In more recent years there has been a movement to remove the T for the Queer acronym and community. The sexual identities aren't kicking the gender based ones out. They are leaving on thier own volition, they are leaving the sexual identities like leaving an abusive lover. Because let's be real that's what this relationship between the two has been. The Transgender community is always the backbone of the movement. They start it. They are the ones risking it all with the most to loose, facing the worse consequences. Then when they make progress queer cis folks take it, take all the credit, kick them out, and make it hard for them to be part of the movement they started by letting them be harassed by the police, taking the action to places that are inaccessible to them, or being hostile to them when they are there. I would leave the cis gay community too for being that mentally and emotionally abusive. The sexual community often leaves the gender community out when the sexual community is making progress, specifically when it comes to laws. Many bills concerning rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, queers, asexuals, and pansexuals, ect.. could have included trans* rights. But said bill wouldn't have been passed if trans* rights were included so they get left out. I would know, I've choosen to cut the trans* part out in order to get a bill passed. Saying "we'll come back and try again when we're done", it's been 4 years and I have yet to go back and make a trans* bill (today I got together with a group of trans* folks and I am going to support them in making a trans* bill). That's usually the way it goes too. For fear of not being able to help anyone I left the ones that needed the most help behind. I did get the bill passed if you were wondering. But people aren't just sexualities, races, or genders, they area combination. The right thing to do, what I should have done, is fight for the whole thing. We fight togther, we should succeed togther, and fail togther. I had to go Alex, who is trans* and my fellow warrior in the struggle with this bill, and tell her I cut the trans* part so it could get passed. She should have smacked me and said we get it all passed or none at all. But she didn't, she just continued to support the bill. And I know you are all like but we just finished marriage equality here in the states, is thier turn now. It's too late! First the sexual community has a bad track record for sticking up for the gender community so it's understandable that they don't trust the sexual community not to fuck this up. Also having two groups fight separately for the same thing has never been bad or detrimental to the overall goal trying to be achieved. Second cis pepole don't know what's best for trans*pepole and unless we are going to let them run the show cis people will probably mess up. Cis pepole need to take a seat and listen. Cis people I know that's hard to do, being the majority and all it's hard to believe there's something you don't know about gender. It seems like such a simple concept but its not. Take a seat! Third the sexual community takes things, claims them as thier own, and is very abusive. Fourth gender and sexuality are different it's easier to understand if you talk about them separately. It would help not to confused the two if they were separate communities. I love the trans* movement and trans* folks but I support them doing what is healthiest and best for them. If that means leaving us then that's what they got to do!
6/30/15
6/27/15
Daily struggles
Juice, Drank, rainbow attire, water, cis white male hetro nomative gay agenda, sunscreen ... I'm Pride ready
Daily struggles
Where the hell are all my wedding invitations???????? If you'd was the most important Queer issue why am I not eating wedding cake right now??????
6/26/15
Daily struggles
So when are we going win the right not to be murdered or harassed by police. Or the right not to be fired for gender presentation, or being whatever gender I identify as even if it's different than what's on my birth certificate. But we won so who cares about these important issues right? #wewon #marriageequality #winning
6/24/15
Daily struggles
When your host committee works faster than the managing task force
#cc16 #creatingchangeChicago
6/23/15
Skitt: Ethical travels
So I went to India to visit one of my gays who's nickname only makes sense in American sign language. It would literally translate to bright moon light. But I guess we'll call him moon. I was very worried about this trip. I had no idea what I was going to name my travel album, I didn't even have a hash tag when I got on the plane. I also wanted this to be an ethical trip. I wanted to go and learn without placing the burden of teaching me on the people kind enough to keep me. I didn't want to promote western ideas, I want to sit back, shut up, and listen to other people. More importantly I didn't want to be the American who comes over eats some food, learns some words, buys a sari and thinks they know India. I have to belive there is an ethical way to travel even for the ethically impaired, such as myself. (Wanted to name my album bollywood, didn't for obvious reasons). I was in places that just breathed life into your lungs. It's busy, hot, everybody trying to get by the best way they know how. Moon lives in a huge tower almost like a prince, or mafia. They have 2 servants, 2 cooks, two drivers, and anything else their little heart desires. I thought I would go to India and it would look like home. But despite years of occupation the part of Mumbai I was in looked as a child would think it ought to and then some. Temples were beautiful huge white buildings with gold adornment. There were coconut trees everywhere, along with lots of other fruit trees. Cows! Lots of cows and stay dogs. My first night I was surprised to see the city so alive in the middle of the night. I ended up naming the album paradise after the Coldplay album because of my first night there. I saw these two broths laying out in divider for the highway on some slabs of concrete looking up at the stars before they went to sleep. My first reaction was wow how beautiful that must be to sleep under the stars like that. Only when I was safely in my friend's apartment laying on his deck, with a fan and ice water, (cuz its freaking hot) did I realize there is no nuance in it for them because that is these two boys everyday (they are homeless and don't have a choice in the matter) I expected India to be very heavily influenced but it's resilient and refuses to give up. I got a paradise, lush, hot, and on the water. But for those who live there under the same stars I find so memorizing what do they dream about when they close their eyes? What does paradise look like to them and am I living it? Could this be paradise?
