During the summer of 2018, I participated in Generation Feminist: Building the Next Generation of Feminist Leaders, Scholars, and Activists. A two week national program, my cohort of thirteen traveled to the University of Rochester as a part of the collaboration between the Center for Educational Justice at the University of Redlands, the Women’s Center at Bowling Green State University, and the Susan B. Anthony Center at the University of Rochester. Grounded in the feminist history of the greater Rochester area and hands-on experience working at Willow Domestic Violence Center, this program intended to provide us an opportunity to put theory in to praxis. Below is a reflection of my positionality within the program during my time in Rochester.
Foremost, I want to acknowledge the stolen land, upon which I stand to write my positionality statement, of the Haudenosaunee tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy. Moreover, I wish to acknowledge my own whiteness that continually upholds the very structures of colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy that have erased these peoples through genocide. Notedly, it is not only the Haudenosaunee whose history has impacted my own feminist learning today, but also the Cherokee people of Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama who not only share the language of this area’s indigenous populations but who are also descendants of the Iroquois Nations themselves. Their land has supported me and aided in my own growth and development in which I cannot deny.
I also acknowledge as a result of English being my first language, alongside my ability to speak, I can walk into most spaces without stigma and expect that communications are tailored to my abilities. Granted, having Auditory Processing Disorder complicates my ability to learn, retain, and communicate knowledge or work in certain environments, it does not override the privileges of my first language. Furthermore, due to the geographic location of my birth, I am able to travel and live without fear of being questioned, detained, and/or deported by the police state. This is coupled with my whiteness, which all of my marginalized identities are in proximity to, that benefits me due to the structures of white supremacy.
While I am fluent in the language of the oppressor, I still struggle to articulate who I am to others, but I’m learning that a language exists that describes me. First, I want to reiterate that my name is Jordan and my pronouns are they/them/theirs. I specifically wish to focus on my identity as a queer person here, as it has most prominently impacted my experiences here at Gen F. This is not to say that my experiences as a first generation high school and college student, growing up in and out of poverty, living my Pagan faith, or being a survivor are not present or impactful as well.
In retrospect, Coming out on National Coming Out Day as a lesbian in 2015 was far from what I expected or hoped would happen. Long before, and since then, I have been faced with decisions that have impacted how honest I let myself be with others. This has been an isolating and harrowing experience riddled with internalized homophobia, body dysphoria, and doubt. The strong lines of Christian faith of my community at home have created a culture where I am seen and feel as a burden, demon, and a person unable to be loved.
To the queer role models I clung too and to the others, I have been grateful to know that it is thanks to y’all that I am alive and well today. This past year has been extremely difficult from classes, family life, finally unpacking the trauma I’ve been denying, and coming out in a new sense all over again. I am learning how to be the “other”. Starting with kindness and loving myself, I am vowing to live authentically.
Authentic me, however, feels as if I am a foreigner in my own skin. Constantly, I feel watched, not in a paranoid sense, but in the sense that I am out of place- my gait clumsy with the pitch of my voice too high. I feel like a lost tourist, illiterate in the language of where I have found myself. I don’t know how to navigate this social construction of what is politically correct between girl and boyhood. I don’t know who to ask for help and even if I did I don’t know if I’m even sure what I’m searching for or how to ask. My Non-Binary identity is one of constant fear, following down a rabbit hole of the uncertainty of what-if’s, plagued by worst-case scenarios. Often on this borderline that divides the known landscape from the abyss of uncertainty, I sometimes think about not thinking at all. To say that suicide ideation has not shaped my young life would be a disservice to who I am today. My mental health has felt the brunt of this impact when I fear every blue light, doctor’s office, intimate act, and interaction with strangers.
Speaking of strangers, I often reflect on Haley and grieve for her. I find myself sitting in a classroom with rows of women, or presumably identified women as I attend a women’s college. But what does it mean to be a woman? I desperately hope one day that I realize that I just have misunderstood womanhood and I can forget what it means to be trans. Is womanhood the start of menstruation, because at eleven years old my fifth-grade self had no concept of womanhood? It is the start of the catcalling, walking in groups, sharing locations while on dates, or better yet earning less than a man’s dollar? Yet, through a bond of mutual oppression, I don’t fit in this cisterhood. I am a token, the topic of my women’s studies classes. Classes that won’t even change their name to respect those whom it studies. Still, I laugh at the notion of a gender binary. Even as the world tries to convince me that the spectrum of gender does not exist, I’ll button up my boy shirt like a suit of armor. Ready for battle.
