Intersecting identities/places

I feel like I’m living in two worlds. Once consists of clear, sunny New York winter days, Oberlin friends in the city, subway stations and queer coffee/activist bookstores (I’ve been in one right now for the last four hours). It’s not the same as my normal world, not by a stretch – but it’s filled with some familiar people and things, like bagels and Regina Spektor. The other world I’m in bears little resemblance to any life I’ve known. Because I’m in the transcription stage of my internship, I wear headphones at least six hours a day and listen to seven or eight people talk – their thoughts, banter and hopes. It feels like I’m in the room with them. I know the quirks of their speech patterns, I get agitated when they don’t understand a concept another is presenting, I get excited with them. I get tired with them.

One of the reoccurring themes I’ve heard at the office is that I’m not alone in my inability to picture their world in the context of mine. When members of QEJ explain their job – working to achieve economic justice for low-income LGBTQ people -- to friends or possible donors, the recipients usually nod, frown and say, “Yeah – I know all about queer homeless youth. I’d love to help.” People can’t imagine queer homeless adults. I’m guilty of it, too. When I picture the shelter system, I think of the families my mom brought food to in Ann Arbor, and how we had to play with their children while she dropped off the lasagna. I don’t think about what happens when those homeless LGBTQ youth grow up. We think they get help, or are rescued, or go to college. In a lot of situations, they don’t – they just grow up and have to deal with systems ensconced with LGBTQ-phobia and people/authorities in the system with prejudices they pass on and are never trained to ignore in the workplace.

Another trend, one that makes a lot of sense, is that a lot of LGBTQ people who require public assistance feel that they can’t complain to higher-ups, or do anything about the discrimination that comes from police, because they fear that said public assistance could be taken away entirely. Due to this fear, they often (by no means all of the time) do nothing to take action. The stats on the numbers of LGBTQ people who get arrested, physically assaulted, fined, unwanted sexual attention, and told to move by the police are disgustingly high, and within the LGBTQ people there are categories of identities that deal with these injustices even more. I don’t want to name specific stats because they’re not published yet, and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to do that. But it’s evident that transgender people experience police abuse even more, and people who have been homeless at some point in their lives have much higher numbers, too. I thought a lot about something Kenyon said. He pointed out that New York is the only state in which all individuals have a right to government-provided shelter. He laughed. Obviously, he said, that was a joke in the first place since there are people on the streets. Besides that, though, we have to question what the word "shelter" means. Is it just a roof over a person’s head? Or is the New York government implicitly required to provide everyone with a place free from violence and discrimination?

A couple of nights ago I got back to Chloe’s house from QEJ, grabbed a bite to eat and went almost immediately to hang out with a group of people she knew from high school. The six of us squeezed into a booth at a diner. They were nice enough – tossed around a lot of names I didn’t know but had that made-up quality of another high-school universe – until the girl across from me started talking about someone she knew who got a sex change. “That’s so gross,” she said. “Now he has a beard.”

My initial thought is that she was joking. Firstly, I had just been immersed in queer social justice land. But also, I just couldn’t imagine how a sex change would be thought of as gross. Ew, it’s so nasty that someone decided to take on characteristics of another gender, or identify as another entirely, right? How dare that person grow a beard?

It’s strange to remember that some people still think of it that way, as a perversion. We were all supposed to go bowling after, but I decided to take the Subway home. I felt vaguely like I had escaped something, denied the existence of something.

That’s the closest I’ve gotten to trans discrimination in my world, but I realized that the digital recorded tapes and my life can’t stay separated for much longer. I want to go to the places the people in the group (I wanted to say “my group” – I don’t know if I can) talk about, and see for them first-hand. Since I’m not allowed to write or talk about their stories in the tapes and on the surveys, I feel a duty to do the work and collect my own. I brought it up to Michelle, and was worried she would discourage me from it, but she didn’t. If anything, my trips next week will help inform the work I’m doing with her group, I suppose. So that’s the plan.

This day marks the end of my week with Chloe, although I might end up staying with her again later in the month. We hung out with some of her friends last night who were delightful and made no comments about transitioning from female to male, and I’m sorry to go – but excited to stay with my dear friend Max in Montclair, New Jersey until Monday.

A side note – I’ve never felt more portable than in New York City. Last night, out at two in the morning (with friends, Mom, don’t worry) and only a backpack, I felt like I could go anywhere. I had my laptop and headphones if I needed to transcribe or write, my cell phone, and a subway pass. It’s a carnal feeling, like what any people throughout time have felt when they’re in a brand new place, and don’t know exactly where they belong or how to get there.