Cambridge Transgender Awareness Month 2015 DECOLONISING GENDER PANEL EVENT: MINUTES LLE (zie/hir, they/them), SJG (they/them), SAS (they/them), NDS (they/them), KI (they/them), SC (they/them, he/him) LLE: Gender is a complex thing to define, but it is a fact that for the most part of the world gender has been defined by white colonialists. Gender is a colonised concept: the male/female gender binary is a white gender binary, exported globally via colonialism and used as a tool by colonisers. It erases non-white gender systems, forces assimilation to social roles, and imparts racialised violence against non-white gender non-conforming people especially transfeminine people. It’s not just about direct transphobia, but the imposition of the white gender binary on people at large (including POC [people of colour] who identify as cis [cisgender – non-trans]). TPOC [trans people of colour] are forced to participate in this system. TPOC are still figuring out what decolonising gender would mean and how to do it, especially as they have the pressure of living within the system on a daily basis. This must go beyond representation and inclusion because that won't make up for their labour, erasure, suffering. Q: What would it mean to decolonise gender on a personal and institutional level, how would we do this? SC: Conversation around gender & race is heavily academic, which is a problem. For me it means moving away from the white Western gaze, white narratives I'm surrounded by. I grew up in Hounslow, in a brown area, then moved to Brighton (Whiteton!) for 7 years. Even after coming out as trans I didn't really know what gender meant, I had white people all around me so the conversations I had weren't validating enough due to the lack of intersection with race. Decolonising gender for me means: reclaiming gender, reclaiming language, the words I use to describe myself, the identities that I can have, expression and clothes that I wouldn't wear before: that's not how you "look" NB, or trans. That's on a personal level. Institutionally, I work in 3rd sector and do community activism and organising. But it's difficult when I work with mostly educational institutions I know that I'm not speaking to the same audience I'm used to. I have to rethink - I'm going to be talking to a white audience. More education, less validation. I did a TedX talk in Brixton and my mentor said "you say white people an awful lot" - quite a controversial thing to say! She changed my speech to a speech for my community & people like me to a speech tailored for white people. KI: Decolonising gender is unlearning all the social construction that has been placed on me or taught to me since birth, unlearning anything that has been consistently forced me into believing I am my assigned gender - in media, stories, films, a certain story always taught about gender. Breaking apart everything I've learned. I grew up in India in a postcolonial environment: a certain mindset, the same structure enforced on us.
NDS: It means going back to my roots. I don't have to disclose my pronouns in my mother tongue: we use gender neutral pronouns by default. It's about really understanding what gender variance looked like in India pre-British-Empire, and how that relates to me. Relating it also to religion, and all these layers. Colonialism is internalised too: a structural system that is so baffling to think about dismantling on an individual level. On institutions: I am "the trans" in my workplace. I am perhaps the first trans person they've come across. Whiteness attached to non-binary genders is what they saw at the time. Jack Monroe, Laurie Penny: gender variance is a very white thing to do or be. SAS: I negotiate myself within institutional spaces. I'm interested in the shift between postcolonial and decolonial, on a personal level, and on an intellectual one, recognising in myself that it's not “post”colonising gender since we exist within that colonial gender structure still, but it's about undoing a way of being with yourself or with your interactions. It's not an answer but a way to think about - not how to do it on an individual level, because it’s a community thing, but to begin it - then it needs to be a collective practice. De-colonial: there is the colonial, but I'm going to undo it. Not post-: it’s not about going before or after. And it has to be coupled with self-care and compassion. There is whiteness in my family: the intersection of race, class & ethnicity existed in the domestic sphere for me growing up. It’s not about undoing things in terms of opposites. Yes, deconstruct hegemonic totalising ideas, but don’t try to undo things like: I really like Murder She Wrote. I have compassion for myself; I like certain things. I respect who I am but also contextualise how I've gotten there and undo the practices that are telling me that the way I got to way I am is because I have to be a certain kind of person. SJG: Picking up on the idea of unlearning things: that’s important on a personal level. I'm mixed race and grew up in a white background in terms of school too. I didn't understand race because of this: it felt totally normal. People were still imposing race upon me: they saw it when they looked at me even though I didn't see it. They changed the way they interacted with me. It wasn't till my teens that I realised it was racism. A lot is just going back and seeing my childhood through a different lens: how the white kids treated