Today on The Laura Flanders Show - poetry
and trans politics with the performance group
Darkmatter.
[music]
I have a confession.
I have this insatiable addiction to coffee.
fair trade coffee
fair trade coffee in NPR membership mugs
I want to wake up to that smell next to me.
That and freshly pressed New Yorkers and Moleskine
covers and sweaty yoga mats….
See the truth is
I’m a Snow Queen.
I just have this, this thing
For white people
Can’t help it.
It’s the way they eat steak for dinner.
I know I’m a vegetarian, but I’d make
exceptions
You know I’ve heard that white men have
huge…
empires
I’ve heard they’re really good…
at gentrification.
Once, a white woman asked me where I was from,
no, where I was really from.
then told me she was going to India with her
non-profit that year, and I said ‘Oh, tell
me more, oh take me with you.’
The first white boy I slept with was so excited
when I told him he was sexy like I was the
first person to say that like ever in the
entire world.
You have to understand I like it that way
like your veins are showing
like your skin could bleach out your clothes
like your SPF level is 9000.
like WHITE
It just turns me on
Like I would love to cuddle in the ugliest
sweaters with you and listen to David Sedaris.
And plan our future lifes together.
We can rent one apartment in Brooklyn and
another in the Mission and stare at the same
Che-shaped constellation together at night
time.
I want you to pick me up on the way back from
an unpaid internship.
I want you to tell me about the hip-hop you
jam to in your Prius.
I want you to talk to me about your gap year.
I want to map the lines on your palms to the
lines you drew in Africa.
I want to get my name tattooed on your arms
in Sanskrit, and then Chinese.
I want us to make black friends together.
I want us to have brunch with them.
I want us to get gay married in San Francisco.
I want us to pick up our tribal print tuxedos
from American Apparel.
I want us to vote for Obama, and name our
ethnically adopted children hope and post-race.
On our wedding night you will show me all
the women of color artists that make you feel
like a diva, such as Beyonce.
And you will awkwardly gyrate me without your
hips.
And later that night you will pull me aside
and take nude photos of me like that time
you randomly selected me from the airport
security checkline.
I loved that…
And when we couchsurfing together on our first
honeymoon night
I will call you master because colonialism
never had a safe word
You will whisper tenderly in my ear
Don’t worry, I’m not racist like them
…then fuck me like you are.
So that was a poem by DarkMatter.
Trans-South-Asian performance art duo comprised
of Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian.
They are deeply engaged in the connecting
of arts with social justice and they've been
performing to sold out crowds all around the
world in the last few months and more.
I couldn't be happier to have you in the studio,
thanks for coming in.
Thanks for having us.
Thanks for performing.
Tell us a little bit about how the 2 of you
met.
A little bit of your history.
You're related to a former show guest Urvashi
Vaid, good friend of mine.
You want to do it?
You start and then I'll go.
You start Alok.
Okay, cool.
Well we tell the story a lot, so each time
we like to say it differently.
I think it all began with the journey of our
people here.
Oh, nice twist!
Essentially Janani and I both come from Indian
families who immigrated here from India, and
like many sort of like uppercaste, middle
class Indian families who came, we were raised
with expectations of assimilating, making
a lot of money and being conventionally successful.
Then there's this awkward part that we were
trans.
There's not really that many trans or gender
nonconforming Indians in diaspora because
we're taught from a very young age that you
should be as less visible as possible, and
being trans is a way of bringing a lot of
attention to yourself if you might.
Because we were one of the only sort trans
and gender nonconforming Indians we knew,
when we met in school it was kind of this
huge moment of like, "Holy crap!
We like exist?
There are other people who are like us?"
It's just like earth-shattering moment.
I think so much of our art and our activism
comes from our experiences growing up, and
feeling erased, our experiences growing up
and feeling like there's no one else out there
like us.
I think what we really try to do with our
creative work is to rewrite the story of our
immigration, to rewrite the story of our lives.
