Scenes from a Black trans life

At the crossroads of life and livelihood, scholar and activist D-L Stewart invites us into scenes from his own life as he resists and reflects on the dehumanizing narratives that shape the Black trans experience in the US. With each word of his captivating and poetic dissection, Stewart emphasizes the magnitude and urgency of the rallying cry "Black trans lives matter" -- and calls on others to uphold that truth, too.

Hello.

Hey.

(Laughter)

As you just heard,

my name is D-L Stewart,

and I'm a faculty member here on campus
at Colorado State University.

But what's most important
for you to understand about me right now

is that I identify as both Black

and as transgender, or trans.

And yes, I'm going to talk to you today
about how Black trans lives matter.

As I do so,

I'm going to share
a few scenes from my own life,

mixed in with the ways

that race and gender have historically
and currently intersected

to shape the lives of Black trans people.

Ready?

Audience: Ready.

DLS: Scene one.

I am at home with myself.

My body, a sovereign country.

Sovereign meaning

it is superlative in quality.

Of the most exalted kind.

Having generalized curative powers
of an unqualified nature,

unmitigated,

paramount,

possessed of supreme power,

unlimited in extent, absolute.

Enjoying autonomy,

independent,

royal.

My body defies the restrictions

of a society consumed
by boxes and binaries

and "are you a boy or a girl?"

Independent of such conventions,

my body clings instead
to the long ago lore

that understood its magic.

I contain multitudes.

From this supreme power to name myself,

define myself and be myself,

I stake a claim to myself

and organize my resistance.

A resistance that boldly proclaims
that Black trans lives matter.

My body is a sovereign country

and my first site of resistance.

End scene.

To say that Black trans lives matter
is a claim to sovereignty.

As much as Black Girl Magic,
and #transisbrilliant,

Black Trans Lives Matter
is also a chorus of resistance.

Because Black trans lives begin
by defining our bodies

as sovereign countries

from which we first begin
to resist the messages

that we have no place here.

We push whole movements forward
on the strength of our vision.

We set trends and create new worlds.

We are the vanguard.

Black trans lives have always mattered.

And yet,

caught at the time-traveling intersection

of Juneteenth emancipation celebration

and Stonewall's emancipation declaration,

Black trans lives
are both seen but yet unseen.

Unseen by the antiblackness
of queer and trans movements.

Unseen by the transphobia
and trans-antagonism of Black movements.

Our sovereignty and resistance are blocked

by layers of systems and structures

that have always sought

to contain, define and erase
Black trans bodies.

Scene two.

I am with my therapist.

The one whose testimony I must rely on

to declare me man enough
to have my documents changed.

The one who is to be believed.

Despite my own declarations
that I am not this body,

that this body is neither hers
nor yours to define,

I sit with this doctor.

And she fills out a form for me.

And when concerning what all I've done

to affirm my gender,

"Has the patient's gender presentation

aligned with their gender identity?"

She decides that my gender presentation

is more neutral, really.

While I sit there, mind you,

head to toe in clothing
from the section of the store

where the dress buttons
go down the right side,

and my pants give away
the number of inches around my waist,

and my hair is cut
like Denzel's "Man on Fire,"

but I'm still more neutral.

Really?

Because she still sees,

and you see,

a Black woman.

And Black women's bodies
are always already made genderless.

End scene.

From mammy and Sapphire,

to Mandingo and Sambo,

Black bodies and our genders
have been caught in the white imagination.

And the imagination
of whiteness is fanciful,

and powerful enough
to turn its fancies into realities.

Imagined as a thing,

we were made to become that thing,

and so we have been bred like horses,

fed like turtles to alligators,

branded like cattle,

milked like sows,

made into oxen to plow.

Gender did not matter,

so long as our body parts,

our arms and legs and backs,

our breasts and genitalia

could be turned into profit.

The Black body was made not white

and therefore not worthy of gender.

And under the weight of the gentile tulle

and virginal lace that dressed
plantation mistresses,

Black femininity has always been denied.

Instead, she is either beast or porn star.

Neither a proper gender, dehumanized.

Made a social threat
that endangers civility.

That puts civilization in danger.

The angry Black woman cannot be escaped.

Not even by a first lady
of these United States.

Likewise, ill-suited for chivalry

and outmatched as masters
and captains of fate,

Black manhood lays flaccid

in the hands of white man's dominance.

Body measurements taken,

speed measured,

draft pick forecasted.

This is the NFL combine.

Body measurements taken,

teeth and body cavities inspected,

number assigned.

