life being made into a joke. Many assume we are incapable of oppressing those within our own communities but that is not true. Our culture values gender normalcy and heteronormative behavior and this influences our own trans and queer communities. Those who do not conform to heteronormative roles are considered less than, either consciously or unconsciously, which results in a lack of recognition, respect, and inclusion. When an identity, like a transguy, is decidedly defined based off of stereotyped masculinity and straight identity, what does that make someone like me who doesn’t fit that standard? We are left fighting to prove we are trans enough, if we are allowed to be considered trans at all.

As gender normative, ‘normal’ looking, white, middle-class “gay” becomes more socially acceptable we must actively guard against oppressing those in our communities who are different. Statements like “That’s so gay,” “She’s not trans, she’s a real woman,” and “I’m not gay trans, I’m just trans” create unconscious hierarchies that result in significant oppression. The person saying it may not feel the oppression in their words, but it makes them the tool of a system that prefers us to be ashamed, hidden, or dead.

Politics of Love

Posted on by JAC

This past weekend friend and I drove up to Massachusetts for the wedding of two friends, a lesbian wedding in a castle to be exact. At the wedding I was filled with joyous bewilderment – sort of like when you see something so amazing that you can’t even believe you’re seeing it. That’s what its like when I look at the bridal couple because they are both such good people. It also made me think of something I don’t think about much; romantic love. It made me wonder what are the fucking chances that this ‘love’ this ‘partnering’ can even happen, what are the odds? This was reinforced by the mood of the wedding which was more than just a happy wedding. It was clear we were celebrating a victory, the victory of these two people overcoming a society that did not want them together and be just that; together.

I don’t pay much attention to ‘gay marriage’ politics, and often feel aggravated how the “gay” movement has a one track mind on it, ignoring other important issues. But there are strong benefits to obtaining marriage rights. The USA has an unusually high amount of civil rights attached to a marriage license, who knows why. Maybe its our puritan roots. The fact that my two friends were able to get legally married will enable them to get everything from tax breaks to insurance to visitation rights, practical things for life. Partnering is so complicated, queer or not, when someone finds a good partner there is often that “good for you” mentality thought there, which can be really patronizing but it highlights how communally understood the difficulties of partnering are – and that’s without thinking of legal issues and shortcomings. In queer communities, on top of it being hard to find someone there is the extra stress of cultural, familial, and societal disapproval. When a couple makes it through all that, and still has more hardships to come against, you can’t help but celebrate. Like, way to kick society in the face and say “I love this person so fuck you!” I still think there are more significant needs of the communities as far as civil rights, but I’m gonna try to keep in mind that marriage is also important.

The State of T and Me

Posted on by JAC

I started taking T three years ago. I knew it was something I wanted, I was positive, I was prepared, I was terrified.

Me, less than one month before starting T:

[image description: JAC – auburn hair and brown eyes, looking directly into the camera. His shoulders are bare, shirtless and leaning on a white pillow]

This is the only self-portrait shoot I did from before T until two months in. I decided not to photograph myself in any structured way. At the time, I felt enough like a science experiment without documenting myself in mug shots. I did take my measurements – everything from my chest to my wrist. I also recorded my voice. Being a singer my voice was of particular interest to me. I recorded it at every shot for a year, then every 6 months, then every year. Its fascinating listening to my voice then. I remember recording it, but only after playing it back a few times did I notice how nervous I sound and that my voice is shaking.

My voice before T

I remember being excited and sad when I found I was no longer a mezzo soprano, and discovering a tenor falsetto which, funny enough, made me feel really butch. I listened to my voice from a year ago and was pleased to find my voice today is a little deeper. I keep shooting for that baritone, haha, but I don’t think I’m ever gonna get it.

My voice now

I really like what T has done for me. When I started T I told myself I was going to take it until I didn’t want to take it anymore. No pressure, no deadlines, no “goals” (fuck you GID). I knew there was a possibility that my health would deteriorate and if that happened I would deal with it when I came to it. So far, though it has had some not-so-desirable health effects on my disability I find that the price is worth paying. As Kate says, its about doing whatever you have to do to make your life more worth living.

Me, 3 years on T:

[image description: JAC – pink hair and brown eyes, looking directly into the camera with a slight smile.]

I’m very pleased in that I look almost exactly the same. I started taking T in order to look more like I wanted to look, to sound more like I wanted to sound, and that’s exactly what happened. I took my measurements and every one was within one inch of those I took three years ago. Its funny because my body looks very, very different from before which just shows how little change can go a long way. Before I started T I was terrified. I was terrified of my health deteriorating, terrified it would make me go crazy(ier), terrified of being denied health care, yeah that was all in there… But what scared me the most was changing into someone I couldn’t recognize, living in a body I couldn’t imagine as a me I didn’t know. Really its no different than the fear I had as a little kid, dreading getting older because I didn’t want grow up and be someone I didn’t know in a life I couldn’t imagine. Now it all seems so insignificant, now that I know myself better, know my life better. Honestly, I don’t think being trans has much to do with it, I think I’m just getting old and being genderfucked along the way. Is shit perfect? Course not. Sometimes the androgyny pulls on me so hard that I don’t know if I can stand it anymore. I dream of a voice I’ll never get in a body I’ll probably never have dressed in a metro-fashion I’m incapable of affording let alone pulling off. The reality is that yes, I want to be read as male, yes I want to pass, I hate being stared at, I hate being afraid… I hate being different. But this is who and what I am. I lived so long as a lesser version of me either trying to be more femme or more butch than I am, more of a girl or more of a guy than I am, always trying to pass as something other me. And if I’m not going to go all out now, well, what would I be waiting for? For it to get easier, for the world to get better? I don’t have time for that. I don’t think anyone does. This is the only life I have and I figure its good enough for me and if nothing else, I have really fabulous hair.

