Black Looks

Violent suppression of initiatives we cannot understand or even deaths in the African Diaspora as well as the African LGBTI set us back for generations but worse still is the hypocrisy and corruption that blinds us to this fact. Why? When you kill a living being because of their gender identity or whatever reason, you rob yourself and the rest of the universe of a part of What Is. Because of our mundane human conditioning and ingrained religious intolerance we adopt self-righteous pedestals and snuff out the life force that is human diversity. We laugh at what we see as spectacles as we slowly die away ourselves as part of the essence of the universe. “Everyone dies sooner or later,” is something we dread hearing while knowing the truth of the statement.

When I think of the plight of the transgender community as an African in the Diaspora I’m reminded of all those little murders that happen daily in the name of propriety or why most of them happen in the western world. In Africa most transgender people are underground so nobody knows any better but as a friend argues it is no surprise. “If African transgender people were out they’d suffer the same plight as their sistren and brethren in the west,” and don’t we know it?

Even as I gather my thoughts in my head to write this piece, I can hear the whispered indifference of people who ought to know better as they willingly give in to learned bad behaviour in the name of “doing what’s best for you” as if that makes them better people. In fact they are no better than Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” when he drags Ikemefuna off to sacrificial slaughter. I do not mention this lightly. Okonkwo’s masculinist stance leads him to greatness but robs him of responsibility with regard to Ikemefuna’s death and eventually to his own exile for killing a clansman. However in this context, Ikemefuna is no longer the little boy of the novel but a vision of the future -openness, courage and compassion. In this guise, he is the spirit of the transgender dead facing up to cultural traditions that exclude difference for nepotistic gains. This usage is not accidental as we live in post colonial or neo colonial times in terms of gender identity and the rules remain the same: conform or die! Exile for anyone is a type of death as some transgender people can attest and we do so in plain view daily: at home, abroad or overseas.

As a transgender person that also identifies as a lesbian, I’m constantly aware of the dangers of being out but some of us cannot help but be. In this sense then as beings, human beings, even in the company of allies we still face predictable and unpredictable danger within the global LGBTI not to mention back home in Africa. How many have died suspicious deaths globally so that “old western values” last? How many more suffer in silence boxed in by the subtlety of compulsory binary fixity? How many more of us must go underground for life’s sake? How many are displaced in dehumanising exile in far away lands that circumstances have hand picked for us?

The temptation here is to join forces with the gender debate rattling on in traditional Gender Studies academy and fix the players… Obiageli and Okonkwo’s other wives and their prescribed roles in that world cannot always be fixed. The consequences of such fixation stifles our evolution. Rather in those very communities and elsewhere, Ikemefuna must become more than the little boy but a sort of archetypal voice conferred for the remembrance of transgender victims of persecution alive or dead by allies as by foe. In other words, art and literature of peoples all over the world must speak out lest they accept their complicit roles to stifle diversity and equality. Hiding behind religious intolerance, tradition or fixed notions of “the way things are” or Western values is no longer an option.

I’m reminded of openness and courage in the face of impending deaths or hard worn longevity, I’m reminded of compassion exercised in the face of ostracisation because we dare to say, “for us, in the transgender community, there is more to being human than merely following the flow of constructed, possessive and or perceived sameness,”. I’m reminded of the loaded injustice of those in the medical profession whose training would rather they told a parents lies rather than admit to the ambiguity of a child’s gender and the parent that either leaves the fate of child and mother to societal indignation. I’m reminded of men who have leered at first sight only to take up “honour restoring” arms or “corrective rapes” to cover their own monstrous appetites. A pitiful attempt to announce to the patriarchal world that they are not gay or women who take sides with their tyranny claiming, “I’m not a lesbian” or worst still, “That’s not a real woman. I should know!” I’m reminded of some members of the LGBTI whose selfish supremacist yearnings threaten the very ethos of activism. Their aim: to isolate, incite violence against and or exclude permanently all transgender people out of existence. But most of all, I’m reminded of the many transgender dead whose names, like Ikemefuna’s, are with me every waking day. Those whose lives made mine worth living in plain sight; those whose very deaths have changed and continue to change the judicial framework and will do so for those to come in future times.

