this idea of 'masculinity' in trans-masculine communities

but whose masculinity exactly? and who gets to definite it? and claim it? and what is our responsibility to it?

so cathy came over for dinner last night, and it was lovely. i made chicken enchiladas with salsa verde and we had salad and cake! yum-fest. and she's a smartiepantz and so much fun to talk to and it seems like we haven't run out of subjects yet and could talk for hours and hours.

so i was telling her about my week and how i went to this dance performance by this transguy named sean dorsey at the mission dance theater. and she was asking how it was, and i hesitated a lot. but i think ultimately what i had to say it important and a conversation that i want to start more or encourage cuz i think lots of folks are having or have had it already, but we need to have it louder or more publicly or more emphatically or maybe even with some action taken around it?

so to encourage myself to be a bit more positive, these are the things i enjoyed. when i was in highskool, i got to hang out with a bunch of modern dance homos and go to a lot of their performances, and i think my standards or what modern dance could look like or be got pretty high cuz they were incredible, thoughtful, creating, cutting-edge performers. so i'm kinda critical about my dance. and the piece that sean did incorporated a fair amount of lifting, mirror work with other folks, using both high and low space--all things that i appreciate a lot.

his style as far as i can tell is to record himself telling stories over a background of music and then have movement choreographed to the stories. i also really appreciated that connections and thought in the first story which seemed to be loosely if not entirely autobiographical and centered on his experience writing masculinity on his female body in middle/high school and being bullied and constantly picked on and harassed. in the story, he meets another 'freak' who is basically writing femininity on a male body, and sean talks about how while trans-masculine bodies are picked on and harassed and seen as freakish and unacceptable, trans-feminine bodies cross a whole other line and the penalities for crossing that line can be seriously more intense.

while i've had individual and small group conversations about the differences in violence and oppression facing members of the gender variant community, i feel like it's seldom that these conversations happen in large public spaces. and specifically where they talk about the different experiences that transwomen and transmen have in the world. while mysogyny wasn't necessarily named specifically, it was in the room. and i think that that's super important and necessary component of any conversation about 'the edges/fringes of masculinity.'

so i'm being productive and pointing out the things i liked/appreciated. but really i mostly walked away from the performance with a bad taste in my mouth. i think i had romantized the bay at least in this area, and had hoped that the transmasculine community had gotten some of their shit together. and maybe they have, but really i didn't see this at the sold-out dance performance in the mission.

i think that a lot of sexy, intriguing, performancey pieces are being made about mostly trans-masculine folks right now, and their journeys and experiences with masculinity. very few are made about folks' _responsibility_ to their newly emerging, confusing masculinities which i think it hugely problematic in our fight against mysogyny and patriarchy. we (meaning trans-masculine) need to be having conversations about what it means to identify (sometimes) as men, to pass as men (sometimes), or to have different relationships to masculinity.

further more, i'm sick and tired, of white trans-masculine folks presenting masculinity like it was some overarching concept/identity/experience that was the same for all trans-masculine folks. i think that my experiences as a genderqueer/trans-masculine individual is *so* informed by my race and class, almost to yield it a different beast and definitely to yield it a beast that carries a whole wealth of different responsibilities.

however that never seems to make it into the cute, heartwarming story that nontrans folks eat up.. maybe cuz they're trying really hard to be allies, we've got fucked up shit going on that means we don't question or challenge those with marginalized identities (pedastal complex anyone?). maybe folks are just way fucken clued out.

so as usual, this group read as a mostly if not all group of white masculine-presenting and identifying folks who said shit nothing about how their masculinity, their privilege, their identities were influences and formed by their race and class and what kind of responsibilities such identities warranted.

whiteness and class privilege gets normalized in these scripts. creates an 'other', sets the stage for what is typical and normal even in a freaky, marginalized community.

and while i love coming-out stories, learning how to bind stories, stories of hormones, and stories of childhood bullies and survival, these stories are flat to me without a contextualization that there are *many* different masculinities and we need to be specific about our experiences and our assumptions and locate ourselves. white trans-masculine folks *do not* get to have the end word/point of definition on this. and those of us in the loose community who know better have a responsibility to step up and speak out.

oh san francisco. how did you romance me so? there are many more folks talking about this shit but the what gets to claim public space seems sadly the same.

our strengths are in our complicateness and the acknowledge and telling of that complication. we need this to survive and to create new visions and new possibilities. i am so thankful for my community and my family that keep me on my toes, questioning, thinking, loving deep and complicatedly. keep it up folks. i love you.