me vs. how the kids of colour did. On an institutional level Beyond the Binary – the environment we've created is completely different, the ethos is prioritising of people of colour. We publish poetry, opinions, news, vaguely about NB people. But there's also the judgement of it, of people's quality of work. In the mainstream, these people will not get published. Wider trans community = white trans community. So TPOC get silenced in the mainstream. Decolonising because of the prioritisation of voices that would otherwise not be and would be lost - it's an exceptionally important thing to have other PoC involved in it. Is this important? SAS: I agree, but this is how colonialism operates: it still requires a sense of vigilance in institutional spaces. Being the one person in the department who is Black and working on Black East African Italian people – maybe that makes it easier to get funding? But at the same time I’m fetishised because I am that one person, a silencing on one hand but an overrepresentation on the other: I am seen to be representing all these people. SJG: Being the one person who does it (BTB) is to flood the discussion with voices of TPOC so you don't have to be the one person who covers everything. SC's initial
point of paying people for their work is so important. Time and ability to work without a lot of return are privileges. It's important that there's the space and the funding for people to do this. KI: This funding is held by certain sorts of people - mostly privileged and white and most, probably, cis, so when they do fund media/tv/film a writer to do something, most likely the writer is white and cis, so they don't know how to write about TPOC because they are not one. Trans things are the new things to capitalise on. They are almost always white, thin, non-disabled, beautiful or handsome: I have never seen myself on TV. SC: You can't be trans AND a person of colour. That's too much! It's a really painful thing; we've all talked about this hurt inside of us. What you [SAS] said about self-care: we never talk about decolonising as including self care. Our memories may be with our white families and white partners, we can't just rip that apart because it still means stuff to us. How do we balance decolonising gender being destructive and devoting time to self care? Is this damaging? SAS: I ask myself that all the time. An internal but minor struggle in the grand scheme of things. I fear about re-colonial practices, which is just colonial. I was more conscious about race dynamics in my own domestic spheres and broader colonialism. But if I say fuck everything and drop everything: the irony is that it is back to colonial practices: what does colonialism do but strip a person's ability to have individuality and pleasure, aesthetic or otherwise? Abnegation: it's taking away my agency in a sense because now I am recolonising, becoming a good Black-conscious subject letting go anything with a white face in it. That's not good individual practice. But it’s more important to contextualise. I have the multiplicity of voices who have made me into me. My father refused to teach me Spanish nor the indigenous language of Costa Rica. My grandmother doesn't speak English; I couldn't speak to her when I visited. But being hyperaware that I am stripped of this thing means that I don't want to strip myself of these things that do give me pleasure: it's the most committed we *can* be. I hope this isn't too provocative to say: but white people will still exist. Whiteness will still be around us. Despite decolonisation we still have to live in this world no matter what we do. Whilst saying "no", part of decolonial practice is I can see you, in my family, in a relationship with me, but not letting that detract from colonial hurt or other kinds of experiences. SJG: They are still in the family. SAS: Yeah they're in the family you can't just let them go. SJG: Some of the self-care stuff can also tie into decolonising things and asserting yourself, e.g. learning languages, media from other parts of the world. Mix up the messages you're getting in life. There’s a spoken word poetry event this evening: writing poetry is self-care for me. SAS: It's a bit recolonial to try to escalate - I lived in America for the past 10 years so I know a lot of black Americans who want to get, but don't have the privilege of tracing, their place in Africa, but they tried to learn an African language, or tried to
learn *a* language; so even if it can't be tracing their roots, even just learning a language, decentering yourself from that Anglo-Imperial sense - Arts is a decolonial practice. You're building a new genealogy, a new line to identify yourself. In terms of decolonising gender, how to find decolonial practice. KI: I have seen theatre as a form of decolonising gender and theatre in gender. It's hard to get work as a TPOC - but most of the roles I do play are queer roles. I've never played a trans character, only lesbians. When there's queer stuff there's some awareness around politics, so they leave things more open - an age range, regardless of skin colour, a brilliant practice that the theatre at least I've been in has tried (vs usual “female, white, age 25”). There’s a queer version of Midsummer Night's Dream I'm in right now. Re self care and how I never take time for self care: I am consistently working, but also because my work acts as a form of self care and therapy for me. Playing these