Not the kind of race I mean
I was recently having a conversation with a number of artistic peers, discussing the impact of our personal and community histories on our art and artistic process. I don’t remember who the question was raised by, but the group consisted of a mix of racial/ethnic/gender/sexual identities, making for good conversation.
In general we all agreed that our various personal and community histories – of religion, race, ethnicity, language, geography, class, sexuality, gender, and so on and on and on and on – played a factor in how we approached creating art. While it was a great conversation, and fodder for more discussion, I’m less interested in that than in something which happened after.
During the conversation, I said, “It’s been interesting going from presenting as part of a strong, privileged group – white, heterosexual, male – to an oppressed group: queer, trans, female. I try to both be conscious of and artistically honor that oppression while being aware of the privilege I still do posses.”
Then, while giving someone a ride home – who identifies as black, female, lesbian – she turned to me and said, “Your comment really surprised me, since I don’t think of you as white.”
What?
Continue reading 'Race identity'»
(Apologies for the pun in the title…)
While on the El yesterday two black girls got on the Red Line around Argyle, heading north. They were both in their late teens/early twenties, dressed to enjoy Chicago’s at-long-last nice weather. One of them was smoking when she got on, and turned to the closed door to take one last puff and throw the cigarette to the ground, stepping on it and extinguishing it.
The two girls continued to stand in the door, chatting, when someone across from them – an older white man – got up and moved to the other end of the car. The girl who was smoking took offense to this, and started speaking loudly at his back as he walked away: “Oh, so you don’t like the smell of smoke? Well, my pussy smells better than you, you ass! Yeah, that’s right, you better walk away!”
I was playing around on my phone (oh, the joy of a phone with Internet…) but looked up at her during her little tirade. We locked eyes. And I, conciously ignoring the decorm of the El (and public places in general) held that eye contact. Continue reading 'A racey experience'»
I’ve been trying really hard to bike to work when I’m able to. I biked today, but didn’t head home until after the show was done, at about 9:30PM. I have a route that I take to work and another one I take home if it’s late (different streets that are slightly less direct but I feel safer on). I was in a less-nice neighborhood (in this case, that’s code for ‘poor’ or ‘black,’ depending on your perspective) and a group of black kids was walking on the other side of the street from me. I had a moment of nervousness, then got mad at myself for having an initially racist reaction, then tried to tell myself it was a class issue and that I would have had the same worry reaction to a group of white kids who were similarly dressed. Then one of them jumped out at me, saying “Gimme that!”Don’t worry – I’m fine. He went back to the group and they all laughed and laughed at the way I swerved and sped up in my panic. So I (apparently) was never in ‘real’ danger. But, while I’m obviously upset that it happened at all, I’m also A) pissed at myself for having that initially somewhat racist (or even ‘just’ classist reaction), and B) pissed at them for somewhat living up to my poor expectations.
But now I’m all upset and trying to figure out where it’s coming from. I like knowing where my emotions come from, and estrogen isn’t horribly helpful for that… I’m also trying to figure out how or if what happened tonight is linked transitioning issues. I’m watching Six Feet Under (which is a really good show) and an episode where one fo the characters gets carjacked and then taken forced at gunpoint to take the carjacker around town, and feel like it wasn’t horribly helpful to my emotional stability, particularly because the character who was carjacked was gay and there were lots of calls of ‘faggot’ being tossed around by the carjacker. Likewise, at Julia Serano’s talk, she mentioned the potential dangers of having gender expression not matching legal papers, with asshole cops and the like.
I was just talking with SS, and used the word ‘vulnerable’ about the situation. It really sort of threw me – I wouldn’t in a million years have used it to describe how I felt or am feeling. I’ve admitted to feeling emotionally vulnerable before, but don’t know that I’ve ever said “I felt vulnerable” about a physical fear. I don’t like that that’s potentially a part of transitioning, or of living in the world as a woman (hell, it’s not potentially a part, it’s definitely a part). Again from Serano’s talk, she said some cissexual women (see this post) will brush off transsexual women’s complaints of feeling objectified or fearful of interactions, as it’s ‘just’ part of ‘shedding male privilege.’ (These are not Serano’s words, and not even her words of other people’s words, just my impression of how some cissexual women see the situation.)
I don’t know. I’m kind of rambling. I’m just unhappy to find an intersection of two of my least favorite things: feeling vulnerable and feeling unsure of where emotions are coming from…
-R
PS – Gods, I like asking questions as the title of posts.
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