Tonight, I had a really good conversation with my housemate, about privilege, and more specifically, my privilege as a rich person. I've thought alot about what being trans* and deaf has meant to me over the past two years, and thoughts about patriarchy, heterosexism, and white supremacy has meant - but very rarely, what class has meant. What it means to be rich, and add that along the laundry list of my identities of how I move through out the world that is full of classism - a world that I have not felt, just can rattle of numbers and theories and more, but not feel. And that's not enough to really show up and grow and transform: to transform myself, and to be a person that's really committed to transforming the world.
And it's not about making myself not a rich person, finding ways to escape and deny it; it's not about self-flaggelation and pity-me-I'm-privileged bullshit. If I do it, call me out. It's about trying to be authentic, as scary as that feels sometimes (like right now).
I am rich. I grew up in a really wealthy family, and have gone to private schools my entire life, leading to alot of educational privilege, and alot of thinking about the correct theory - rather than doing things and figuring them out as I go along. I have grown up always thinking, and believing, that I have options - and that things will work out, particularly financially - and they do, with the support of my parents. I've lived part my life as a crusty anarchist punk boy. I do organizing, and I'm funded by my parents. I get burnt out, but it's never for long, and I don't face any financial repercussions for it. I live my life with a sort of lightness, and maybe some of that is my youth, but I know of working class folk my age who are activists and organizers and they don't move the world in the same way that I do. I don't feel the weight of what it means, the same way I've felt the weight of ableism has felt in my life and what the weight of transphobia and cissexism have felt.
And since I'm really frustrated with the world and my friends for not getting it, for not feeling the weight of what ableism or transphobia means to me, and as many workshop facilitators have told me: it's time to get from the heady part of this to the heart. To try to feel what the reality of being rich means for me - and what's really important to me is to try to sit with the ways that class impacts the identities I'm figuring out how to navigate. I am figuring out how to live and honor these identities, build power within them, build community with similarly-identified folks.
And I know that I'm not in the same boat as alot of people I know and care about. I’m searching out finding the kind of trans* healthcare that I would most prefer, and knowing that I’ll get the funding for it from my parents and maybe their insurance. My question is not "How do I access this without insurance", its "What does my insurance cover?". It means that I’m not worried about employer healthcare, or finding other ways to figure out how to pay for it. It’s going to happen – because all of my other healthcare has been paid for by the wealth and insurance I have access to. I can explore deafness, but with the privilege of knowing that I can put my speech processors back on and hear – then pass as a hearing person: passable speech, hearing people when they talk to me for the most part, etc – and that is a direct result of the wealth I have, and have had, access to, the doctors, and the insurance. Being someone who walks and doesn't have MCS, it means I can enter and exist in inaccessible spaces. All of this is privilege within a context of oppression or marginalization or something. It means that I deal with some trans* issues, and some deaf/disabled ones – but often, it means that I’m not loaded down with the deep intersections between class and queerness and disability and whiteness and citizenship/settler privilege in my psyche and spirit, and that I’m not directly faced with the very many ways of violence, exclusion, isolation, that a lot of my friends and community members are experiencing in their lives.
And that’s a clear line of difference that defines me from many people that I am in community with; and that this notion of trans*/queer/crip solidarity is messier than it initially seemed – I grab at these identities because they make sense, they help define parts of my world, but my other identities define those as well, and I haven’t been as clear on that as I’d like to be, or as I want to be. Because I know what I personally need or want in terms of resources and support, but will that actually help out most queer/trans*/crip/deaf kids? Probably not. And I have to sit with that, I need to feel that when and if I speak. Those of us with privilege have to sit with that. Feel what it means to be who we are, in the world that we’re in; what our relationships are to the other identities that we inhabit.
I’m learning to be uncomfortable with the fact that I don’t have answers for all this stuff, but just sitting with what’s here in my life. I feel like I either try to fumble for answers for privilege or what it means, or be silent about it, not making moves either way. I am grateful for the ways that my friends and community push me to grow, push me to feel, for sharing their experiences and thoughts when they’re tired and have had long days, long years, long lives; because often its in these conversations that I learn.
