issue 2
trains - issue 2 october 2017
content warning
sexual assault, nudity, violence against trans people, sex, dysphoria, internalized transphobia
james knowlton
lani paguio vivian tylinska chase hagar dallas james knowlton corona iniguez river flora winnie black hayley mandel nick hensel logan novak cover art by frankie bruiser
editor in chief
frankie bruiser
assistant editor
dallas
note from editor gender, like other identity categories, is always culturally and socially situated. terms like “trans,” “nonbinary,” and other labels that have come to prominence in describing variant genders in western cutlures are absolutely not universal. the ways in which different cultures and peoples around the world understand and name gender cannot be standardized. that being said, trains as a project is operating around a framework of gender self-determination. this essentially means that any person who feels that they deviate from, break, or refute traditional western standards of gender (the binary) is someone that trains wants to feature and uplift. within this, trans and gendernonconforming people are prioritized, but you don’t necessarily need to identify with those labels to participate. gender is so subjective and contingnet on a person’s entire embodied experience, and the
language that people use to describe their genders is constantly shifting. I want to uplift all different kinds of genders and gendered experiences that deviate from the gender binary or from the gender that was assigned at birth, regardless of language. to be transparent i feel the need to acknowledge my own social position and privileges. i am a white, able-bodied, thin, nonbinary trans girl who comes from a middle class family. i was raised in the san francisco bay area by my biological parents in a nuclear family of four. i have gone through higher education at a liberal arts college. my whiteness, class status, ability and education, among other intersections, afford me certain privileges that should never become secondary to my struggles in being trans and gender-non-conforming. issue 1 focused on concrete ways people can advocate for and humanize trans people in their everyday lives. we have grown in size and scope since the first issue, but this focus remains at the heart of what trains hopes to do. thank you to all the contributors, readers, and supporters, thank you for participating, for reading, and for being here.
<3 frankie
Eric A. Stanley on
g e n d e r self-determination: Echoed through the dreams of other liberation movements’ understandings of identitiy and power, gender self-determination at its most basic suggests that we collectively work to create the most space for people to express whatever genders they choose at any given moment. It also understands that these expressions might change and that this change does not delegitimate previous or future identifications. Gender self-determination also acknowledges that gender identification is always informed in relation to other forms of power and thus the words we use to identify others and outselves are culturally, generationally, and geographically situated. In other words, terms that are more common now, like “transgender,” are relatively new to our vocabularies and are not inclusive of all of our embodied experiences. Gender self-determination believes that there are multiple ways to work one’s gender and sexuality--and while they might have material differences they must not be hierarchized in the name of realness.1
1 Eric A. Stanley, Captive genders : trans embodiment and the prison industrial complex, Oakland, CA: AK Press. 2011. 5-6.
frankie bruis-
james knowlton
er
i saw you in a dream
lani paguio
in a dream in a mirror on a body lani paguio
my friend Milo and I were laughing about all the different ways we can appropriate hood masculinity and chinos came up. “yeah, chinos is what cholas wear, not those fucking Banana Republic ones.” i had to look it up on google images and this is what came up. “it reminds me of dickies shorts. i wore my brothers when i was 13/14…ah fuck dude am i appropriating this shit?” i have two pairs of these at home and i like wear them to business casual events because who has time to dress like a cis woman when you’re trying to network? i remember in the dressing room i was so excited to get these. like the joy people feel when they find something they like. the joy in the dressing room like this is who i am. “oh no dude, when you wear it, it’s fine. it’s just when *our mutual friend whose a cis woman* wears them with a black sports bra and backwards hat at a crew party its fucked up.” chinos chinos chinos til this day I keep this tab open on safari maybe it’s a way of me saying I don’t want to forget you I don’t want to forget you but I’m not sure what it is exactly I’m not trying to forget: the body the pants or the futures you offer me
lani paguio
i had a conversation with frankie about using/embodying language beyond masculine and feminine to get at what people like us are really about. fuck gender spectrums of masculinity on one side and femininity on the other. spectrums inherently demand that we locate ourselves, and as gender non conforming children born out of imperial struggle and capitalist desire, locating ourselves/possibilities of selves is never a straight up answer. i believe that movement is our answer. organizing with the masses is our answer. remolding with the masses (literally everybody vulnerable to the state) is our answer. navigating a FOBâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s boat in queer waters is our answer. the waâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;a. the jeepney. any other vehicle of struggle and unity (lol not incarceration) is our answer.