To help sort of create a space for other trans
and gender nonconforming people who have been
erased from our people's archives.
Do you remember this moment Janani or?
I remember this as many moments because it
was over several years that we've built together
an artistic practice and also an activist
practice, and when we started touring which
is where we picked up the name, "Darkmatter".
It was actually because our names were too
long together to fit on a standard play bill.
We were like, "Okay, we need to come up with
something shorter so that people aren't having
to read out Vaid-Menon and Balasubramanian
every time they book us."
Alok was like, "Janani come up with something
sciency."
Because I'm the sciency one.
I was like, "Okay dark matter and dark energy
together comprise 96% of the universe, but
they're only understood in their effects,
therefore we're going to go with Darkmatter."
I just thought it sounded cute.
Yeah , Alok just thought it sounded cute.
Then we went on our first tour, we had a no
idea what we're doing.
We sort of just stumbled through some very
cold bus rides, and then from there things
just started evolving and shifting, after
our first tour we got the chance to travel
to Palestine together and work with and do
art work with - as well political work with
- the queer movement there.
Which is, I think, was a really critical moment
for us to develop a lot of frameworks and
learn a lot from what they're doing around
creating space for queer and trans critique
and political practice that are not rooted
in sort of mainstream LGBT politics.
Like what?
Tell us a little bit what you learned from
the Palestinian colleagues.
Sure, a lot of their work is rooted in community
organizing.
It's rooted in organizing their own people.
Al Qaws, the organization we were working
with, works on both sides of the wall, and
a lot of people are told this thing about
how Israel is this gay-friendly place, it's
this gay Mecca, that's the word they use,
where you can go party, and Palestinians are
homophobic.
That's the general standard messaging.
What al Qaws does in addition to their community
organizing practice, in addition to creating
space for queer Palestinians, is pushes back
on this narrative that Palestinians are homophobic
and Israel is a safe place for gay people,
which is very similar in some ways to how
the US positions.
The US is a safe place for gay people, and
all these backwards countries in Africa, South
Asia, Middle East, Central America, basically
everywhere else, are "unsafe" places for gay
and trans people, which as we know because
of escalating rates of violence against our
communities is not true.
Which as we know, because as soon as queer
and trans migrants come to the US borders
they're thrown in detention centers, is not
true, and yet this myth allows a lot violence
to happen in the name of queer and trans-bodies,
and so that's the sort of trajectory and a
lot of the lessons that we took from what
the Palestinian queer movement is doing.
You've just been travelling all around Europe
performing this piece and others.
Well I guessed it was Europe, I don't know.
What was it like there?
Who did you perform for?
Did they get it?
I think what really struck us the most about
this trip is we always had the stereotype
that Europe was this very stodgy, white sort
of like bourgeois kind of space, but we met
the sort of us of Europe.
We met a lot of children of migrants, a lot
of queer and trans people of color there.
They were asking the same sorts of questions
of how both of our countries are marketing
themselves as LGBT friendly while simultaneously
criminalizing our families.
We're put in this bind where there's a certain
sense of purchase to our queer and trans identities
that feels really hollow and rhetorical.
It's really beautiful to make those connections
and to talk about other things like pink washing
are actually operating across the Western
world.
Especially in Europe right now with the rise
of nationalism, the rise of Islamophobia.
I feel like it feels more important than ever
for queer and trans people of color to have
the space to resist the incorporation of identities
into these racist projects.
We're also seeing this incredible refugee
migrant crisis which I can only imagine is
more hell ... I can't even imagine for trans
people trying to get across those borders.
Did you get any sense that there's solidarity
networks or an underground railroad, if you
will, for trans people?
I think trans folks and especially transfeminine
people.
Trans feminine people like me are people who
are signed male at birth, but identify as
either women or more feminine on the spectrum,
are often really erased from our conversations
around migration, because often the ways that
we have to travel aren't like the sort of
model minority migrant story.
They often have to do with sex work, they
often have to do with trafficking, they often
have to do with drug trades.
