Smoke. Kill. Stay. A Non-linear Detrans Narrative by Shaawan Francis Keahna

ARTIST BIO: Shaawan Francis Keahna (he/him and she/her) is a transient storyteller somewhere east of the sun, west of the moon. His art is currently on display at the Watermark Art Center in Bemidji, MN, as part of the Miikanan gallery. His other art can be found in A Howl, by Native Realities Press, R.I.S.E. Vol IV, and The Asian Cyborg and Other Othered Bodies.

STATEMENT: “There is a reality of the body.” This is what my trans ex wife turned best friend says. There is a reality of the body, a lived experience, a truth to the horribly politicized “biological realities” and the stigmatized self-determination we all fight for. My art exists in my unreal body. Sometimes I joke that it’s like someone made me up. I feel invented, so I make comics. I feel comical, so I invent. My art is fueled by love and rage, joy and spite. I wrote recently that I never really had a choice when it came to my gender. I was put on oral steroids for what later turned out to be an estrogen allergy, which most doctors hesitate to diagnose, because what “woman” is allergic to estrogen? They put me on the steroids to treat the symptoms, but the steroids did exactly what they wanted to keep me from—they lowered my voice, redistributed my fat, changed me. I went into my treatment a 17 year old girl, a prom queen, a tall, hyper-feminine entity, and once the pharminduced amnesia hit, I came out on the other side a 19 year old boy. For this reason, some members of my family worried about me transitioning. Some thought I was being irrational and impulsive.

My cousin, a trans woman, had known she was a girl since she was 3 years old. When it came to me, the question was “where did my granddaughter go?” I went on T when I was 19 out of pragmatism and dysphoria. I stayed on it and stayed identifying male. I got into an abusive relationship with someone who told me I had to be a lesbian because of how complex my gender was, how imposed it seemed. I went off T spring of 2020 out of pragmatism, too. I was disabled and terrified of going to the pharmacy when the pandemic was in full swing. I watched my body reshape itself into the woman’s body it never got to be, and was amazed. It wasn’t me, though. In spring of 2021, I flared up so bad I couldn’t walk anymore. I found out I had something called Estrogen Dermatitis, that I was allergic to Estrogen, and that it was mixing with my other autoimmune issues to make me sicker. I went back on T, got top surgery in June of 2022, and I am so much happier and healthier.

WEBSITE: shaawan.com