Join and listen or hop on cam/chat and contribute to the discussion
JUST A HEADS UP!
This is not a safe space for POC queers!
I just got banned because I told a kid to “stfu with that white privilege” because he said he didn’t like the term POC.
I’m going to be linking to folks to THIS CHAT so we can have an ACTUAL DISCUSSION.
signal boosting the fuck out of this
FUCK WHITE PRIVILEGE~!!!!!!!!!
Hey there internet,
Are you a trans* person of color? Do you live in Chicago?
If you answered “yes” to those two questions, I could use your help.
I’m trying to cobble together a project (currently untitled) giving personal experiences that TPOC have faced in Lakeview, in addition to around the city.
What do I mean by “experience”? A verbal threat, an assault, or even someone just slinging around slurs like they meant nothing. A rebuff from a person at the bar. Not being allowed into somewhere. Bathroom policing. Policing in general. All of this would be valuable to me.
Post wheninboystown as well as Take Back Boystown horribleness, and being directly affected as a QPOC and a Black woman, I wanted to compile more stories about what issues trans* folk of color have faced in our various neighborhoods. Why trans* folk of color, and not POC in general OR trans* white people? TPOC are an intersection of two things both disgusting groups hated (trans*ness and racial difference), in addition to the slurs thrown around were often targeting trans* women of color (often Black and/or Latina).
I do want to focus on Lakeview/Boystown, as that is a hot bed, but do want to also make a point that many TPOC travel far from their homes to reach services, and face issues right on their doorstep.
So far, I have an idea of mapping the locations the experiences took place at, adding in other “human elements” (like writing or voice clips). I most likely will have everyone work as an anonymous person, as I do not wish to push anyone out or simply make them uncomfortable.
I am not making any money off of this project, and I sadly have nothing to offer otherwise besides hoping this shows the immensity of the issue in Chicago.
If you would like to contribute a piece, please send me an ask or fanmail and I will contact you as soon as possible.
What you can send me: audio, video, art, just needs an intersection or building it took place at attached to it. Don’t send me anything via ask box/fan mail, but once email communication happens, feel free to.
Thank you <3
signal boost!
Hey y’all,
I’ve set up an email strictly for submissions and questions about the project.
Contact me at chicagotpocproject@gmail.com and I can answer whatever you gotta throw at me.
(please keep it project related, any other somesuch can be sent to my normal email, ms.nyota.uhura at gmail dot com)
signal boost!
This seems more relevant now that this whole “cotton ceiling” thing has gone around.
I’m done identifying as “Trans*”. I’m done trying to force my way into these movements and groups that are so overwhlemingly white. I’ve already spent three years trying to, I don’t plan to spend the next ten or twenty doing the same. I’m exhausted from fighting for acceptance outside of the trans* group, I don’t see any need to keep fighting within that group. I don’t see why I should try to be included in a space that works so ardently to keep me and people like me out. It’s a waste of my time, and I believe it will ultimately be hurtful to myself and others like me.
Don’t be surprised, the entire trans “consciousness” comes from a place of incredible whiteness. Not only from its attempts for inclusion within the lesbian and gay movements, but within its discourse. Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg, Riki Wilchins, S. Bear Bergman, and Julia Serano are all white. The people defining my identity and supposed community are all white, we share nothing in terms of culture or ideology. In fact, the reason I celebrated finding Feinberg and Bornstein was because they were such a good alternative to the dominant, ALSO incredibly white, narrative when I was first coming to terms with my gender. This is like rejoicing at finding a band-aid after being stabbed, because the dominant narrative had me questioning all the time what I was, whether I was trans enough, whether I was feminine enough to even be trans, all that bullshit. I didn’t feel any kind of peace within myself until I read Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” at UTEP. Until then, I had been combing through what Feinberg and Bornstein had written in hopes of making sense of my gender.
And if I remember right, Jameson Green said that the term “transgender” was thought up by Virginia Prince, someone who didn’t believe people should have access to surgeries, and who denied gay men and transwomen entry into the organizations she created. Why would I chose to use a label to describe myself that was created by someone who would hate means hate my use of it? Ignoring that history is one of the most problematic things I could do, and I’m not accommodating or excusing anyone by contributing to that. In fact, the only word I really identify with is “Mestiz@”, and within that I don’t need a signifier for my gender, the “@” does that for me. To me, that single letter, or symbol, I guess, shows how I am a combination of male of female, and how my understanding of “male” and “female” are based in Chicanism@.