While I can be banned from the military, but I can’t be banned from fighting. Fighting a battle against myself, dysphoria, transphobia, and violence against my trans siblings of color when my very breath is an act of resistance. My words are a weapon, my voice is a trespasser giving away my femininity. Sometimes I wonder if Haley had tried more, if Haley was more quiet, spoken only when spoken too. Appropriate, dresses to her knee. Domestic, childbearing, man loving, a baker. Maybe she would have survived.
This dissonance between my body and my interpretation of myself is not met in a hatred of my body to be clear. My dysphoria is oriented in the interpretations of my body by others. As a result, my wardrobe acts as a means of protection. I police my own body: how I sit, how I walk, how I speak, how I dress, how I let myself take up space. This is complicated even more so by the way I have sold my biometric data to researchers or plasma to the CSL in order to simply survive. My body feels like a toy for researchers to play with. Once again stripping me of the thought that maybe I will have complete sovereignty over my body someday and that others will not think that they know me better than I do. I am scared to exist in this world. When I say I am scared, I mean to say I fear for my own mortality. I am not ready to leave this world, but when I walk into a restroom and I am met with stark eyes or when I speak to the barista and they jump I ask myself will I be the next #saytheirname? Haley, did you knew when you applied to Agnes that Jordan would leave? That they would exist in the world?
Even now, in these tumbling words from lips that hitch, hiccuping, seesawing between right and wrong I find myself a banner, torn in the whirlwinds of breaths held shakily. See, I can’t swim but my limbs are flailing, scrambling for the words to understand Haley again. Not just the surface of her: I want to be chest deep. Yet, the whoosh of breath tickles my throat reminding me of the dysphoric heaviness sitting in my chest. The pressure in my head reminiscent of deep sea dives leaves me diving headfirst into thoughts never ending.
The constant battle I face against my own restlessness, an invisible opponent, leaves each punch weaker than the last. My arms are tired. The last time I came out, the last time I opened that door, walls shook and hearts trembled. Not of love, but of fear. Why bother running, escaping, fabricating disillusionment when I know exactly how I feel? I know that I feel like a box to be checked off. I feel dismissed as if my reactions and feelings are overreactions at best. I am lumped into a category of all trans folk: men, women, gender non-conforming, agender, genderfluid, queer, two-spirit, and a list of ongoing others.
As a human being, I feel minimized. As a trans person, I already face a plethora of discrimination and this experience overall has demonstrated that even at a place that values inclusion and I am subhuman. The urgency and action of this program have fallen short of protecting me as a marginalized person.
As a human being, violence against me by the World Health Organization is defined as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.”* When they say “physical force or power” this does not this is only physical harm; it includes societal power imbalances. If statistics help bring clarity to the severity of how this impacts trans people note that 40% of trans individuals attempt suicide over their lifetimes partially as a result of the violence they face.** I am unwilling to exist in a space where I will bring further determinant to my own mental health.
As a trans person, misgendering me is telling me that my humanity is conditional and only deemed worthy of acknowledging when there is a benefit to that party. Encouraging me to engage in a program that cannot see my own humanity minimizes me further. Feminist spaces exist on the basis of gender oppression, but when your gender is not on the binary there is no space for you.
As a result, I’m trying to grow where I am planted. With my love and burning passion so that I may be the person I needed when I was younger. I hope I can make young queer kids feel like that they can exist and be successful. I am grateful for all the people who have and will to continue to hold me, support me, ration ideas and feelings, bring me chocolate soy milk, and most importantly love me despite dealing with what feels like a rollercoaster of discovering who I am. As a result of others, I am constantly reflecting on what love means and what my next chapter holds. More importantly, what I want it to hold and the love I want to foster within it.
* More information at: http://www.who.int/violenceprevention/approach/definition/en/
**Statistics from: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/preventing-suicide/facts-about-suicide/
tags: WGSS 1; WGSS 2; WGSS 3; SUM 1; SUM 3; SUM 4; SUM 8;