Thank you all for paving the way for all of us!!!

Mia Nikasimo © November 2009.

Recently, I remembered helping a friend, Susan Giwa, work on a piece about activism, oppression and separatism amongst women’s groups. I found myself pondering the backlash that could arise as a result of criticising the work of such reactionary enclaves.

Susan, a citizen of Mushin Oloosha is a photo-journalist, transgender rights activist, and a lesbian who suffered the dire consequences of speaking out against a women’s enclave which became oppressive in its outlook at the expense of the women it purported to support by empowering them. It is one thing to be an activist facing oppression at the hands of those she called allies, for instance, having access to complementary therapies was blocked, phone calls that came any time of the day despite her demands that she wanted the calls to stop and the fact that she constantly ran into people from the enclave so much so she felt she had to move.

It is another thing entirely, when an acquaintance of Susan’s called Leslie Aparietema started intruding on Susan’s personal life, one had to wonder, why? What was going on? Was Leslie’s “lesbian purist” stance somehow motivating her reaction to Susan, a lesbian and a mother of four, or because of me, a translesbian? And to think all this was going on within the African Diaspora. How can we offer the people back home, in Africa, any advice on LGBT issues while we fall out with each other as we do?

Susan is one of those gorgeous (au naturelle) women who holds her own well in any company be it academic, debate or in social settings. She prides herself on her abilities. She is also well traveled and now has a reputation as a well respected activist and a photo journalist. However she hadn’t banked on Leslie Aparietema’s intrusive nature. Naively, all Susan saw was another black woman, a sister, a lesbian completely missing the manipulative tendencies of miss gotten allies. Even the jolt of the supremacist enclave that nagged at her could not bolster her awareness to what was going right there in her apartment with this bent ally.

As it turned out, they met some time before at a conference for something or the other during an event in the Cathedral city of Canterbury. They had walked round the city centre from the Canterbury West station through the shopping centre and then onto Westgate and all the way to the university just for something to do after a weekend of hectic LBT performance, creativity and digital technology for women of African descent. Here, Susan felt she was in her element. She gave an inspiring talk whic h was so well received she was approached by a number of organisations to run photography workshops for them. She felt on a roll. The engagements to hand, she thought, were enough to keep her busy for a while. Most of her travel and board were effectively taken care of so she was always good to go.

Meanwhile back home in Manchester after the open microphone event. Susan cooked for Leslie. Leslie couldn’t help turning how she came to be with this woman over in her head: How does she identify? She wondered as she sat there wine in hand as she took Susan’s flat in. She couldn’t believe the fact of Susan’s underwear. “Susan,” she called as if she dearly needed a refill.

Susan came in but noticed immediately that Leslie had hardly drank any of her wine.

“What is it? She asked, “drink, there’s more where that came from, you know?

“Oh, I am a sipper if that’s alright with you?” she said as she took a sip of the wine.

Susan was about to return to the kitchen when Leslie stopped her in her tracks.

“Are those boxers yours?” she asked with a questioning look on her lackluster face. Susan had mistaken it for a smile and smiled in spite of herself. She wasn’t used to someone commenting on what underwear she used but as if she hadn’t noticed, Leslie carried on with her inquiries. “I never pictured you for butch but your boxers… The girlier the better as far as I am concerned,” she continued out of hand.

“Look, I’m cooking… Besides I’ve better things to do instead of talk shop on underwear. I’m don’t do butch/femme identity and I’d rather we didn’t talk about it, if you don’t mind,” she said as she backed away to continue cooking.

Shortly afterward looking somewhat red from the heat or was it a fair helping of wine to smooth her frail edges out? Whatever it was she looked herself most.

Susan had already set the dinning table with a fresh set of white roses in a glass vase. She came in with a plate full of piping rice and fresh fish stew and a mixture of vegetables. Leslie joined her and sat down still holding her glass of wine.