Skit: Cyanide happiness
No the title is not a typo. The more I go see Dark Matter, this being my fourth since March, the more I have to report back. I am being to think we make our own happiness, out of a preselected number of resources. Like when you are born based on who your patents are and your demographics you are alloted a certain amount of tools and resources. Because happiness is a really abstract concept let's say you are building a house instead. You are born Bill Gates's legitimate cis hereto male child. You are given money, connections, labor, land, and nice materials at birth to later build a house. Let's say you make the best of your silver spoon life and when it is time to build your house you have acquired beach front land, legendary architect and contractors, Brazilian red wood, and weapons grade metals, plus you still have labor. Now if you became a crack head and squandered your silver spoon life now all you are left with is a premade mediocre house on 25% of your original land. What if you are born black in America, the one we all imagine the government is keeping down (they are keeping black people down but not all by themselves black people are actively participating in their own disenfranchisement but I digress) such a cis hetero male black person is given hand me down tools, shack materials. But no land, money, connections, or labor. If they over come all odds they can end with a bit of money, small decent piece of land ( at high interest rate), okay materials, and the skills and knowledge of how to build a house. They will then spend the rest of their life building the house as their life expectancy is much shorter than the rest of the general population, but the spouse may enjoy the house in her later years. Now if the same black boy just lived life chances are he would either see all that he had stripped from him when he was inevitably imprisoned or he would build a shack after gaining the knowledge and skill of how to do so and die in debt because of the land he bought to build a shack without money. If I was building a house when I was born I would have been given connections, tools, decent amount of resources. I now also have the knowledge and understanding of what goes into building house and the ability to acquire land at a decent interest rate that I would be able to pay off before I retired. However, I know all of the people I have to hurt in order to build my house. I know what it really means to have money and how that money some how still ends up funding occupations or military ventures. I acquired a moral compass, ethics, ideal conditions for building a house. I can no longer, with good conscience, commit to such actions as building a house. The system that we preside in, building a house has such negative ramifications that it is not worth it. The only way to build a house is to dismantle the system. So in a way academia stripped me of everything that I was born with. Left me completely unable to achieve what every human should be able to which is build a house, be happy. Walking around knowing that you can't build the house everyone expects you to (which is way more than you will ever be able to) just fills you with doom, despair, and anxiety. Or you are only able to actually build your house as you approach death, because you have literally been killing yourself to achieve it. We see it all the time people work themselves to death, put themselves through hell, live miserably, and for what? To eventually be able to build a house? To eventually be able to do make our own happiness which will make us happy, regardless of how we continue to grow and change, for the rest of your life? We are being sold an unobtainable dream and told to go obtain it. And we try our hardest which normally leads to misery or temporary happiness but nothing like what we were promised. A cyanide happiness that is actually killing us, plus we are still unhappy. Which I for one think it's bull shit. I don't want to have to live in unhappiness forever and I doubt want the answer to achieving happiness to be dismantling the systems. I think we should be okay with temporary happiness in all its forms. If that means a person's smile that makes you feel a little less lonely or a large cup of coffee on Mondays. Why aren't these small temporary happiness enough. Would we all rather lead miserable lives and die for an irrational fantasy? If we took more stock in the good and stopped sensationalizing tragedy wouldn't our outlook on the world change.