I’m sure solidarity doesn’t work until the heart strings are involved, not just minds and bodies, but hearts. For privileged folks like me, I know it’s not the same feelings that people who aren’t privileged, who are oppressed and beaten down, feel. But I guess a call to myself, and to others, we gotta try to consistently move between our heads and our hearts; to not just have the right theories, or come up with the perfect options; but be able to grow the capacity of ourselves to sit with the tough parts of this fucked up system, with people who are our friends and in our families, who live in our communities or claim similar identities or parts of who we are. I know that’s often what I want when I deal with, or experience, the reality of when I feel oppressed, or beaten down, or tired from the world that feels inaccessible or that feels like I’m not supposed to be here. I gotta grow that too. Every day, with practice.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
The Weight of Access, The Isolation of Home
When I think about the title of this blogpost,"The Weight of Access, The Isolation of Home", I think of messiness. I think of a messy room, with books and papers strewn everywhere. Bits of truth here and there and overthere in that corner - crumpbled up piece of butcher paper, a reminder that I live in a world that for I, and so many for us, we were never supposed to make it this far.
Or that by the standards set, it should've been a given, it shouldn't even be a question - but things change, and shift, and warp in to worlds that carry seemingly oxymoronic meanings: wholeness and isolation; freedom and an increased fear for one's safety. It's complexities like this that seem the toughest to wrestle with, at least for me.
I remember, that spring two years ago, when I discovered that I was moving on two separate paths; or maybe a more apt description would be floating or swimming down a river. That's more like it: being disabled/hard of hearing has existed as long as I can remember, and being queer and trans feels like I'm growing in an empowering, fierce, direction. And in a river or other bodies of water, you can feel clean, washed, relaxed - and you can feel like you're drowning, gasping for air, trying to hold on tight - and even more importantly, you need water to live.
That spring, I know there was a glimmer in my eye, and looking in the mirror, I knew it was a glimmer that included hurt, deep hurt, but a window in to experiencing another world, another home - ways of being in the world that wasn't just about our ideas or our theories, but body-based, tangible, real - in ways that match our ideas and dreams and frameworks.
But the thing I've been realizing about access, the thing that I've been learning about home, is that it's hard. That the foundation that I have is dreams, and sometimes that's just a net over the ground. Other days it feels rock solid. But it's what I have. And it adds just that bit of magic to keep me going.
But sometimes that isn't enough, and it's so much more tricky than that, I've found. I mean that's no suprise coming from someone who's white, class privileged, and used to be straight, male, and even quasi able-bodied identified. Learning how to work and know, and most importantly, love and cherish, the parts of me that the world creates barriers for, the queer, femme, trans, disabled parts of me have been, at the same time, had me feeling the most empowered I've ever felt in my life, as well as feeling curled up in a ball, sitting in bed most of the day, tired. So tired.
So going back to the title, I think of my friend, Mia Mingus'essay "Feeling the Weight, Some Beginning Notes on Disability, Access, and Love," in Make/shift magazine (issue 10, to be exact). That I've learned that it's not just access that I'm looking for, or perfect logistical situations: that there's an emotional weight to access. That it's hard to accept when it's there, sometimes, and the fact that it shouldn't be seen as something to celebrate - because it's what I need to be there. That it feels like repeated conversations about access needs, continually putting myself out there, and people nodding there heads, and responding in the moment: but usually putting their hands up in the air and not knowing what to do (or not wanting to do anything else) in the future, in the days, weeks, months, after those conversations. It feels like being tired of making requests. And a history of a lack of access, stretching beyond my relationship with any person, or group of people. That it's something more than just this one time.
So I go inside, I leave the waters. I go carve a space, alone. I figure out how to make things work for me, alone - that's the only way to manage it. But it's never really managing it. It's a way to control it, control my surroundings, to shut out the world, and hold on to dreams. Hurt filled dreams, because they feel so real, so needed, but knowing that I need others to make these dreams real. So now home is what I need to build, but it has begun to resemble a process of isolation, rather than community. It has looked like digging into books and finding the words that remind me to hold on, and that I'm not alone, not alone in this mental space, not alone in these dreams; freeing myself as I shut myself away from the world.