A lot of ways presenting as a trans person
of color is already being - and especially
as a trans woman of color, trans feminine
person of color - is being associated with
being a sex worker.
There's a long history of our bodies being
seen as contagions, right?
I think even a lot of organizations that are
working on refugee issues, working on immigration
issues, still aren't transcomprehensive.
They also have this particular violence of
expecting that trans looks a certain way.
Trans is not one aesthetic.
If you have a trans woman feeling from some
country in the Middle East, another trans
woman fleeing from South Asia who is to say
that they look anything alike?
Right?
Trans should be about self-identification,
not what we look like.
I think what often happens when we talk about
trans immigration narratives, we already have
a stereotype of what a trans person should
look like.
Well you made a really great video Alok, and
maybe you were both involved, but for ... Is
it regional 29?
Refinery 29.
Refinery 29, the lifestyle site, where you
made the case that combating gender binaries
is something that everybody should have a
stake in.
For people who are just trying to get their
head around this, can you make that case clear
for our folks?
Totally, absolutely.
One of the jokes we always have is we meet
a lot of leftists who are like, "Yeah, I'm
down to talk about everything's socially constructed."
But when you say, "The gender binaries is
also a lie."
They're like, "Wait!
What are you talking about?
That's too much."
I think it's really important to understand
that this thing called male and female and
this thing called man and woman are recent
historical constructions that have everything
to do with racism and colonialism.
That I've never actually met anyone in my
life who fits every single norm or stereotype
about what it is to be a man or what it means
to be a woman.
Yet we keep on thinking that these fairytales
are relevant.
For me, and I think we all actually have a
stake in recognizing that there are as many
genders as there are people in the world.
That all of our intersections of our experiences,
our identities, the ways that we have presented
ourselves mean that actually no two women
are the same.
There is no such thing as a universal gender.
I don't feel the same from day to day frankly.
Speaker 1: Take a pick.
This next poem is a poem I wrote about my
father, I feel like a lot of trans narratives
tend to be about our mothers, but sort of
what I was saying before, I think we actually
have to transform masculinity as well.
I've been thinking a lot about how so many
South-Asian men I know never consented to
being men, that racism did was racialize them
and gender them as these sort of "savage brown
men".
This is a poem about thinking about how my
dad's masculinity is related to my own transness.
Let's take a look.
when i am 11 years old my father declares
that the parking lot smells a lot like marijuana
to say that i am scandalized would be
an understatement.
you see
i was the prude love child of my middle school
‘DARE’ program
which means that i was taught from a very
young age that
the minute you consume
drugs you become a very very
bad, bad person
so when my father insinuates that he knows
this smell
i judge him to be a evil man
and tell him to confess immediately
or i am running away from home!
he laughs, says
“the things you will never know about my
past”
i have never asked my father who he dated
before my mother.
i have never asked him about his first kiss.
i do not know what he hoped his life would
look
and whether it came true.
you see there is this thing that happens
when you call someone a father
he ceases to become a person and instead becomes
a punch line
for everything that you hate about yourself
he becomes a parable
as if on that day two new people are born
everything he is before this moment is now
history
his story
there is this thing that happens when you
are trans
where you know you are not a man because
you know you are not your fathers son
and the moment you tell him this
he becomes everything you are running away
from
so in this way being trans is another way
of saying
“i am running away from home”
i have never asked my father what it was like
to become history
to watch thirty years of memory
coil inside his gut
so that every time he laughed
you remember what it felt like
to be young again
. . .
