Porchlight Manifesta: A QTPOC Call to Community
This letter is a call to community: equal parts invitation and manifesta. On May 20, 2013, over a hundred queers in Austin, Texas gathered for “Queer Questions: A Townhall on Drag and Performance,” a structured forum in which to discuss racism and transmisogyny in the Austin queer performance scene. The conversation that evening, by all accounts, was challenging and fraught. However, as is so often true when truth and power collide, the event was also transformative and life changing for so many. We write to you now because this story goes untold. Difficult as it was, the town hall marked a beginning, a rejuvenation, and a renaissance for QTPOC life in Austin; we would love for you to be a part of it.
Many things came out of that event. The following just one person's experience during and after the town hall.
In May of 2013, I had been in Austin for exactly 11 months. In that 11 months I had found a circle of queer folks I felt safe around. It was a small community, and difficult to break out of because nearly everyone else I met seemed to be complacent with interwoven structures of violence that affect me and millions of others daily. I was underwhelmed by Austin, after having moved here with high hopes. Austin prides itself on being more progressive than the rest of Texas, and possibly the U.S., but I only found more of the same. White supremacy, transmisogyny, fat hatred, misogyny, ableism, anti-Blackness--these things aren’t unique to Austin, or Texas, or the U.S.
I went to the town hall expecting to have to speak a lot. I went expecting it to be another place where I would have to fight to be seen as a person. I went prepared to be exhausted, and angry, and frustrated, and heartbroken, because that is where these conversations inevitably leave me.
But I didn't have to speak. Because others were doing it for me. Other queer people of color, and even some white folks, were speaking truths so beautifully and honestly (and patiently) that I felt seen for the first time in my time here. I was in awe. For the first time in my life I felt like there was this larger community of people committed to fighting for liberation too.
For me, the town hall was a turning point. I remember that night as one that foreshadowed what an amazing place Austin can be. I remember it as the first night I felt I could be (relatively) safe, comfortable, and loved in this city, because here were so many people fighting for themselves and folks like me, who they didn't even know. That was the first time I realized I could build a life here, and now I am happy to call so many of those same folks my family. I love Austin now, and it is because of them. I have found a community centered on love and support of each other. Committed to making ourselves, and the world around us, better.
So who are we?
This all began with a small group of friends who gathered in living rooms, huddled around snacks and laptops, family making out of necessity.
We refuse oppressive spaces
that dehumanize trans women
that make caricatures of Black people’s lives
that make light of poverty
that perpetuate violence against sex workers
that do not provide accommodations for disabled people
that enable sexual violence
that do not see fat bodies as desirable
In other words, we reject transmisogyny, anti-Blackness, sexism, anti-sex work bias, ableism, fat hatred and other things besides.
Before the town hall, we were few and we were humble. Now, we are many and we are fierce.
We are a collective of individuals that center the experiences of QTPOC. We are making space where our art and stories are heard, where our lives and our humanity are at the heart of what we do. We do not wish to be a sidenote. All too often, QTPOC are erased from the annals of history. Our labor and our creations are taken by those in power, exploited, whitewashed, and sold for other people’s profit. We resist. In the liminal spaces between past and future, we see what was and create what will be. Our fashions today will be their fashions tomorrow. Our artforms today will be their artforms tomorrow. Our thoughts today, will be their thoughts tomorrow. All that we are, they will try to be. We refuse to be tokenized and erased. We are taking back what is ours. We are creating our own hirstories so that when our descendants look back, they find their experiences reflected. Our stories are important and we demand that they be seen, heard, felt today. But not by the establishment. We will not serve ourselves up to be categorized and dissected by the coldness of white colonial capitalism. White supremacy would have us surround ourselves with white walls and white wine and white people. No. To them we will remain unknowable.
We do this for ourselves and we do this for you. For the trans Latina crossing the border, for the sister on the corner hustling and for the queer black man in the halls of academia doing the same, for the hard femme making space for themselves in a masculine world, for the brown dyke raising a kid, for the queer fam struggling to make rent, for the incarcerated queer locked in the system, for all of us. We hope you see yourselves reflected in us. We hear your struggles resounded by ours. We feel your presence in the beating of our own hearts. We invite you. Find us and join us. We are building spaces for ourselves and we want you here. We want to build a new world with you. Where you are the most important element. Where your humanity is seen without question. Where we can create the stories that matter to us. Where we can hold each other accountable when we mess up and learn from one another. Oppressive institutions have no place among us, but you do. Flawed as we are, knowing that we may end up hurting one another because of all the destructive things we’ve been taught, we are here and we want you to find us.
We’ll leave the porchlight on for you.