Prado Gómez

Prado Gómez is the Director of Proyecto ContraSIDA Por Vida (PCPV), a community building organization by and for the queer Latina/o community in San Francisco's Mission District. Over the last 15 years he also has worked with youth (queer youth of color, youth of color and young women), using writing and theater as a tool for self expression and social change. Prado is a Mestizo (Chicano, Apache, Hopi) activist, parent, singer and husband. He dedicates his time to sharing knowledge in an effort to promote holistic health and wellness, especially in and for transgender communities of color through his work at Proyecto, as a trainer with the Harm Reduction Coalition and Training Institute and with his children.

...So are we as a self-proclaimed community going to try to be different than the rest of the world,

do things differently,

transform community through healing as opposed to punishing,

by recognizing that people are more

than their mistakes or fucked up choices?

even if those choices

hurt other people in our community?

What is it that we value?

What's important?

What importance do we place

on responsibility for ourselves and to each other?

I think it's responsible to want to own the choices we make,

and to be accountable for how our actions affect others,

our community,

and not run away from our choices when the shit hits the fan.

I couldn't help noticing the reactions

to the accusations of rape,

the fleeing distancing from maleness,

of my identity that was even remotely male,

from being seen as a man.

The repetition a reminder of female history,

gender non-conforming to the chromosomal condition.

I may look like a man,

talk like a man,

fight like a man,

even smell like a man,

definitely fuck like a man,

but I'm not really a man, remember?

I often think that's the reason so many people

start out as grown women and all of a sudden become boys as opposed to men

after hormonal and surgical intervention.

_ after all, are not men.

Therefore, not as threatening,

and certainly cannot be expected to be as responsible.

Either way, it seems that people want

the romantic and sexual allure of men,

but not the legacy of men.

To have a boys life,

without a mans responsibility.

Playing dress-up,

playing man for the attention,

that's what drag is.

Even if the stage is a political one.

It's still a stage,

and if you can take it off when it doesn't suit the situation, it's still drag.

And that's all good,

I love drag.

That's part of the umbrella too,

but I think it's problematic to occupy male space in the world

but refuse to recognize that that is indeed the space one occupies.

And proceed to shirk the responsibility that comes with that.

Just like folks of colour,

like my kid, who may sometimes pass as white, even though they're not.

Race may be an illusion,

but it is a powerful one in a racialized world,

as is gender in a gendered world.

I don't bale on my manhood when it's inconvenient.

I'm not ashamed to be, or apologetic about the fact that I am a man.

It's whom I struggled, mostly with myself,

to liberate.

Although it is political, it's who I am, not what I do.

It's not my political or social statement

since I moved here,

until I graduate from college.

I am, or strive to be, the honourable and responsible man I was meant to be.

My inherited complex legacy included.

I owe it to those people who pay with their dignity every day,

and those who've paid with their lives to be who they were,

to stand firmly in the shoes I've stepped into,

for better and for worse.

I feel like I have a responsibility to them,

whether they know it or not.