there is a VCR tape in the living room drawer
fast forward to the scene where a man who
would've looked like me
if i hadn't run away from my father
walks out of the door in next to a woman radiant
enough to be the sunshine when i first opened
my eyes
this is my parents wedding video
in this shot
my father’s friend tells him that he can
no longer be a rebel
now that he’s a married man
this is how i discover that my father used
to a rebel
when i meet his friends from college they
say
that he spent most of his time hanging out
with a man named karl marx
and a dream of a decolonized india
they tell me i look just like him
and i want to correct them say no i’m not
a man
i mean i’m not that man
my father laughs at me in the video the same
way
he will fifteen years later in a parking lot
the same way he laughs when I'm back home
and use words
and use words like ‘revolution’ and ‘now’
and he tells me that we need incremental change
so of course i accuse him of being middle
class liberal
who's come to care more about his private
property
more than he has his people
and he tells me
that there is this thing that happens
when you grow older and begin to
recognize that you are not invincible
which is i think my father’s way of finally
admitting
that he was never invincible
that his hands were so sweaty from being afraid
of
all of the ways that i began to look just
him
that he could never quite
hold on to me
i think this is my father’s way of finally
admitting
there are things i had to give up
in order to have you
. . .
i gained the confidence to yell on the streets
because i learned how to fight my father
i have been shouting at him for the past six
years
and calling it a relationship instead of a
riot
because maybe that’s my way of convincing
myself that
i see myself in the flames
and maybe
that makes all of the difference.
There is no question the movement has a long
way to go, when it comes to taking on some
of these broader questions.
You've actually been very critical both of
you of the mainstream LGBT movement, can you
explain why a little bit?
Woo!
We do that all day.
We always like to say rainbows are just refracted
white light.
Gay rights are wrong
Honestly, the mainstream LGBT movement is
not really a movement at all, it's a marketing
scheme.
It was created specifically so that white
wealthy people could position themselves as
victims of the very systems that they're upholding.
It's not even a figurative thing, right?
It's like a bunch of rich white gay lawyers
got together and said, "Hey, the black Civil
Rights Movement have done really well, let's
copy them."
Of course when white rich people are appropriating
those tactics they succeed.
They do really well, I mean to be fair they
would say there are all these rights, they're
denying to people can't get married, but we've
managed to win all these rights for people
all over the country, the most vulnerable,
or perhaps with people that have benefited
from these rights most...
Then they will oddly be very silent when we
say violence against trans women of color
is increasing, incarceration is increasing,
detention and deportation and criminalization
are increasing.
And that a lot of people are forming families
specifically in those really harrowing situations
that don't look like married couples.
Right, and where are the protections for those
capitalist nonconforming communities?
Jealousy is hard to talk about without feeling
small.
Love means having the same conversations over
and over.
Love means listening differently every time.
I’ve spent the last six years unlearning
all the ways my parents communicate.
I still have the same conversations with my
mother everyday.
She asks me when I’m coming home and if
I have a job.
Once a year my mother tells me she’s depressed.
Today I tried watching everyone train like
they had a broken heart.
There is something so warlike and old about
the people on the train in the evenings.
You can grow so old waiting for wars to end.
My friend who is trying to breakup calls me
to come watch him cry so he can get out of
bed sometimes.
He asks me to tell him where the pain is coming
from.
I point to a place and he says that’s right
it was just hard to tell.
His heart breaks so loudly it ruptures mine.
Some love stories don’t end like anyone
is right or wrong.
People can just walk away from each other
with their now broken feet.
My friend will stay put until the breakup
is real and bone-shattering.
I can’t say stop because I wouldn’t do
different or haven’t tried.
Love is excessive to the point of survival.
I keep telling my friends I love them in an
attempt to give the word love meaning.
Every love story is eventually a ghost story.
I’m reading a gay book that feels like the
words in my own mouth.
Loving other writers means I’m left both
jealous and hungry.
Half my anxiety comes from doing things I
love.
If you stopped eating love stories back to
back you might remember you aren’t hungry.
I’m glad my old lover flew away and didn’t
break my feet.
I keep making haunted houses out of people.
Sometimes there isn't enough new language
from one person to the next
so we say the same words behind their backs
to their faces.
‘I love you’ sounds like ‘I stole this
feeling somewhere'.
In just a year, certain parts of this story
have already become my ghost story.
Many of them are ordinary places like kitchens
and street corners
When I keep my mouth open in the Village bats
fly out.