Ademas, the people who I look up to as my TPOC ancestors didn’t identify as Trans*. Even Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson identified as drag queens and transvestites. Y Sylvia even said in an entrevista that she only identifies as herself. We, and I do mean ‘we’ because I’ve done this myself, ascribe transness to her postmortem because that’s the understanding of the space she occupied that we have today. Maybe she would have argued with that. So my history isn’t something I share with white trans people, and with that goes my last theoretical connection to white trans people. Because really, we have no more in common than I do with the average white cis person, except for some of our medical histories.I realize this means that I’ll have to create a community for myself, to find new ways of defining myself that don’t exist in white queerness, and I intend to. I will (re)create a space in Latinidad for myself and people like me. And I will never give up on that.I’m going to continue my work. I’m going to keep working for Trans* rights and TPOC. I’m going to dedicate my life to doing everything I can to help those communities, because it’s the least they need. It’s the least I can do.
So nothing’s different, really, except now everyone knows. And everyone saw me call you out.
This seems more relevant now that this whole “cotton ceiling” thing has gone around.
I’m done identifying as “Trans*”. I’m done trying to force my way into these movements and groups that are so overwhlemingly white. I’ve already spent three years trying to, I don’t plan to spend the next ten or twenty doing the same. I’m exhausted from fighting for acceptance outside of the trans* group, I don’t see any need to keep fighting within that group. I don’t see why I should try to be included in a space that works so ardently to keep me and people like me out. It’s a waste of my time, and I believe it will ultimately be hurtful to myself and others like me.
Don’t be surprised, the entire trans “consciousness” comes from a place of incredible whiteness. Not only from its attempts for inclusion within the lesbian and gay movements, but within its discourse. Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg, Riki Wilchins, S. Bear Bergman, and Julia Serano are all white. The people defining my identity and supposed community are all white, we share nothing in terms of culture or ideology. In fact, the reason I celebrated finding Feinberg and Bornstein was because they were such a good alternative to the dominant, ALSO incredibly white, narrative when I was first coming to terms with my gender. This is like rejoicing at finding a band-aid after being stabbed, because the dominant narrative had me questioning all the time what I was, whether I was trans enough, whether I was feminine enough to even be trans, all that bullshit. I didn’t feel any kind of peace within myself until I read Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” at UTEP. Until then, I had been combing through what Feinberg and Bornstein had written in hopes of making sense of my gender.
And if I remember right, Jameson Green said that the term “transgender” was thought up by Virginia Prince, someone who didn’t believe people should have access to surgeries, and who denied gay men and transwomen entry into the organizations she created. Why would I chose to use a label to describe myself that was created by someone who would hate means hate my use of it? Ignoring that history is one of the most problematic things I could do, and I’m not accommodating or excusing anyone by contributing to that. In fact, the only word I really identify with is “Mestiz@”, and within that I don’t need a signifier for my gender, the “@” does that for me. To me, that single letter, or symbol, I guess, shows how I am a combination of male of female, and how my understanding of “male” and “female” are based in Chicanism@.
Ademas, the people who I look up to as my TPOC ancestors didn’t identify as Trans*. Even Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson identified as drag queens and transvestites. Y Sylvia even said in an entrevista that she only identifies as herself. We, and I do mean ‘we’ because I’ve done this myself, ascribe transness to her postmortem because that’s the understanding of the space she occupied that we have today. Maybe she would have argued with that. So my history isn’t something I share with white trans people, and with that goes my last theoretical connection to white trans people. Because really, we have no more in common than I do with the average white cis person, except for some of our medical histories. I realize this means that I’ll have to create a community for myself, to find new ways of defining myself that don’t exist in white queerness, and I intend to. I will (re)create a space in Latinidad for myself and people like me. And I will never give up on that.I’m going to continue my work. I’m going to keep working for Trans* rights and TPOC. I’m going to dedicate my life to doing everything I can to help those communities, because it’s the least they need. It’s the least I can do.
So nothing’s different, really, except now everyone knows. And everyone saw me call you out.
This seems more relevant now that this whole “cotton ceiling” thing has gone around.
I’m done identifying as “Trans*”. I’m done trying to force my way into these movements and groups that are so overwhlemingly white. I’ve already spent three years trying to, I don’t plan to spend the next ten or twenty doing the same. I’m exhausted from fighting for acceptance outside of the trans* group, I don’t see any need to keep fighting within that group. I don’t see why I should try to be included in a space that works so ardently to keep me and people like me out. It’s a waste of my time, and I believe it will ultimately be hurtful to myself and others like me.
Don’t be surprised, the entire trans “consciousness” comes from a place of incredible whiteness. Not only from its attempts for inclusion within the lesbian and gay movements, but within its discourse. Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg, Riki Wilchins, S. Bear Bergman, and Julia Serano are all white. The people defining my identity and supposed community are all white, we share nothing in terms of culture or ideology. In fact, the reason I celebrated finding Feinberg and Bornstein was because they were such a good alternative to the dominant, ALSO incredibly white, narrative when I was first coming to terms with my gender. This is like rejoicing at finding a band-aid after being stabbed, because the dominant narrative had me questioning all the time what I was, whether I was trans enough, whether I was feminine enough to even be trans, all that bullshit. I didn’t feel any kind of peace within myself until I read Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” at UTEP. Until then, I had been combing through what Feinberg and Bornstein had written in hopes of making sense of my gender.