This is the prison intake room.

Body measurements taken,

talents and abilities advertised,

teeth and body cavities inspected,

name and value assigned.

This is a slave's bill of sale.

Made either stud or farce,
he is not for his own pleasure,

but rather for profit and jest.

Athletes and comics

contained.

Made not a threat.

"My gender is Black," said Hari Ziyad,

because Black bodies
and our genders have been caught

in the white imagination,

and we have always been transgressive.

Transgressive meaning

a violation of accepted and imposed
boundaries of social acceptability.

Blackness is transgressive.

And once set free

from social acceptability,

blackness challenges the limitations
of what gender can be.

We have always been fugitives here.

Escaping from gender surveillance

to claim our sovereignty

and right to exist and to live free,

to proclaim as beautiful

that which was made ugly,

to defy convention,

Black lives and trans lives
and Black trans lives.

And yet, in this world, that fact

that Black trans lives make a difference,

make differences

and make a matter of mattering
is doused by the fire hoses

of past and current denials

of our rights to exist and resist.

We must fight to be seen

as we see through fences

into the play yards
that we are kept out of.

Scene three.

I am at school.

The bell rings, it's recess.

We line up to go outside.

Those made boys on one side,

those made girls on the other.

We file out of the doors.

The boys stopping
to fill in the closed off street.

The girls and I,

walking across the street.

"Keep your eyes
straight ahead," we are told.

Because there's a park across the street.

But there is a wrought iron fence
that encloses that park.

This is where the girls and I play.

Mostly, I stand at the fence and watch,

as my fellows play ball in the street

and be loud

and be rough

and be sweaty,

and I am behind the fence.

Accused of thinking naughty thoughts.

They have no idea.

End scene.

Sissified and bulldaggered,
we are all made up.

Just boys in dresses and girls in suits,

the Black transgressive body

caught in fantasies of boxes and binaries

that make our genitalia
representative of our gender,

and our mannerisms our sexuality.

Black trans lives are therefore
written off as merely gay effeminate

or lesbian butch.

And the overlay of femininity
on bodies marked as male,

and therefore as man,

adheres like a "kick me" sign,

except the consequences
are much more deadly.

The majority of trans people murdered
in this country are Black trans women.

Because when manhood
is located between one's legs,

and defined in opposition to womanhood,

what's between one's legs

cannot be seen as having anything
in common with womanhood.

And this same acidic wash
serves to blanch trans masculinity,

making it fade into nothingness.

Black trans men
become illusions of manhood,

women merely playing at being men
because you can't get a real man.

Forever put in our place,

we are indelibly marked as "woman."

And at best, the looming threat
of Black trans manhood

is contained, inoculated,

made more neutral, really.

Scene four.

I am with my therapist.

I tell her what I think about,

as my body begins to slowly morph
into another version of itself.

What will happen as I move

from the social threat
of angry Black womanhood

to the physical threat
of looming Black manhood?

When will my neighbors
forget to recognize me and my pit bull?

They've seen us nearly every day,

predawn or after twilight,

for what will have been
over two years by then?

When and how soon

after I am no longer misgendered woman

will the cops be called
to come and contain

and erase my presence?

How soon before the purse clutching,

the sidewalk crossing?

What does it mean to become a brute?

To turn my body
into another kind of threat?

She's stunned that I'm already
recognizing this.

I can't afford not to.

End scene.

Who can see me and my Black trans kin
in the skin we are in?

Who dares to love us,

who holds us close?

To whom do we matter
other than to ourselves?

We're not looking for saviors.

We have each other.

As Lilla Watson said,

"If you have come here to help me,
you are wasting your time.

But if you have come because you recognize

your liberation is bound up in mine,

then let us work together."

Let us work together
to make Black trans lives matter.

The lived experience of Black trans people

out into the world.

And if you believe that your liberation
is bound up with mine,

then I invite you

to make Black Trans Lives Matter
your personal ethic

by being transformative,

loudly and mindfully.

You can do that in three ways.

Transform your thinking
about blackness and gender.

Be loud by taking the risk

to confront false assumptions
and other's fears and biases.

Be mindful and pay attention and believe

what Black trans people say
about our own lives.

Being transformative loudly and mindfully

takes practice.

Just like getting
someone's pronouns right.

Mine are they, them, their,
and he, him, his, by the way.

And getting someone's pronouns right

and being transformative loudly
and mindfully matters.

Because Black trans lives matter.

My life matters.

My body is a sovereign country,

and my first site of resistance.

(Applause)