We're a group of trans individuals from Canada, the US, the UK and the Netherlands, trying to raise awareness, educate, and inspire! Feel free to send us topic suggestions!
I have been experiencing and observing WAAAAYYYY more transphobia than ever before. I am posting these here, now, as a reminder to end transphobia and to respect boundaries.
So like many of yall I’m out here trying to get through each of these disaster days of America as well as possible. I’m dedicating more of myself to my poetry and to art and the uplifting of the wonderful queer and trans people of color around me called Nu Zulu. Click that to check out the tumblr page, please! There will also be a monthly zine once I figure out how I would like to distribute it. It’s a place for us to come together and create and share. I dream of it becoming a tool of resistance and revolution to supplement our activism. I’d appreciate it if you checked it out, and feel free to submit stuff for me to post on the blog/reblog as well!
The first volume is coming out soon! Here are some outtakes form a shoot @therealybag and I did today. Get ready to build something beautiful together!
A survey for nonbinary/genderqueer folks, about your pronouns
This is an attempt to collect as much information as possible about nonbinary people’s pronouns.
This survey opened on 2017-08-19, and will stay open until there are less than 10 responses per day. I will then process the responses into some useful statistics and lists, and publish them.
LCD Soundsystem's synth player and technician Gavin Russom has come out as a transgender woman.
Gavin Russom, synth player and technician for the band LCD Soundsystem, came out as a transgender woman in a new interview with Pitchfork.
She says she took some time for self-care after the band’s 2016 tour and had the opportunity to spend time with other transgender women. She’s keeping her same name, but will go by she/her pronouns and begin presenting in a way that feels truer to herself.
A few excerpts from her interview, of which a portion is written in first person:
I’m 43 and I can identify that once a decade, I made a concerted effort to make my trans identity known. That includes a period of time when I was a child in the ’70s, when I was going through puberty in the ’80s, and then several periods throughout my twenties, thirties, and forties. What makes this time different is that I’m in a stable moment in my life. Working with LCD Soundsystem all last year and then having a solid block of time off to focus on self-care was really important for me. This is what came out of that. I don’t like coming out so much as a term, but sometimes it’s the only way to say it. […]
Up until this point, I felt comfortable working with my own gender fluidity, my own identification within the feminine end of the spectrum, and the politics that arise from those things through my music. Retroactively, this is a thread that goes through my entire body of work. It’s an interesting way to listen to it if you weren’t already getting that.
I feel very blessed because the world that I operate in is relatively open-minded. I mean, the electronic music world can be extremely bro-y and also close-minded and sometimes even worse than maybe a more traditional office job. However, at least where I’ve found myself, the people who are around me have been very supportive. I still had fears that I might experience consequences, mostly because I know so many trans women who have lost their jobs when they’ve come out. It’s a very unfortunate reality. There was a fear and awareness that my ability to do this really is a privilege—and it shouldn’t be, but it is. […]
It has been a process of paying really deep attention to what’s going on with me. I had a very significant moment very early on when I called my bank and the teller said, “Oh sir, thank you so much for calling us.” It’s so hurtful, and of course they don’t know—they’re just looking at a document that has a gender identifier. But it was so powerful to just be enough in my own body to say, “Whoa, that didn’t feel good.”
There was legitimately something unmanageable for me about living as a cis man. I was working so hard just to present this image of myself that ran very deeply counter to who I really am. There’s nothing theoretical or intellectual about that. It’s the physical thing in my body. It felt like there was almost another person constantly walking next to me being like, “Hey, hey, hey, pay attention to me, hey, hey, hey.” To some degree I wish I had been able to work through it sooner, but I’m also very glad that I worked it the way I did. Having gone through 42 and a half years of being in denial and trying to work through this stuff has given me a lot of experience.
Congratulations, Gavin. Thank you for sharing your music and your story.
Big announcement! Gaby and I just secured an apartment in Chicago, and I just officially accepted a job as Assistant Director of a nonprofit out there(Grassroots Campaigns)!! Super excited for this new adventure !!! We will be leaving the last weekend of July!!
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