[on top surgery & chests & race/class privilege] morning pages / kaybarrett.net

this has always been, me at the cusp of different cultures, 
even in my queerness and transness. went to a liberal university
but was surrounded or felt surrounded by white and affluent people.
this translated into the queer and transgender community. slowly we
carved qtpoc space, slowly we were seen as too militant for just wanting
to hang out with one another. having spaces for trans people of color
was even seen as snobbery.  if white transgender men/bois hang out,
it’s not seen as privileged boy’s club, it’s generalized as radical (read: cool)
trans community. if a bunch of trans or queer POCS hang out, we are
coined as radical (read: stigmatized and violent). we are given the
pack mentality, the gang approach, the separatist cloak. it’s a form of
racist and limited queer visibility that looms and even clutches, truly
confines even in supposed fresher and more progressive cities. 

surrounded by white and affluent people who had insurance,
whose parents or grandparents were benevolently liberal and
though i know this is not the over-arching experience for
everyone in this demographic, it was the case for the majority
of people i schooled with. moving onto what was “trans” activism
and when i saw the FTM community, so much of the contributors
ushered themselves into liberal white male privilege, that i didn’t want
to affiliate my guy/male/boi/manness with them. i was at the
bridge, the cusp, the steady foot in 2 cities. passing or not,
enough so in my own neighborhood i could be a kuya, butch/AG/stud,
or brown boi making his way back home, being too out of place with
my upwardly mobile language, not having to do manual labor or
struggle with language barriers as much of my blood family have.  

i gave myself a present and attended a “top/chest surgery for FTMs”
workshop yesterday and it was held at an asian and pacific-islander
health clinic, serving and specializing in those communities. yet, more
than 1/2 of the attendance was white and hadn’t considered any
of the negative cultural implications it meant for white people
(queer and/or trans) to take up space, sitting in the first 2 rows at
an API/A organization. what really was troublesome was the evident 
financial privilege of that community. everyone had mentioned
how they had insurance or had families that could easily pay for top surgery,
not fully considering the problematic hierarchical effects of healthcare
in general. they weren’t even considering that the clinic itself served
low-income and working class asians, migrant workers, and API immigrants, specifically queer/trans/hiv-poz APIs.  it was painfully obnoxious and
how are APIA low-income people supposed to feel comfortable
talking about their needs and really getting a supportive experience?

i find this to be a trend in many liberal and mainstream API/A spaces,
the white love that carries on in our internalized racism.  this is something
that i’ve witnessed and stood up and sat down and felt pummeled and
felt empowered to speak up about. at the clearest point of my
understanding, i see how we’ve had to be  ”little brown brother”
in our spaces how that was imposed as a survival mechanism of urgency.
not to mention, the social services industry which flourishes on the
benevolent helping the needy framework and also, supposes the
white saviorism mentality.

on the other end, QTGNCPOCs and low income QTGNCs in the u.s.
have varying issues that are critical for them and their spirit and
well-being, along with access to initiation, surgery, there
are deep-seeded concerns re: housing, foster care, homelessness,
police brutality.

what i can say, is that i am in a different place than i was 5 years
ago, 8 years ago, when i felt afflicted about the tenuous pull of which
communities to belong to and at what time. how when i was younger,
growing up midwestern and in deeply segregated chicagoan space,
forging QTPOC joy, was hard, still is, hard, but happens on the daily.
the breathing of intersections helps me gauge my resilience, even
if i do not feel this all the time, being and becoming my whole
self is an organic process that is requiring my community and
our seasoned resources to help us collectively rise and breathe
and take action. whether it’s your homey going with you to
the medicaid office, or it’s you asking someone to help you process
your late food stamps or your own ability to zero in on what you need at
that moment despite all the privilege surrounding you that you just
weren’t given this lifetime.  i’ve felt it all over again, the energy it
takes to be and become and operate within communities that deserve
to be served.  i felt that undying hunger that everyone deserves the
resources to be themselves, be safe, and live their lives.

when i was a woman of color dyke/butch/AG, white feminist womyn
would call me their “sister.” it was a gesture that meant fawning and truce
and signed their political legitimacy through affiliating with or erasing my
nuanced struggles. it was rotting in me, that word sister, for so many
obvious and ridiculing reasons. i do not feel at home with whiteness.
i can no longer open my heart up to it unless it is about re-distribution of
resources and not taking up space.

i now see how my brotherhood, my boihood, is developed and building
and searching and understanding. i am not your little brown brother. 
we are not starting at the same line, our toes all beginning at the jump, in this together, as you may say. eager to make the people in us grow up
and strengthen this world, there is kinship on my skin and spirit as it is
going to change, manifest, as i see it acknowledging all aspects of my
cultures and homes. i am excited to call my homies and hear their stories,
hear how they felt when their nigerian, pilipin@, latin@, mixed, chinese,
upsouth black boi/manhoods came up and came within, lived always
within and continues to invest in a safer world for themselves and
their homespun community. 

http://kaybarrett.net/