And I know that doesn't feel right. I know that I need to be in community and surrounded by friends and comrades and all kinds of family. Like I said earlier, one of the most powerful things about water is that we require it to live. I need something more than pieces of paper to hold on to sometimes. Because queer, trans, femme, and disabled positive spaces and community are something I'm finding that I require to fee whole. And I'm still holding on to the glimmer in my eye.
Or that by the standards set, it should've been a given, it shouldn't even be a question - but things change, and shift, and warp in to worlds that carry seemingly oxymoronic meanings: wholeness and isolation; freedom and an increased fear for one's safety. It's complexities like this that seem the toughest to wrestle with, at least for me.
I remember, that spring two years ago, when I discovered that I was moving on two separate paths; or maybe a more apt description would be floating or swimming down a river. That's more like it: being disabled/hard of hearing has existed as long as I can remember, and being queer and trans feels like I'm growing in an empowering, fierce, direction. And in a river or other bodies of water, you can feel clean, washed, relaxed - and you can feel like you're drowning, gasping for air, trying to hold on tight - and even more importantly, you need water to live.
That spring, I know there was a glimmer in my eye, and looking in the mirror, I knew it was a glimmer that included hurt, deep hurt, but a window in to experiencing another world, another home - ways of being in the world that wasn't just about our ideas or our theories, but body-based, tangible, real - in ways that match our ideas and dreams and frameworks.
But the thing I've been realizing about access, the thing that I've been learning about home, is that it's hard. That the foundation that I have is dreams, and sometimes that's just a net over the ground. Other days it feels rock solid. But it's what I have. And it adds just that bit of magic to keep me going.
But sometimes that isn't enough, and it's so much more tricky than that, I've found. I mean that's no suprise coming from someone who's white, class privileged, and used to be straight, male, and even quasi able-bodied identified. Learning how to work and know, and most importantly, love and cherish, the parts of me that the world creates barriers for, the queer, femme, trans, disabled parts of me have been, at the same time, had me feeling the most empowered I've ever felt in my life, as well as feeling curled up in a ball, sitting in bed most of the day, tired. So tired.
So going back to the title, I think of my friend, Mia Mingus'essay "Feeling the Weight, Some Beginning Notes on Disability, Access, and Love," in Make/shift magazine (issue 10, to be exact). That I've learned that it's not just access that I'm looking for, or perfect logistical situations: that there's an emotional weight to access. That it's hard to accept when it's there, sometimes, and the fact that it shouldn't be seen as something to celebrate - because it's what I need to be there. That it feels like repeated conversations about access needs, continually putting myself out there, and people nodding there heads, and responding in the moment: but usually putting their hands up in the air and not knowing what to do (or not wanting to do anything else) in the future, in the days, weeks, months, after those conversations. It feels like being tired of making requests. And a history of a lack of access, stretching beyond my relationship with any person, or group of people. That it's something more than just this one time.
So I go inside, I leave the waters. I go carve a space, alone. I figure out how to make things work for me, alone - that's the only way to manage it. But it's never really managing it. It's a way to control it, control my surroundings, to shut out the world, and hold on to dreams. Hurt filled dreams, because they feel so real, so needed, but knowing that I need others to make these dreams real. So now home is what I need to build, but it has begun to resemble a process of isolation, rather than community. It has looked like digging into books and finding the words that remind me to hold on, and that I'm not alone, not alone in this mental space, not alone in these dreams; freeing myself as I shut myself away from the world.
And I know that doesn't feel right. I know that I need to be in community and surrounded by friends and comrades and all kinds of family. Like I said earlier, one of the most powerful things about water is that we require it to live. I need something more than pieces of paper to hold on to sometimes. Because queer, trans, femme, and disabled positive spaces and community are something I'm finding that I require to fee whole. And I'm still holding on to the glimmer in my eye.
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