lani paguio
dystopian america diasporic america dysphoric america
i donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get dysphoric around cis people! cis people get dysphoric around me!
i donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get brown around white people! white people get white around me! lani paguio
them: are you a girl me:¯\_( )_/¯ them: are you a boy me: ¯\_( )_/¯ them: are you br??wn me: ¯\_( )_/¯
lani paguio
them: what ar your pronouns me: ÂŻ\_( )_/ÂŻ them: do you organize? me:
lani paguio
frankie bruiser
i. violence of femininity comes in its attachment to bodies and parts and not to bodies and parts + what it will do for you my(our) body(s) has always been a location where meaning has been assigned without consent who i like, what i will do for you multiple sexual assaults forcefully, violently carving F E M I N I N E/ W O M A N into my skin marks that still raise killing feminine meant safety/ protection / shield. dark blue ink blotts out all the eyes of people who have assaulted me, taken pieces, watch as i watch myself bury me deep in the warm earth
iii. reclamation body femme masculinity im not trans enough if im nonbinary im not trans if iam femme bc im cafab so im not trans enough if ia m femme gender binarism within the trans community 1.RE desire to go on horomones: ‘i didn’t know u were that far masc’ 2.RE attempts at gender affirmation ‘you are the only gay guy i know’ HRT spells heart if u add an E
my <3 seeps
dallas
ii. i bear burden of sexual violence/domination in patriarchy against my body as cafab + undoing that meaning/healing while trans the cafab (white) vigilance cafab (white) vigilance taught at puberty, enforced in public i never asked for this consent after consent broken, trod upon with hands voices stares black stains in light clothing, tears drip over bathroom sinks washing the places of my body that hold this nonconsenual meaning, that hold violation, hurt, history of violence & shame were dark, there was no lighT i could see what does it mean to reject a bodys coercively assigned meaning what if you can never escape that meaning because of color or shape o r ways people remind you of it tell it ‘you deserve to feel safe’ tell it ‘i am here’ tell it ‘we are not alone’ even if it feels that way to heal these places bring light (for me) 1.piercing holes in skin with metal and ink (let poison drip out, let some light in) 2.associate care and love with dark places; care consent attention slowly replaces violence and fear -> to feel in control hold & be held tight. i love you
dallas
DATING WHILE TRAINS
how does the gender binary inform the ways we date, present ourselves, and mask ourselves to be more desirable to potential partners?
desirability in our culture is dictated by whiteness, masculinity, gender conformity, thinness, affluence, and ability, among so many other hegemonic identities. very often i find myself downplaying my femme-ness and bolstering my more masc qualities in dating contexts in order to feel more desirable, worthy of loving and talking to, more “palatable.”
when i go on dates with queer boys, i pretend to be a boy until i’ve solidified that they might be interested in my transfeminine self.
my (trans)femininity is felt as a flaw in the game of dating-as an obstacle to my being or becoming desirable. it’s made to feel like something to be ashamed of. and if i’m not explicitly being shamed for it, i am implicitly being told that i could be more attractive, more desirable, if only i were more masculine.
