Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
My name is Storm Miguel Florez and I am a Mexicana American, singer songwriter.
I haven’t performed in a college campus in a really long time.
It reminds me back in the day when I was a young lesbian in Albuquerque New Mexico
and I use to perform at the college campus
"Take Back the Night" marches.
There’s just always action happening on college campuses which is very exciting.
My name is Shawna Virago; I’m a transgender provocateur musician.
The students are very open-minded.
I think its an opportunity for one: trans people,
trans students, trans allies to feel empowered.
They are seeing people on stage speaking about their own experiences
or being on stage speaking of their own experience,
and I also think its great for the non trans students
to be exposed to trans people that are empowered,
that have pride, that we're viable, that we have things to say.
For me, I take it very seriously. I want to represent when I go to this kind of event.
For me I really feel growing up I didn’t have transgender
role models that really spoke to my experience.
As a rock and roll musician I didn’t really ever see myself fitting into the gender binary or trying to
assimilate completely as a gender normative person.
And so I feel showing up, my heart really speaks to those
folks that are also in similar paths as artists, musicians,
or just people who realize that the gender binary isn’t for them.
So I think it's good. I take that seriously as an older trans person.
Letting folks know like there is a multi-generation community
that is happening and I think events like this do that very well.
My name is Pardis Esmaeili and I just graduated from San Francisco State,
Biology Department.
And I’m currently the director of E.R.O.S. which is a student government program
that promotes safe sex and positive sex attitudes. And part of that is
enlightening people on various issues around sexuality and gender
and that's why we are here today.
We are having a panel that is consisting of transgender folks
and gender variant or non conforming people.
I’m really excited about the panel because it is something that is close to my heart.
I have grown up identifying masculine most of my life.
I wanted to have a sex change for a long time.
It wasn’t until I came to San Francisco where I had a space where
I can comfortably be masculine and still be in my female body,
that's when I really started to accept myself.
And this panel is really symbolic of the struggle that I went through
and watched people around me go through
and I'm really excited for people who have never had to think about their gender
to see this and realize how much of their everyday life revolves around their gender
and how much of it is really constructed by the society around them.
The main dominant idea that this society organizes
our thinking, our experience, and the whole structure of gender is about this gender binary.
And basically the gender binary means this.
There is this idea that there are two and only two discrete sexes: male and female.
That form the basis of two and only two discrete genders, man and woman.
That in term forms the basis of two and only two forms of gender expression,
masculine and feminine.
Living beyond the binary or somehow outside this binary categories can bring
a lot of challenges in individuals life.
After all society is set up to impose a lot of pressure
and penalties on those of us who don’t conform to society's gender norms.
I just always knew that my gender was different.
Today, I identify as a trans male trans masculine but
I don’t identify as a man in a sense of a bio man, I don’t identify that way.
I think I am very different from that because I also believe there is more than this binary system.
However the external pressures from society for me to pick
are kind of what I'm grappling with today
as I transition and as I come out as a trans man to the world.
I am very proud of this event and I'm proud of all the people who organized and put it together.
I think it is something extremely useful for our campus and needed.
Especially outside to have it in Malcolm X Plaza Cesar Chavez Student Center
to have like all these trannies out performing
and people really you know giving us a space to be.
I identify as gender *** now because
like every time I told someone I like the term ***,
people always think that I’m talking about *** stars.
Even though that is the most like appropriate term to categorize
how my body is and how I act in life.
When I went to school, growing up I did not see a lot of other *** people like me growing up.
I had to define myself and I think that was a blessing and a curse.
Because I didn’t really have role models to look up to.
I didn’t know about the Audre Lordes, the Bayard Rustins and the
James Baldwins in my black history.
There were no gay people in my black history class.
So I didn’t have anybody to look to. I didn’t think we exist.
And growing up in a religion that told me that gay people went to hell,
I didn’t think we exist and I didn’t think survived.
So I didn’t really have much guidance in my life.
I didn’t think of my life past eighteen, or twenty-one, or twenty-five.
I couldn’t conceptualize it past that.
But it also allowed me to shape it for myself because I was pretty determined that if we could co-exist
and we don’t have any role models, we need to start and I might as well start now.
So let me define what a black gay person looks like,
or a black boy looks like, and let me make sure that it's positive
so when people see me they know what that looks like,
and they have that positive image.
That is why I identified as butch. I’m butch and this is what I am,
and I saw other butch women like me. I'm butch. Two years later when I was a junior,
I went to a school in Long Beach, North Long Beach which is primarily Black, Latino, and Asian.
I’m going to school saying, "I'm butch, I'm butch. This is me."
And there are no butches in North Long Beach. They're studs.
The way that race and gender mix there,
that Black Black masculine centered women did not identify as butch.
Butch was a very White term. But going to a White school, I didn't know that.
I thought that was how you defined me.
And so it sectioned me off from the masculine women there
because they all play basketball. I played badminton.
I wasn’t one of them and it made me feel alone because
I’m like they’re Black masculine centered women like me,
and they are saying I’m not one of them because I’m not aggressive - I don’t play basketball.
You know, I’m not a stud. And I was like, what's a stud?
And I didn’t like what a stud was because it was presented to me in such a negative portrayal.
That was only because these people at school were doing it in a negative way,
and I saw the individuals rather then the whole group.
I was really nervous, my heart started to sing but everybody seemed to love it.
So it’s over, it’s good. We're going to keep doing it. We're going to *** this campus out.