And if I remember right, Jameson Green said that the term “transgender” was thought up by Virginia Prince, someone who didn’t believe people should have access to surgeries, and who denied gay men and transwomen entry into the organizations she created. Why would I chose to use a label to describe myself that was created by someone who would hate means hate my use of it? Ignoring that history is one of the most problematic things I could do, and I’m not accommodating or excusing anyone by contributing to that. In fact, the only word I really identify with is “Mestiz@”, and within that I don’t need a signifier for my gender, the “@” does that for me. To me, that single letter, or symbol, I guess, shows how I am a combination of male of female, and how my understanding of “male” and “female” are based in Chicanism@.
Ademas, the people who I look up to as my TPOC ancestors didn’t identify as Trans*. Even Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson identified as drag queens and transvestites. Y Sylvia even said in an entrevista that she only identifies as herself. We, and I do mean ‘we’ because I’ve done this myself, ascribe transness to her postmortem because that’s the understanding of the space she occupied that we have today. Maybe she would have argued with that. So my history isn’t something I share with white trans people, and with that goes my last theoretical connection to white trans people. Because really, we have no more in common than I do with the average white cis person, except for some of our medical histories. I realize this means that I’ll have to create a community for myself, to find new ways of defining myself that don’t exist in white queerness, and I intend to. I will (re)create a space in Latinidad for myself and people like me. And I will never give up on that.I’m going to continue my work. I’m going to keep working for Trans* rights and TPOC. I’m going to dedicate my life to doing everything I can to help those communities, because it’s the least they need. It’s the least I can do.
So nothing’s different, really, except now everyone knows. And everyone saw me call you out.
This seems more relevant now that this whole “cotton ceiling” thing has gone around.
I’m done identifying as “Trans*”. I’m done trying to force my way into these movements and groups that are so overwhlemingly white. I’ve already spent three years trying to, I don’t plan to spend the next ten or twenty doing the same. I’m exhausted from fighting for acceptance outside of the trans* group, I don’t see any need to keep fighting within that group. I don’t see why I should try to be included in a space that works so ardently to keep me and people like me out. It’s a waste of my time, and I believe it will ultimately be hurtful to myself and others like me.
Don’t be surprised, the entire trans “consciousness” comes from a place of incredible whiteness. Not only from its attempts for inclusion within the lesbian and gay movements, but within its discourse. Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg, Riki Wilchins, S. Bear Bergman, and Julia Serano are all white. The people defining my identity and supposed community are all white, we share nothing in terms of culture or ideology. In fact, the reason I celebrated finding Feinberg and Bornstein was because they were such a good alternative to the dominant, ALSO incredibly white, narrative when I was first coming to terms with my gender. This is like rejoicing at finding a band-aid after being stabbed, because the dominant narrative had me questioning all the time what I was, whether I was trans enough, whether I was feminine enough to even be trans, all that bullshit. I didn’t feel any kind of peace within myself until I read Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” at UTEP. Until then, I had been combing through what Feinberg and Bornstein had written in hopes of making sense of my gender.
And if I remember right, Jameson Green said that the term “transgender” was thought up by Virginia Prince, someone who didn’t believe people should have access to surgeries, and who denied gay men and transwomen entry into the organizations she created. Why would I chose to use a label to describe myself that was created by someone who would hate means hate my use of it? Ignoring that history is one of the most problematic things I could do, and I’m not accommodating or excusing anyone by contributing to that. In fact, the only word I really identify with is “Mestiz@”, and within that I don’t need a signifier for my gender, the “@” does that for me. To me, that single letter, or symbol, I guess, shows how I am a combination of male of female, and how my understanding of “male” and “female” are based in Chicanism@.
Ademas, the people who I look up to as my TPOC ancestors didn’t identify as Trans*. Even Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson identified as drag queens and transvestites. Y Sylvia even said in an entrevista that she only identifies as herself. We, and I do mean ‘we’ because I’ve done this myself, ascribe transness to her postmortem because that’s the understanding of the space she occupied that we have today. Maybe she would have argued with that. So my history isn’t something I share with white trans people, and with that goes my last theoretical connection to white trans people. Because really, we have no more in common than I do with the average white cis person, except for some of our medical histories. I realize this means that I’ll have to create a community for myself, to find new ways of defining myself that don’t exist in white queerness, and I intend to. I will (re)create a space in Latinidad for myself and people like me. And I will never give up on that.I’m going to continue my work. I’m going to keep working for Trans* rights and TPOC. I’m going to dedicate my life to doing everything I can to help those communities, because it’s the least they need. It’s the least I can do.
So nothing’s different, really, except now everyone knows. And everyone saw me call you out.