6/19/15
Daily struggles
How do people not grieve the black and brown lives we've lost? I have been crying for 2 days straight now. Not that my tears will bring them back. Maybe if we were less desensitized and more empathetic like a humans should be we would stop killing each other. Imagine if grieved every lost of America life like one of our neighbors dying. I don't think we could handle the pain so we would have to change.
Skittles: how high is the price of freedom?
The constant appropriation of culture that the offender has not struggled, or blead to understand. The fact that I can't claim a white as my identity to avoid oppression or help white women. I would like to take a moment to remember the black and brown lives we have lost this year due to acts of violence, resting in power for peace are only afford to those whose violence or struggle ends when they are buried. I am a queer activist. But at the base of my activism I am motivated and driven by our community. I don't want to do LGBTQIA if it doesn't benefit everyone. A community made up of people of all backgrounds, and the black and brown people in our community are hurting, suffering, and are under attack. We need to support them in any way we can. That means if your outside the black and brown community our lives matter. We are under constant threat of domestic terrorism from our fellow Americans and the ones entrusted protect us Americans. What are you doing to end the attack on you fellow citizens by your fellow citizens? If you part of the black and brown community we need to support each other. I know that there is often a deep mistrust of your fellow man but if we cannot come together we will be continued to be slaughtered like animals. Yes, we have been at put systematically at a disadvantage and the media keeps perpetuating the wrong messages. But some of us have made it we must help bring our resource back to the community whether that be monetary or academic. The only way we are going to survive this is if we get smarter. Less adversarial physically and more combative intellectually. I know we are the weary from the fight. Heavy hearted from the death and the pain. I know we tired from the struggle. All we want is to be free. All we want is the right to be allowed to live life in peace with equality while also being black.
6/16/15
Skittles: things I wrote at work
I have horrible dreams and terrible nightmares;
And sometimes they switch places.
I confuse screaming and silence because they sound the same in my head.
Sleeping is the closest I can get to death without consequence.
I want to sip weak tea and watch the world end.
So everyday I watch the sky rip itself apart,
each day more violent than the last.
I have a cup of tea, not too strong,
close my eyes and pretend.
I dream horrible dreams or terrible nightmares.
I don't know which anymore,
they switch places.
6/9/15
Skit: why do I need gender inclusion
Gender inclusion is a big deal. It can't be male or female space. We need to include more complex stories when we are trying to make comprehensive spaces to talk about differences in socialization, expectations and stereotypes when it comes to gender. To broaden who we accept and allow in these spaces only serve to add to our narratives and understanding of gender. Gender inclusion doesn't just serve the gender variant community but it also helps women. Any woman that doesn't want to remove body hair but is told it is unprofessional needs gender inclusion. Anybody who prefers single occupancy bathrooms needs gender inclusion. Anybody who wants their employer to pay for hormones for medical conditions need gender inclusion. Any man that wants paternity leave to be as long as maternity leave needs gender inclusion. Anybody who is sick of society telling them who they can be or like because of what their gender is needs gender inclusion. We to need to work on accepting that gender doesn't have to be constant, it can change and evolve with our understanding of ourselves and how we relate to the world around us. In particular we need to work on making women's spaces that include, but are not limited to females, women, female bodied people, female/ woman identified pepole, people who express or feel a more feminine gender, gurls, and questing folks. Just because you have boobs and or a vagina does not mean you are a female and does not entitleyou to women's spaces. On the other hand how much or lack of of vigina/boob envy you have doesn't exclude you from these spaces. I personally like the word gurl because it is an all inclusive of all things feminine. Everyone who does not identity fully as Non-gendered , Agendered, Male, masculine, Queer gendered, questing, and or other gender fall under gurl; along with female bodied people and pepole with at least two x chromosomes who choose to do so. To exclude a person who claims the identity is to invalidate them and all who had been or would have been denied before them. Though the following example is not the same, I would imagine that it holds the same sentiment. Black women were denied access to women spaces in times of segregation. They were dealt two blows, the main one being racism, and the more subtle connotation that the color of your skin means your not women enough for this space ; or you're not really a women at all. Ones physically appearance doesn't dictate or equal expression, experience, or identity. So why do we assume such when it comes to gender?