roles lets me be someone else so I can work through those things. NDS: I want to talk about activism. I work in my Student Union as Liberation and Campaign Projects Officer, making sure we have liberation groups and networks set up. I am on the NUS LGBT committee. Whenever I enter conference they're very whitewashed spaces. White people ask why QTPOC friends aren't there: but it's safety and wanting to be around people like themselves, not to be derailed and have experiences invalidated. Not wanting to be token. But then I am the token on the committee. I have to keep making sure these issues are on the forefront. In terms of self care I have to keep saying it and need to get to a point where it comes from them without me needing to keep saying it. So why aren't TPOC there? Because we're trying to survive on the fringes of society and work in our own spaces, and decolonise together. It's easier to do that in self-defined spaces outside of whiteness. White people are always going to be there but it's about protections from them. Going back to do I see myself as an artist: I guess so? More than anything I see myself as an activist: presenting myself to the world.. [They get up and show off their outfit] Selfies are archiving, for me, and self-validation, not narcissism. The reason I have an undercut - I thought a long time about shaving it all off - for me, my hair ties into my culture. Particularly plaiting it in a certain way, Punjabi heritage - no, this links to your heritage. There is a way of being trans and holding onto your culture. So the leggings, the rainbow, robot - claiming unicorns - it seems such a white lesbian thing to like unicorns but we're reclaiming that. [BREAK] Q: What do you think about using de-colonial vs. postcolonial? – the first being an active destruction or dismantling, but then I was talking at KCL about this, about how we're trying to go pre-colonial and find something in our roots and reclaim that. And on top of that, people like me have lost our language - it can be kind of impossible to see how it would look like without colonialism. So my question is: do you think that PoC living in the West, building your own genders, does it feel an authentic way of reclaiming pre-colonised genders in a way that looks forward without necessarily
having to rely on the trauma of not knowing what those genders would look like had they survived? SAS: to preface, I am down with the term postcolonialism. But to start: historically, the word post- means after-, but postcoloniality in a historical sense was around the moment where colonialism was a thing the colonisers would use, it wasn't a secret that these people were colonisers. Postcolonial specifically because it's after the active period of colonisation. From that post-historical moment, life goes on: we're after this moment of active structural colonisation, we have cultures, experiences, languages, life, we are postcolonial subjects after this moment, not directly under the rule. In an academic answer, I disagree we are after any kind of colonialism. It gives more power to colonial powers to say that we are. E.g. the Jamaican prison: Britain is STILL colonising, spending money this way when we are in a housing crisis etc., it is a colonising move to do this. To deny the fact we are under the system of colonialism is to deny experiences. De-colonial keeps it present: politically and culturally important to recognise we are under a more subtle form of it. We might say we’re under ‘patriarchy’ or ‘capitalism’ but these are still colonial practices. In terms of loss: again it's a personal preference so I respect the various diasporas' lived experiences. For me, going back to what I said about self care: self care in the face of the fact you have suffered under colonialism. 1 option would be to live with impossibility and struggle and live with the loss, and take it on: in one sense, a success of colonialism: they wanted you to have that loss. 2nd: I recognise this loss, I value my ancestors and people, but as my form of resistance, in the face of that impossibility, learning another language is a decolonial practice. Patois creation. Our people were polylinguistic. Asker: How Malcolm X's name was an exposure of that fact, that his name/heritage was unknown, confirms that history and exposes it. Owning the trauma and get people to answer for it. SAS: Black dandyism, Wind Rush generation, a history of Black dandyism that is linked to Black liberation even though it comes through Western practices. I can't trace my roots 100% (no one can). It's never going to be a new system of genders. SC: When I wear a bindi it’s like “oh you're so alternative”, like, no, this is mine. Whiteness is so intrinsic that whenever I wear jewellery I'm made to feel like I'm appropriating my culture. KI: I used to love wearing bindis when I first moved to the UK. Then I remember not wearing it anymore because it made me look more Indian, as opposed to if a white person wore it it's fashionable. But if a South Asian person wears it they're different, and "more ethnic". SJG: The metal scene is a really white-dominated space, but to claim it as like - this isn't just yours. Wearing lots of black. Accepting connotations of darkness, something spooky. KI: It's an important part of people's genders how they express themselves. LLE: Then there’s the thing of white (trans) people using PoC cultural dress etc as a way of distancing themselves from the norm.
