Feeling Disconnected from the Trans Day of Remembrance
Yesterday, November 20, was the 10th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. The goal, according to the linked website, is
…to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.
30 trans individuals were killed this year (that made the news, anyway), which is obviously a horrible number.
But I’ve been thinking about the TDOR all week, and am realizing how disconnected I feel from the whole concept, and from the larger trans (and even larger GLBT) community.
I started thinking about this last Sunday, when I attended a TDOR event at the Center on Halsted, Chicago’s “GLBT Community Center.” Except that, when we were using space there to rehearse during this mentorship project, they (the staff and the general environment) were very uninviting, constantly screwing up our space reservations and generally being surly – not a very inviting ‘community center.’ The event on Sunday was a general TDOR reception (which I missed) and a open-mike-ish performance “celebration of the trans community,” which I did make it to.
The open mike (I’m not really sure what to call it, since it wasn’t open at the event, but seemed to be open to anyone who had asked to perform) made me uncomfortable for a couple of reasons. First, on a purely superficial level, the tech was really poorly done: the lights were mishandled, the follow spot was rarely on target, there were audio issues, etc. This wouldn’t, in and of itself, be a huge deal but it just reinforced the perception I’d received while working at the CoH during the mentorship program, of an organization that had been handed this beautiful huge building and was just not using the space well at all. (Their black-box theatre, where the event was held, is great but they clearly couldn’t run the tech at all.)
More importantly, I felt little connection with most of the performers. Basically, most of the acts were sexualized lip-syncing, either by trans women or by men in drag (I’m not sure of the breakdown, but I know there were at least a few of each). Ignoring the arguments about whether or not drag should be included in the “trans community” to begin with (something I’m conflicted about and should really devote another post to), that type of performance just makes me very uncomfortable.
I think, ultimately, it has to do with my discomfort with seeing myself as a woman, and having a similar discomfort when presented with others who are fitting societal sterotypes of what it means to be trans or in drag. That is, I’m still uncomfortable claiming my identity as trans (and even more as a woman) so I have trouble viewing others who clearly don’t have any such issues. (That’s, again, seperate from not caring for some of the music choices and/or some of them just being very bad at lip-syncing.)
Which isn’t to say all of the performers were bad (or even just not my cup of tea). There was some good musical performances (people actually playing music…) and some solid poetry, including some by a woman who was also at the Julia Serano talk I went to a while back. (Who gave me the address to her blog, which I have to hunt down. It’s somewhere on my desk…)
(Performance side note – by my count, three trans men and four or five times as many trans women does not a ‘trans community’ make. What’s up with that?)
Speaking more broadly about the TDOR, I guess I still feel a bit closeted (the very very ‘out’ performances this weekend notwithstanding…) and, while I can definitely work up intellectual rage about so many trans individuals being killed, I can’t get emotionally invested for some reason. I read statistics about the huge number of trans women who are harrased and such and think about myself, where the worst I’ve gotten is dirty looks. Obviously, living fulltime as R will (unfortunately) change that, and not for the better, but speaking from the experience I’ve already had, the worst response I’ve gotten was a cousin who pretended I didn’t exist at a family dinner. Literally did not speak or make eye contact.
And so I have trouble relating to a community where the threat of violence or death is very real, even though I’m attempting to find identity as part of that community.
-R
Themocracy
Your cousin sounds like a jerk. Unfortunately, I have no other meaningful response but that. :-/
I’m not trans, but am differently gendered, and I, too, am uncomfortable when drag is the old standby for performance at events. I’m not sure what it is exactly that irks me, but it does.
People might not actually be as comfortable with their trans identities as you think. I used to think that all the gay people around me were so comfortable with themselves, so out and proud while I still experienced shame and doubt and uncertainty. When I would get one-on-one with some of these loud, proud queers, I would find that they were experiencing the same emotions I was. They were just better at hiding it.
[...] talked with my therapist last night about what I’d ruminated on in this post about the Trans Day of Rememberance, and thought I’d share my [...]
[...] mentioned last year that I felt really disconnected from the TDOR, and I’m not sure my feelings have [...]