“Would you like a glass of water or a refreshed glass of wine?” asked Susan as Leslie tasted the fish stew.

“Hmm, that’s delicious,” said Leslie. “I didn’t know you could cooked so well. Your mum must have passed it down or something. Oh, I’m fine with a glass of wine

For now, Thanks!”

“Thank you,” said Susan as she went to get her a jug of water and her own food. They sat down to eat. Susan had hoped it would be silent.

“Where are you from?” asked Leslie with a mouth full of food.

“What? What can you mean by that? Where am I from?” the alarm in Susan’s voice spoke tons.

“I couldn’t help noticing that you were not black, black, if you see what I?”

Mean?” said Leslie.

“I’d rather just eat if you don’t mind,” said Susan.

“I’m sorry!” said Leslie, “I didn’t realise it is a touchy subject for you”.

They ate silently but Susan’s mind was anything but silent. What does she thing this is? She questions my gender identity, my sexuality, my race, what underwear I wear and why? What the hell does she think this is? An inquisition?

This is precisely the level of oppression a friend had to face. The situation in the LGBT community is no better for transsexual or transgender people today is like the lives of gay people in the 1950s.

During the sexual revolution equality seemed to be the solution but with transgender people set up as subhuman the revolution has not even begun. Traditional gender make caged birds of us all. A couple sat behind me on a bus. Their conversation, part in Akan -a Ghanaian language and part English. They spoke about the way westerners dress which they didn’t hide, they spoke about me, about the way I was dressed, about how, if I were in Mushin Oloosha, they’d know what to do and shouted, “SHAME!” Their fear speaks through fear which meant shouting. Confidently, I stood up as I arrived at my destination.

After all as a friend said, it is worth remembering that subtle oppressions are still perpetrated, for one, somehow, gender identity is consumed in sexual orientation to maintain financial control which meant that the transgender end up being left out to dry. Faced with a woman like Leslie Aparietema and the couple I met on the bus, I felt Susan’s pain. I’m reminded that relationships are very fragile and even more so if you are transgender, androgynous, non separatist members of the lesbian, gay and bisexual or if you are disposed towards gender fluidity, just so.

Mia Nikasimo © September 2009

The act of being Ignorant does not arise out of thin air but when a person from any enclave latches onto the words of a drunk and uses those words as an excuse for his or her agenda their integrity becomes questionable no matter what the person’s personal status happens to be. In pandering to the lowest common denominator such a person has absolved themselves of all responsibility.

A down and out drunk even though there was a chill in the air he chose to sit as usual in his seemingly drunken stupor when three Diasporaic African lesbians walked by on their way back to their respective homes after a night out together. The difference on that occasion was the level of ignorance certain lesbians can display faced with a question of definition with regard transgenderism or was that simply the level of ignorance of a particular black lesbian?

I remembered Ris, a fellow Nigerian, telling me how transphobic she thought Black Pride was. “Margaret’s friend,” she said, “epitomised the insensitive nature of it all for me when she referred to you as a transsexual without any recourse to your femaleness,” she said sounding sincerely livid at how deeply ignorant members of the LGBT ourselves (not to forget the African LGBT) can sometimes be. It was as if the statement was made only a moment ago but it happened a couple of nights ago.

I was not particularly crestfallen by Margaret’s immaturity. I felt I knew of it even before it was alluded Ris mentioned it. I remembered Audre Lorde’s claim that, “If we don‘t name ourselves, we are nothing… As a Black woman I have to deal with identity or I don’t exist at all. I can’t depend on the world to name me kindly, because it will never… So either I’m going to be defined by myself or not at all. In that sense it becomes a survival situation.” (Many times, I have done just that until I found silence too can be about survival with regard to self sacrifice.) I was not going to be defined by Ris’s silence not her many asides in the company of friends or other women, yet again. My awareness of Ris’s moments of slippage which I saw as, “unconscious transphobia” to use her words was important to identify for myself. It meant I did not have any false hopes at least. I had come to expect it of conditioned desires and the swift need to constantly reaffirm them as if lives depended on it.

