The Art of Staying Soft: A Trans Woman/Femme in Academia
Surviving/Studying Violence and Searching for Community: A practice of loving/breathing beyond violence, as “my loneliness keeps me going”...
BY: LEON TSAI
Content Warning: mentions of mental health, ra*e/sexual violence, micro/macro-aggressions of discrimination/marginalization
Quill Christie Peters, Within and Beyond, 2016. Acrylic on canvas. Photo courtesy of teaandbannock
People often ask why I ended up studying gender studies and poetry at the University of Toronto when I’ve practiced/studied/prepared for the arts all my life, especially with an acceptance to The London College of Fashion. Thus I would sensitively reference bell hooks, of how “[we] came to theory because [we were] hurting - the pain within [us] was so intense that [we] could not go on living. [We] came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend - to grasp what was happening around and within [us]... [And] most importantly, [we] wanted to make the hurt go away” (“Theory of Liberatory Practice,” 1991).
I thought that the “higher learning” of academia through women’s/gender studies would help me understand and ease the pains I feel as a young trans woman of colour. Thus I came to learn, and indeed I started to understand; maybe too much knowledge for the ego, so much that I fear losing my way among theories of survival but never practices of liberation.
I began asking myself: Am I in school to know, or to grow? What is it that I wanted to know, and is knowing really enough/worth it? Is it enough to just understand, and with what comfort/complicity are we to study stories of violence/survival/deaths as if they were just cases, of people we demand spectacles from but never justice for? Yet as times have proven personally/politically, such understandings and egotistic elevations would still not save a trans woman/femme from social discrimination, ie. physical/sexual violence.
The irony of studying/surviving marginalization is often the denial/ignorance of one’s/collective accountability for justice even by just fighting/working systematically, or worse: one’s/collective comfortability in complicity, in silence, rotting. It is why I cannot trust institutions of academia anymore: with the constant conflicts between colonial-capitalist notions of “success” and beliefs of transformative justice/solidarity, I wander these halls of “higher learning” wondering for worth.
Within the first few months of university: a group of first-year students in campus-residence posted a Snapchat video drunk, described me as an “it,” as “big as a tower...still with a penis”; they laughed, over a trans woman/femme’s lovability/desirability after an accidental swipe/match on the app Tinder. Then just months later, a class discussion of whether “trans women are women” in a feminist course where cis-classmates stared anxiously and shared respectfully.
I started to not attend lectures or comment much during tutorials with trans-exclusive/trans-specticalizing agendas. And when it was time for community action/advocacy, when I stepped into student politics, it was only a whirlwind of unnecessary scandals of slander/bullying/questioning both on-campus/online of my body, my intentions, and my presence/essence. Thus I softly came to realize that maybe visibility is only part of violence, and that what makes us such a target/threat is not only the realness to our identity/expressions, but the desperate vulnerability for belonging and empathy.
Quill Christie-Peters, Self-Portrait: Kwe loves herself despite all odds, 2017. Acrylic on canvas. Photo courtesy of teaandbannock
My experiences of living/studying/understanding marginalization have helped pause my search for healing/justice within institutional spaces. And while community might just be its last defence, the instability of mental health among students due to competition, pressure, and the lack of socio-economic resources/support continue to be painful testimonials to how systematic communities suffer from internal/foundational conflicts of power, priorities, and purpose.
In a way, marginalization becomes a tool of systematic violence reflecting on the histories of inequities: a practice of decentering/neglecting/oppressing people’s rights, health/safety, identities/expressions, desires/needs, freedoms, and even existence. The same way cisgender women are subjects to marginalization in patriarchal ideologies with socio-political/systematic evidences of sexism, and similarly with the violence of racialization from colonial hierarchies as well, binary/non-binary trans and intersex peoples are burdened with the violent practices of cisgenderism/transphobia: a daily reminder of how the world distrusts your truth with social neglect/isolation as normality and violence as punishment or forced-assimilation.
I cannot think of one trans sister of colour in my common circles across Tkaronto without stories of surviving sexual violence and sex work; I wonder if it’s any different for my cisgender peers to know that the global life expectancy as a trans woman/femme of colour is 35 years old, to understand that violence is not a game of cause/effect but a hierarchy of normality as morality.
“The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary awareness and demand, the implementation of that freedom...” (“Poetry is not a Luxury,” Audre Lorde)
The truth I had to unlearn was that academia will never heal me, nor can it offer justices that we truly deserve as such productions of knowledge were only built at the expense of but never for those who think/feel/love like us. Throughout my share of experiences being the only fat/immigrant/trans kid in times/spaces even at work or in class, marginalization becomes a cycle of searching for belonging/sympathy/community/empathy, and often just surviving but at times also fighting for better inclusion/representation, for justice/change. People ask for the motivations of my little community contributions from just humbly being, and always I try to explain how it is not a choice but a survival skill: I began organizing, advocating, and speaking on social issues at 16 also because I was hurting, hoping for resonance.
