SMUT FEATURES

UNPACKING TRANSPHOBIA

Pedro DiPietro teaches Syracuse students to restructure the way they think about gender, sexuality, and other social societal norms.

words by Jonathan Chau illustration by Lucinda Strol I n a small classroom at Syracuse University, Piedro DiPietro writes on a whiteboard with a black permanent marker since they forgot an erasable one. Their fingertips are perfectly manicured into lilac almonds. DiPietro, an assistant professor who identifies as Latinx, trans, and uses the singular “they” pronoun, has distinct facial features: rounded hollow eyes, a highbridged nose, and sharp eyebrows. Their long black wavy hair laced with grey roots gently lays on their right shoulder of a gray linen cardigan. Underneath lays a vibrant pink tunic wrinkled towards the bottom, which matches their necklace and bracelet. Their wide-legged black trousers hit their faux leather flats perfectly past their ankles. Across from DiPietro are 16 students; seven white women, five women of color, two gender non-conforming people, and a singular white male. They sit in a semi-circle—the class is a rather small group for the over 15,000 undergraduate students who attend SU. Today, the Trans Gender and Sexualities class focus on names, following the narrative of a trans man named Kenji. “How does one self-realize, foster, and cultivate their transing capacity and capabilities without failing their cultural identity and with the pressure of being intelligible as a trans man or woman?” DiPietro asks the group. The class students sit in brief silence. Many of the students’ eyebrows knit together and some lean closer towards their desks. “That is the temptation of whiteness.”

DiPietro strives to dissect and recognize transphobia as it intersects with misogyny and racism. Gender nonconformity has always polarized America. Legal, medical, and cultural practices regulated transgender and non-binary people to endure within a gender binary for

hundreds of years. But when Coy Mathis, a six-yearold transgender student, wanted to use the girl’s restroom in 2013, issues regarding non-conforming bodies became a national conversation.

From then on, dialogue began on whether they should take part in the military, be protected at work, and if mere genitalia dictated someone’s gender. While the community has obtained a few small victories, the violence against transgender people—especially trans women of color has reached epidemic status, with at least 19 trans people brutally murder this year alone.

DiPietro grew up in rural Jujuy, a northeast province of Argentina bordering Chile and Bolivia. While conservative, the area has the largest native population in the country, which has greatly impacted the culture of the region, which has historically included the Travestis, a term used in Latin America to describe those who cross genders, sex, and dress. Sometimes people harassed DiPietro for being “too flamboyant” for someone assigned male at birth. So they sought refuge at church, where they were allowed to explore their creativity and sing in a higher register that they were comfortable with, within their choir.

Their last name is Italian-Argentine, but their background includes Lebanese and Mapuche, indigenous people from southwest Argentine, decent. DiPietro’s father was a factory worker who eventually climbed the ranks and became a manager. Though surrounded by middle-class co-workers, their father came from a family of immigrants. He instilled working-class values and emphasized academics as a means to raise social status. By 15, two years younger than their cohort, DiPietro attended law school. They passed their classes with ease, but something about law school didn’t feel right, so they dropped during their last year. At that time, “I was also learning more about myself, my sexuality, and gender,” DiPietro says.

DiPietro then focused on food activism, helping to implement local gardens in areas of lower social-economic status and looked at sustainable diet alternatives like vegetarianism. This career eventually led them back to academia, where they got a degree in communications and linguistics, and learned about feminism in the process. After which, they attended the Latin American Graduate School of Social Sciences and researched gender, society, and politics. It was there that DiPietro met Maria Lugones, a feminist philosopher focusing on decolonial feminism. Lugones became their mentor, they studied under her at Binghamton University where they received their masters and doctorate degrees, and edited a collection of their writing.

Following a fellowship at the University of California, Berekely, they came to Syracuse to work in the Women and Gender Studies department. Eighteen years after immigrating to the States, DiPietro continues their analysis in decolonizing ways of thinking through research within queer Latinx communities. "The mission in my work is to explore structures of power and see why they came to exclude folks of different representations,” DiPietro explains.

Their studies also tie in with social justice. DiPietro collaborates with travesti collectives Damas de Hierro and Futuro TransGenérico. As the Sexualities Section Co-Chair of the Latin American Studies Association, they successfully fundraised $25,000 to support trans and travestis activism and intellectuals for the organization’s first-ever panel centered on América Transgénerx at their conference in May. The Chilean Attorney General Office invited them to speak about the intersectionality when dealing with gender violence or violence based on gender expression earlier this month.

DiPietro implements their research in classes by including intersectional issues. “It’s critical to center the voices of those who were never given a voice, but it’s complicated because you want to be careful to not generalizing the experiences of those who are marginalized,” DiPietro explains.

Rather the class centers around feminism or sexuality, they attempt to unpack stereotypes that are systematically ingrained in our society. For some students, it’s something they’ve never had to think about. “Growing up, I always had a privileged point of view and never had friends that identified differently than me,” says Christopher Connors, a student in DePietro’s class majoring in television, radio, and film. “I’m learning something new all the time in this class, and for someone like me, it’s important.” JM BITCH