Q: Do you feel like the issue of cultural identity is changing because typical 'national dress' is often associated politically with nationalism (and what comes with it homophobia, racism)? Also: Re worrying about tailoring your message to different audiences and therefore making it less radical? Where is this boundary in which you can tailor it but not silence yourself? SJG: There’s a long history of racism in metal, but also areas of it heavily themed with discourses around race; take some essence of what you want and claim it for yourself in a certain way and be unashamedly different and loud in the message you want to send out with it, ie wearing national dress whilst being specifically loud about anti-nationalism, changing the view about how it's associated. SAS: Steve Biko "I Write What I Like", and then Digital Underground "Do Whatcha Like"; flying in the face of how we're taught, it's a radical (and risky) act to move against established systems. We're still hierarchalising oppressions when dismantling them. If these are your people and you want to wear your national dress and people are questioning that and not seeing that you're wearing something to value yourself, drop them! SC: Experience of white LGBT+ Jewish guy - speaking about straight Muslim woman who "wears a hijab, BUT she's very nice" - ??? Saying I'm Muslim, will people think I'm trans/homophobic, how will people read me? Why is religion viewed as antithetical to queerness and how do we manage that? Splitting sides between race & queerness, "which side" are you on? Re second part: I've been thinking about what "radical" means; I don't really see my feminism as "radical" because I've always centred queer people, PoC, people of faith, so it doesn't seem "radical" to do so. I tick lots of boxes within my identity and other people see that as radical, like I can speak for everything. Talking to PoC, we already know we're fighting this oppression; talking about other things in intersection with this isn't "radical", it's just another step. KI: I've been thinking about this a lot with art, performance, whether I want to be talking to *my* community or if I should be making stuff for a wider audience because I want people to understand how people like me feel and if that would end up helping anyone. It's frustrating wanting to make stuff for my community but there's only funding for stuff that talks to a wider audience; sometimes you get a positive, "this has made me understand this better/think about this", but it frustrates me when people in radical circles devalue stuff that's in the "mainstream". I want to make things that are contextualised and don't water things down; I’m constantly torn, I don't know if one is more "radical" than the other. LLE: it doesn't do much for me as a TPoC to label either of these as inherently "radical", I'm often striking the balance between the two for my own self care rather than for a political purpose; the balance is always going to be bittersweet wherever you draw it. SC: us existing is radical in itself.
LLE: There's a pressure to educate others *and* create for ourselves, but living and existing is radical and tiring in itself. SAS: When white teenage boys shoot up a school they aren't "statistically a threat", but we feel the pressure to be “The Best TPoC” we can be - admitting we're flawed is important. Remaining radical in the etymological sense of "rooted" *but* bringing it to a wider audience. Quoting MLK and Steve Biko - they will always co-opt your message anyway, so for you to know that and fly in the face of that - you have to do your own work and know your own history, both in case you're challenged and for yourself to know your own story. Say your message and speak to the people who are there to hear you. Q: Is it not also important to discuss the construction of categories like "whiteness" and how they might reproduce colonial categories; in what ways is this discussion today reaffirming the trans body of colour as the "other"? SC: There's a gap where white people aren't acknowledging privilege. In a past relationship with a white person, we talked about me as a PoC, my need for a safe space etc, but never about *her* whiteness. If that had been talked about the power dynamics would have been very different. SJG: It’s important to say this panel isn't gonna discuss everything and change everything; it's part of a conversation and we're taking bits from things, bringing it back in, it's not the be-all and end-all - don't assume that attending one panel makes you an expert. We can only talk about our own experiences and there's so much more out there. Anon responder: I feel like that question criticises the use of "whiteness"? Implying that if PoC stop categorising race, ignore racism, everything will be decolonised? It doesn't work - PoC have been victims of genocide because of these categories, and that's not over. Gender is still constructed and is still a basis for violence. Something being a category doesn't make it not real and if we lost that what would we as PoC call ourselves for liberation? LLE: the way these categories are set up, people already look at me and assume something; I would almost rather they put a name to it. Rejecting categories without some further project of deconstruction doesn't work.