frankie bruiser
I don’t understand why only cis men find me attractive. I have to pretend to be a girl so that I can get fucked by cis dudes on okcupid. THE VAST MAJORITY OF FATPHOBIA I FACE COMES FROM QUEER AND TRANS WOMXN, FEMMES, NONBINARY PEOPLE I’m not “butch” or “masc” enough to be found attractive or desirable by womxn and femmes. I’m not “femme” enough to be found attractive or desirable by womxn and femmes. What really kills me is not that I have meaningless sex with gross cis men who misgender me and won’t leave when I ask them to, but, that queer and trans femmes and womxn don’t see me or my body as desirable (enough) to date/ to sleep with/ to love
nick hensel
:/ transphobia and femmephobia within the queer community :( straight cis dudes are attracted to me up until they realize i’m trans. queer (cis and trans) people are attracted to me more when they are able to invisiblize my femme-ness. being with queer masc people (both cis and trans) often feels like a balancing act of me masking my femininity and exaggerating my masculinity just enough. (white) queer beauty standards privilege and hierarchize “masc” presentations over “femme” ones what does it mean when the queer/trans community creates a new gender binary? are we really escaping the suffocating boxes, or are we reinventing them with new language? how can we describe our genders beyond “masc” and “femme?” gender is more than a spectrum between two binary poles, regardless of language used. frankie bruiser
cis gay dudes like to fuck me on my stomach so they don’t have to look at my trans breasts, so they don’t have to confront my transness, so they can fuck the femme out of me in an attempt to escape the femme parts of themselves. why do you do this to yourself? because my self worth is tied to my desirability. desirability is power. breaking this oppresive ideology can seem easy to do intellectually, but in practice it’s more complicated. i long for the day when dating doesn’t feel like a balancing act of witholding pieces of my true self and exaggerating parts of myself from which i feel estranged. i long for a world in which self value isn’t tied to how closely you line up with whiteness, with (cis)masculinity, with the gender binary, with thinness...
frankie bruiser
BACKWASH
w/ logan novak
are there certain places that make you feel more affirmed in your gender than others? because i’m a closeted trans person at work, and i work and live separately from my friends and other gender-affirming people, i literally return to my life as a trans person and am reborn into my real identity. coming home feels like i’m finally seen again for the person that i am, and my identity goes without question. what are you wearing when you feel most gender affirmed? i love big sweatshirts and jackets because i don’t have to think about my body when i’m in them. i just like to feel comfortable physically so that i am able to detatch myself from all but the necessary physical manifestation of my selfhood. photos and interview by frankie
what’s your number one go-to for coping with dysphoria? honestly listening to pop music because, like my gender, that is something i denied myself for so long, and when i’m allowing myself that joy i feel really shameless and unremorseful for the person that i am. what’s an accurate metaphor for your gender, if there is one? aside from identifying with the word “twink” and a hot can of la croix in my car, i most often think about my disembodied self as parallel to my lived experience as a trans person. i like to imagine myself as a warm pocket of air walking through laurelhurst park (in portland) and people walking through me, but i take comfort in knowing that i know i am there whether any one else does or not.
alien Some of us believe we can outrun gender Like it has interest to chase Or escape it in rockets, but Gender is a sneak which Passes in the magic of our words A sticky that binds our movements and Mires the revolutions of our synergy A vestigial amalgamation we just canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t cut away, and I would hate to be stuck with that Stuck with the shadows of social afflictions Without exchanges to remedy my isolation Still, in jettison I have come to love the smell of my unwashed body Adapting to bacterial multiplicities as Surrogates of friendship Waking for the chance to forget the ranking of my problems and Instead identify them Since then, removed from gravity Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve become the empty that Wraps itself around points of interest and Watches the wandering of ships Mistaking their roving for the dying of stars Referencing them as constellations they do not have the endurance to emulate
river flora
james knowlton
chase hagar
the abomination is about the disunity of the sexed body as perceived by a compulsory heterosexual and cis-normative society. this video aims to commentate on the violence this propogates as well as the fetishization of femininity that arises out of the censorship of the body. both alluding to oppressive gender normatives and the literal dissection of the body that is consequence of these socially enforced political regulations of gender, the abomination wishes to insinuate a conversation around the heavy history regarding genderqueer identity as well as how gender norms and binary limitations function today in modern society.
