TransForming Community videos

So in the past I’ve mentioned the annual National Queer Arts Festival event TransForming Community, which is dedicated to exploring the friction at the intersection of contemporary trans and queer communities. (an anthology of the same name and theme edited by Michelle Tea and myself should *hopefully* come out sometime later this year – it’s been put on hold as our publisher has recently had to relocate...).

Anyway, the Queer Cultural Center (who puts on the festival) has recently YouTube'd excerpts of individual performer’s pieces from shows over in the last three years. There are 20 of them and they are all great, so you should definitely check them all out!

As you know, I’ve written exhaustively* about the issue of trans woman-exclusion, irrelevance and invisibility in queer women’s spaces, and how this invisibility is exacerbated by the increasing numbers of trans men who feel entitled to inhabit women’s spaces too. A lot of the performers brought up this issue in one way or another, so I wanted to highlight a few of those pieces:

of course, there is me ranting about the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival trans woman-exclusion policy

Shawna Virago (who is a personal hero of mine!) talks about a similar policy at a bay area women’s bathhouse called Osento

Michelle Tea has a few funny and poignant words about why trans men are “in” and trans women “out”

and finally, the piece that I find to be the most brave and moving is Prado Gomez’s piece (I raved about this back in June after seeing him perform it live). It addresses the hypocrisy of trans men who move through the world as men, yet distance themselves from the word “man” whenever they find it convenient. Personally, I feel that this video should be required viewing for all newly transitioning trans guys.

anyway, hope you enjoy them all! -julia

* when I say “exhaustively,” I don’t necessarily mean that I’ve said everything there is to say about the topic, but rather that I exhaust myself by writing so much about it.