“For within structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were meant to kneel to thought as we were meant to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They lie in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. They are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare.” (“Poetry is not a Luxury,” Audre Lorde)
My journey with violence has only led to my softness growing in strength. I believe vulnerability as a superpower of mine in which most fear due to their shadows of insecurity, yet really when you have nothing else to lose, one’s true essence of identity/expressions become all that one has to hold onto. I figured that if one cannot be safe, at least try to be sane even though sanity is a privilege with salvation losing its meaning.
Cynical of me for surrendering salvation while survival becomes a breathing practice, but maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s clinical depression/PTSD/anxiety. And while systematic communities cycle with conflicts hypocritical to their core, I realize that everyone among/within scattering communities lacking care/resources/support are still all searching/fighting/healing through spectrums of resilience/resistance as well.
Maybe communities aren’t to be searched for or built at all; maybe communities are meant to be grown, organically, like a garden. And perhaps planting a garden starts with loving a wilting flower, embracing embodiment: a collective practice for deeper breaths and (re/un)learning joy, as combatting marginalization/violence becomes no theory of understanding but an art of surviving through softness against hard/difficult circumstances.
Beyond a past of bullying, self-harm, domestic violence, and survival sex work to the present reality of institutional marginalization, economic instability, and continuous social unsafety, I thrive on the compassionate politics of transformative justice while striving to meditate/manifest for community reparations/healing. Still sleeping on a mattress where triggers of rape lingers, I cry myself to sleep at night but my loneliness gets me through.
As I remember being told not just to embody life but to be the embodiment of love instead: I pray myself to fall in solitude only to rise in solidarity, together; I meditate/breathe for the light and to the glory of those alongside/after me. Thus storytelling for survival through grace: a soul of feelings planning, organizing, and preparing for just the softest revolution yet...
Quill Christie-Peters, The Places That Hold Us, 2016. Acrylic on canvas. Photo courtesy of teaandbannock
All art featured in “Decolonial Love Letters to Our Bodies: Gwen Benaway and Quill Christie-Peters.”
Writer’s Note:
As a sensitive/dramatic writer/poet/lover, I find myself often with the urgency to glorify our collective survival and healing, but sometimes there aren't beautiful/loving-enough words to contextualize or soothe the pains, the losses, as well as the complexities for our need of both rest and justice… And during this health pandemic of interpersonal/socio-political/economic uncertainties, we must remember to hold on harder/tighter/softer for those in need/at risk, to hold space for the undocumented folks, sex workers, folks experiencing homelessness, essential service and medical-care workers, elders/children/anyone chronically ill or with compromised immune systems, folks quarantined in abusive households, folks incarcerated, folks in-between borders/seeking asylum, as well as Indigenous folks on/off reserves, etc… Nothing but healthy/safe vibes/wishes/prayers to/for all, and let's work from our privileges to fill in the gaps of injustice while demanding/fighting/advocating/(un/re)learning in solidarity.
Not to mention as well with the continuing visuals/traumas of police brutalities and state violences. Recent viral medias of Black murders and outrage has led to the public/protestors across Turtle Island (North America) advocating justices for Tony McDade, Regis Korchiniski-Paquet, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Nina Pop, etc. I can only write of grief for their dreams of freedom and justice… Other than the continuing (re/un)learning allyhood and actionable solidarity, I pray we rest especially in ever so soft care for the Black folks retraumatized/mourning. With gentler essences as fighters for love, yet it is only in love's full glory that we must demand for justice, even if it means no peace. Contributing to the issue of “Marginalized Voices” while resonating with Martin Luther King Junior’s reminder of how “a riot is the language of the unheard” (1965), it is necessary to recognize/embrace the heavy histories and emotions in the awakening from painful losses… May we find healing slowly, gently, and gloriously through support/solidarity, while our community front-liners and allies demand for and organize towards justice fiercely... Sending love and light to all especially those often caring for others—the activists/organizers/healers/care-takers/lovers during this time.
Community Resources/Actions:
Resources for non-Black folks to support Black communities in Canada
May/June MN Bail Fund and Support List
JUSTICE FOR REGIS KORCHINSKI-PAQUET
Homeless Black Trans women fund
COVID-19: Emergency Support Fund for Sex Workers
COVID-19 Resources for Indigenous, POC, Trans, Disabled & Undocumented Communities
COVID-19 Scarborough Emergency Food Bank Delivery
#RentRelief for Immigrants During #COVID19
COVID-19 Black Emergency Support Fund
FoodShare Toronto: Black Creek Community Farm
The People's Pantry - A Toronto community response to COVID19