watch the abomination at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AoeLj9R0G4&t=22s
chase hagar
STOP CALLING MEN WHO ARE ATTRACTED TO TRANS WOMEN “GAY” trans femmes and trans women already face so much opposition, resistance, and violence toward their gender identity and expression as it is. when you even imply that trans femmes / trans women are “actually” men, you are perpetuating this resistance, you are perpetrating this violence, you are normalizing and affirming it. and that’s what saying this implies: that trans women or transfeminine people are “not real women,” or that they are “actually men.” it’s an age old myth that is quite literally deadly--meaning this ideology is a the root of the mudering of trans women, which happens far too often. the ideology that trans women are “not real women” is the starting point of violence against trans women and trans femmes. this rhetoric is exactly what men use to justify abusing or murdering trans women and femmes. an actually radical queer politics requires that we abdandon the gender binary all together, that we stop conceptualizing gender in oppositional binary terms. and without the gender binary, (binary) sexual orientation disintegrates. “gay” and “straight” as labels inherently reference the binary in order to make sense; without the gender binary, there is no structured basis of what to “orient” onself towards sexually. sexuality just is.
frankie bruiser
We, as a society, have not created a space for men to openly express their desire to be with trans women. Instead, we shame men who have this desire, from the boyfriends, cheaters and “chasers” to the “trade,” clients, and pornography admirers. We tell men to keep their attraction to trans women secret, to limit it to the internet, frame it as a passing fetish or transaction. In effect, we’re telling trans women that they are only deserving of secret interactions with men, further demeaning and stigmatizing trans women.
janet mock
corona iniguez
NEPESH
by hayley mandel
One of the driving beliefs of trauma recovery is that you cannot get back to who you were prior to experiencing a traumatic event. There is an acknowledgement that things will never be as they have previously been, and there is more pain in trying to reanimate a departed entity than in constructing the shiny new. Drawn in the sand is a distinction between “before” and “after”, and the person who stretched their limbs in the “before” category is considered very much dead and gone. For some people, this separation is an important one to make. The division offers protection in its boundaries from uncanny horror; an abject reality that forces recognition of deathself onto the holder. Certain circles believe you can slip serpentine into the role of Dr. Frankenstein and bring your slaughtered self back to life, but like Frankenstein’s monster, it is a wholly unnatural version of a human being. So what happens if there is no “before”? What if before was during, and that glimmering after is just a chafed spot on a looped rope, wedged between what my body knows and what the viscidity of my brain does? What if I was born a ghost? I’ve haunted Earth for twenty one years. I’ve been here much longer than that. I’ve felt souls crying out to HaShem beat against my solar plexus since before we left Egypt, since we became free, since they never stopped coming for us. We are phantoms, we are Pluto, we are a plant named for the consistency of our displacement. We have walked, and will walk again through the shadow of the valley of death and fear no evil. Home will continue to be an unstable concept because it has to be. More than a prelude, this is the dream, and the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together. Intertextuality is scrawled with a penknife on my gelatinous endoskeleton like the artificers of Varo’s world-weaving tapestry, projecting reality after reality in a holy simulacrum of blood-tinted light reflecting off of Rumpelstiltskin’s cursed golden threads. Afflicted I suckle greedily from her tit, allowing tzaraat to spread across the stretched canvas of my liquid transparency, a mimicry of the grotesque expansiveness that sludges through my veins. Godliness went out for a smoke and the leper took its place, crouching, caressing itself inside my skin, soft as the whips that licked our backs. Instead of morphing into a pillar of salt, I became sulphur. It’s not me, it’s the dybbuk speaking. Words on the page are starting to bend now. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?