There's something in the air this winter stringing
airplanes and bombs and hearts and money to
a single line of gunpowder.
Every story I’m writing feels terrifying
under the surface.
I have this ungrounded fear that a poem and
a bomb are two parts of the same rupture.
Like we are just watching each other survive
more
This time it’s not even beautiful
Let me ask you a question about one of the
topics that's coming up under the Obama administration,
which is this question of trans inclusion
in the military.
Are you checking this off as a great gender
item achieved?
No.
There's this really weird thing happening
right now where you're seeing a lot of people
speak about trans rights, and I wonder who
exactly are they talking about.
Who they're talking to.
Because the average trans person is actually
incredibly poor.
Is living under incredible violence and duress.
What we actually need is economic justice,
racial justice, housing.
I could be less concerned with participating
in US militarism.
I also tell people, every trans woman of color
and transfeminine person of color who has
to survive in this country has already had
to be a soldier, because if you look at the
rates of PTSD in our communities, the rates
of suicidality, the rates of chronic pain,
every single day we have to fight for our
legitimacy, right?
Focus on those warriors, focus on the people
who are being denied from homeless shelters,
the people who are being denied from getting
adequate healthcare.
Those are the campaigns we should be taking.
You're being very careful to say transfeminine,
not trans woman, do you want to talk about
the thinking behind that for a second?
Totally.
I really feel like we're in a terrible moment
right now where we're talking about gender
as if it's still in the binary even when it
has to do with trans.
There are actually a lot of people who experience
trans-phobic violence who don't identify as
trans.
I want to uplift, just 2 days ago there was
a Black gender nonconforming person in Detroit
who was murdered because they were wearing
a dress and they actually did not identify
as transgender at all, but in that moment
they were read as someone who was a boy trying
to be a woman, right?
Actually a lot of hate violence affects gay
men, and especially Black gay men, affects
gender nonconforming people like me who don't
identify as women, but when we're read or
when we're street harassed or seen as trans
women.
I think when we only talk about violence about
violence against trans women we're actually
erasing the whole spectrum of violence because
often it's not about how we identify, it's
how our perpetrators of violence see us.
Because harassers don't have this sophisticated
understanding of what people's identities
are, right?
They see you in a moment and they want to
beat you up.
That's the thinking behind it.
We're talking about seeing any moment.
We got some push back the other day on our
show from someone on Twitter saying, "You
are supporting erasing women in favor of men
with gender dysphoria" Are you about erasing
women?
Wow!
Honestly it's really funny being trans on
the internet, I have to say.
Because what we never talk about is that being
trans or gender nonconforming on the internet
means your image circulates across the world
and everyone's baggage and anxiety around
gender gets flung on you.
Janani: Like, "What's in your pants?"
Around that piece around erasure, I think
that that's actually an act of erasure because
what it does is it actually doesn't talk about
how trans women, and transfeminine people
have been doing feminist organizing forever,
that actually colonization on this land was
about trans misogyny.
It was about, "Look at these indigenous peoples,
these men in dresses."
That actually Stonewall was about trans women
and transfeminine people of color resisting
police violence.
That a lot of feminist victories would not
be here if it was not for trans women and
transfeminine people.
If you're really looking for people who are
erasing women, trans wouldn't be in the very
front line of my list of problems.
No, I think there's this particular brand
of radical feminism that actually does itself
a disservice by saying trans women are not
women, because what that reduces women to
is vaginas which is misogyny and has been
misogyny actually produced by the doctors
who surgically alter children's bodies at
birth to match this idea of a vagina and an
idea of a penis.
If we're going to talk about original sites
of violence, it is that doctor, it is that,
whoever it is, the lawyer who created 2 sets
of boxes you can check on a form, and not
trans people who are out here just trying
to live our lives.
Trans people aren't the problem, gender binaries
are 
the problem.
I love it.
I'll leave it right there.
Thank you both.
Great to have you.
Thanks for having us.
Thanks for having us.