Trans Benefit Calendar

Posted on by JAC

2011 Transguys Calendar Project – Providing Financial Assistant for Transitional Care

“The Transguys Calendar project is a labor of love designed to provide financial assistance to transgendered individuals… 100% of the proceeds will pay for very expensive and much needed medical procedures, which are typically not covered by insurance. Our goal is to raise $10,000 or more every year to be donated to our brothers in the trans community.”

The Fucked-Over Femme

Posted on by JAC

This past weekend was Femme 2010, the biannual Femme Conference put on by the fantastic Femme Collective. The Femme “community” is like any other where it is in actuality many similar communities grouped together under one umbrella. I am always excited for Femme Con and this year I was optimistic about making more femme friends and also meeting more femme guys, which were few and far between last time (2008 in Chicago). But the longer the conference went on the longer I was alone.

Early in the conference I met a transguy, a femme ally, who confided in me about a woman purposely making negative comments about “masculine energy” taking up space in the conference, insinuating that non-female people were not welcome. I wasn’t surprised, but I assured him that was not the opinion of the general populace of the conference. I have always admired the Femme Collective’s hard work to expand the femme umbrella’s reach, but what do we do when oppression is coming from under the umbrella in addition to outside of it?

Invisibility. Many queer femme women feel invisible because the world doesn’t understand/believe that feminine women can also be queer nor do people often recognize the subversive political action that goes with being a femme woman. Femme transwomen who, among many things, are often refused access to women spaces and have severe issues of safety. Whether it is misogyny in its most traditional ‘women are demons’ sense or in more complex spheres where somehow cute shoes equal complying with the patriarchy – femme women have a lot of shit to deal with. That said I would like to point out that not all femmes are women, and femme women are not the only ones who have to deal with shit.

“Come In Ladies!” The signs were all over the conference, but what about us femmes who aren’t ladies? Can’t we come in or are boys not allowed? I heard whispers: “Men shouldn’t be here” “What’s with all the butch looking people?” and “This is a femme only space” essentially telling me not only am I not a femme, I am also unwelcome. I was really perturbed by the 1970s-esque pro-vagina sentiment that was overtaking everything. Yes, pro-vagina is awesome but vagina does not always equal woman, and woman does not always equal femme. What about those who don’t have a vagina (or a specific a type of vagina), or have one but don’t identify with it? As the weekend progressed I found myself getting nervous. I was worried people didn’t want me there or wouldn’t be interested in my workshop or in my performance (which was in an all women line-up). I felt alone, desperate for people to talk to. I went to a workshop for guy and genderqueer femmes but the whole thing was over run with female femmes processing their loves and issues (some very problematic) about transguy femmes; which I found particularly ironic because it was the only workshop dedicated to non-female femmes but it was dominated by females – but “male energy” is what’s stealing all the conference space. There were multiple testimonies of how femme transguys presented competition for community, status, and even sex partners. This dialogue made me too angry to constructively comment. It was a typical bubble-world testimony of coastal queers thinking the entire world is their liberal city, where apparently transqueers are running wild en masse. I’ve never found it easy to find my own folks, in fact out here in the Midwest the closest feminine (not femme, just feminine) transguy is a nine hour drive away and I only met him last year. Yeah, us femme guys are a real invasion.  Claim your radical status and sex partners now before its too late!

Not only am I invisible but I’m getting fucked over by my own communities. Folks like me, we’re the Fucked-Over Femmes. We have to deal with similar oppressions to female femmes but we aren’t allowed to bond and unite over it because we are male or masculine. How much male privilege you think is allowed someone like me? Not a fuckin lot, if I’m even read as male at all. Femininity is considered equal to woman, and not being a woman I am frequently denied the identity of femme, even by those who know me well. Instead I am habitually told how ‘gay’ I am, which I don’t mind because I am queer, but the use of gay here is incorrect and it says something about unconscious gendering. Someone may lovingly say “JAC, you’re so gay'” because I’m wearing a poofy skirt but they don’t say it when I’m restoring a bike. I’m the same person but I’m not expressing the same “gayness” AKA male femininity. Pushing against masculinity is hard; coping with scrutiny from other guys for not being ‘man enough,’ even pitied for getting delt the femme hand in life. I am continually asked why I transitioned at all if I was just going to be like a girl. I do not deserve to pass as well or get the right pronoun because I don’t exude the hypermasculinity that would make me worthy of it and if I am at all bothered by this it is my own fault for not being a “normal guy.”

I love my femme communities and I will continually work hard for them. And I know for a fact that the general community of Femme Con is awesome and strives for inclusiveness, but – and you know there is always a ‘but’ on this blog – different types of femmes have many different oppressions to battle and no one is harder than another. In general we are all up against the same shit: You get cat-called, I get called fag. You’re afraid, I’m afraid. Our big similarities outweigh the tiny differences. I may be a Fucked-Over Femme, but not any more or less than any other femme. You may feel invisible, but no more or less than I am. What is more frustrating that seeing your community when it refuses to see you? We all feel invisible, we are all getting fucked over, we all need to fight together. We all are undervalued and stereotyped because, as Kate Bornstein so eloquently said in her keynote, “sexy is evil and cute is dumb.” How are we supposed to rise above the oppressions put on us when we are still counting people out, or counting people as less-than? (sound familiar?) Kate talked about how no femme is truly invisible, but femmes are still being fucked over, sometimes by each other. We need to stop the legitimacy wars and start doing what we do best, fighting for justice and looking fabulous while we do it.