May 12: I watched my leg intently. Just as before, little tendrils were sprouting from it like pillars of smoke. My reflection lookewd in the mirror and spat. She’d seen it too. May 13: My skin is more overgrown than the lawn so I hired a specialist to take care ofit.Beforethesunwentdownhehadboredaholethrougheachofmythighs. May 17: Ominous protrusions have spread all throughout my body. My neighbors gape as I comb the holes in my legs. Somebody tells me it’s 85 degrees out. May 18: Burrowing into the recesses of my mind, I have set up a threshold in the thicket of my skin. A storm brews within the shadow of one my legs’ hollows. Occasionally a breeze blows through the other. May 19: I am a mite crawling on my own body. I try to look at your face but all I can see is my face. My neighbors are not watching but I can still feel their soft corneas in my mouth.
vivian tylinska
May 20: The lump in my throat is growing and I can’t hide it from myself. With my fingers, I dig up a tree growing on my skin and use it to build a log cabin. Nobody admires its fine craftsmanship except me, but I don’t complain. May 24: Via a series of clever inductive processes I have transformed the surface of my body into industry. My neighbors smile and wave at the workers who construct polyhedra, but not at me. In the far reaches of my heart some ruffians are spitting on the ground.
May 26: I have nearly filled in my various orifices with cement. Bridges stretch across the holes in my leg. My skin manifold is smooth and abstract. I put my hair in a braid and my neighbor steers her child away from me. May 28: I have made a perfect sphere of my body to express the purity of my soul. I can’t help but feel something seeping through my pores again. My reflection is laughing in the distance, though I don’t have the eyes or ears to confirm this.
vivian tylinska
winnie black
i do not identify as trans (i don’t identify as anything) but have spent my entire life presenting on the masculine end of the spectrum - with the exception of a very short stint in my mid 20’s experimenting with a “feminine” presentation. i am often categorized as butch or trans when people seem to have a hard time processing my gender presentation. the text of this collage was between me and an old coworker of mine. these were the only words we’ve ever spoken to each other. it is a commentary on the lack of awareness surrounding the possibilities of gender identity & presentation and how most of the time, we cannot fit into the boxes that people want to put us in.
winnie black
(glossary)
(c)afab (adj) (coercively) assigned female at birth (c)amab (adj) (coercively) assigned male at birth cisgender / cis (adj) denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with the gender assigned to them at birth.
cisnormative (adj)
qualities that assume or ressemble being
cisgender; of or pertaining to cisnormativity.
cisnormativity (noun)
the assumption that all, or almost
all, individuals are cisgender.
compulsory heterosexuality (noun)
the idea that heterosexuality is assumed and enforced by a patriarchal society. This refers to the idea that heterosexuality can be adopted by people regardless of their personal sexual preferences. Heterosexuality is viewed as the natural inclination or obligation.
desirability (noun)
~wikipedia, lol
who and what is considered desirable is a set of traits (white, cisgender, able bodied, thin, affluent etc) taught to us early on, and determines how we treat people in the larger world.
-definition adapted from Caleb Lunaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Treating My Friends Like Lovers: The Politics of Desirabilityâ&#x20AC;? from The Body is Not An Apology published online April 2nd 2017.
dysphoria (noun)
the anxiety or distress a person faces due to the gender they were assigned at birth; can take many different forms.
dysphoric (adj)
the qualities associated with or the qualities of experiencing dysphoria.
femme (adj/noun) a person who has one of a million kinds
of queer femme or feminine genders. part of a multiverse of femme gendered people who have histories and communities in every culture since the dawn of time. a queer gender that often breaks away from white, able bodied, upper middle class, cis ideas of femininity, remixing it to harken to fat or working class or Black or brown or trans or non-binary or disabled or sex worker or other genders of femme to grant strength, vulnerability and power to the person embodying them. a revolutionary gender universe.
gender binarism (noun)
~ Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
the idea that there are only “masculinity” and “femininity” which exist in opposition to one another.
genderqueer (adj)
~Alok Vaid-Menon
denoting or relating to a person who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both, or a combination of masculine and feminine genders.
HRT (noun)
hormone replacement therapy. some trans and gender variant people utilize HRT to synchronize body with gender identity and sometimes to alleviate dysphoria. not all trans and gender variant people pursue HRT.
masc (adj)
a term adapted from the concept of masculinity, can
be used to describe a range of gender identities.
nonbinary (adj.)
describes any gender identity which does not fit the male and female binary. there cannot be one definition, considering the number of nonbinary identities is infinite.