My survival, in fact, depended on this discovery. When I was silent I used it as a form of survival instinct at times while remaining fully eloquent in my physical appearance. I could not be quiet physically if I tried. So when I even heard you ask, where’s the problem then? I was ready to respond without experiencing a nervous breakdown. I was able to ask the question, were Ris’s loyalties flawed? Or was I just experiencing Margaret’s obvious sharing of her friend’s transphobic disposition towards transsexual people generally or this black transsexual person in particular?

The problem sometimes was simply one of absent emotional support confronted by the opinion of a drunk – a different type of silence… Complicity with a drunk, transphobia, homophobia and sexism was tantamount to deriving amusement from the wrong quarters. I cannot dessert myself because of the narrow mindedness that surrounds me. For me, the drunk that night represented one of what Audre Lorde referred to as, “the Master’s tools.”

Meanwhile, that night, as we walked from the South Bank Complex towards Waterloo Station Margaret was in a fit of her own transphobia which emerged from the throw away words of a drunk settling or settled down for the long icy night. Watching all three of us as we approached he called out… “Oi, which one of those two is yours? Are you, the one in pink, the husband of those two?” We continued walking but Margaret could not contain herself.

“Did you hear what that man said?” came the unwelcome remark like a very public slap across the face.

“I did but it was not meant for me!” I said in a damage reduction response to her.

Ris kept quiet as usual. No surprise there but Margaret babbled on demanding some direct response to the drunk verbal jibe. When none came she asked what colour my top was. When I told her that it was orange. She merely grumbled. That’s why I said “he could not possibly be speaking to us!” but she was not having it. She went on digging.

“He wasn’t speaking to me. I know that much based on the colour thing you seemed to be hooked on. However if we were all dressed in black he could easily have been taking about any of us bearing in mind none of us was wearing pink.”

Strangely, I found myself thinking about Semenya’s plight during an international athletic competition where her gender was questioned and wondered how that would play out if she were a transsexual woman? Would Margaret have found that funny too? Precisely my experience when I was asked in a packed bar at the BFI when I was put on the spot on Leslie Feinberg’s behalf. However I rose to the occasion by responding, “She’s a transgenderist which is not like female or males transsexuals. Nor is it about the person’s sex as female or male either. Rather it is about the individual’s gender expression. In Leslie Feinberg’s case, she is a woman to woman transgender person who feels more comfortable in a male gender expression (i.e. looking male in appearance).” One thing that stood out was how little the LGB know about the transgender community. I hoped my explanation would help. The silence that arouse as a result seemed to make the point in a predominantly straight space.

The very fact that Margaret took a drunk word as the foundation for her ill-placed merriment said a lot about her cognitive immaturity (and about people that react to floating opinions in the same vicarious manner for the sake of ill placed amusement.) While she did not understand transsexuality or transgenderism for that matter, a simple direct question could have settled things as the clear response had done in the bar earlier. Everything went quiet but she sounded like she was having to much fun to allow matters to end there.

Peculiarly, although Margaret noticed my silence in the face of such overt exclusion the fact that she picked it up as something to talk about made her just as bad as the inquiring tramp. To think all this took place before we even seriously talked about the film, “In the realm of the Senses” was telling; it screamed of the multiplicity of proclivities unwilling to coexist.

One question cropped up in my mind just then, are we saying then as Africans, or as Africans in the Diaspora, that it is alright to mock identities we do not understand or poke fun at them for our own selfish ends? If so, what are we saying about ourselves as human beings, Africans, Americans, Asians or Europeans, whatever their proclivities?

Bibliography

1. “An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich.” 1979. In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 81-109. Freedom, Calif.: Crossing, 1984.

2. Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Ru Paul. Boston: Beacon Press, 1976.

Mia Nikasimo © September 2009.

Foraging

Who will marry a dog? A Yoruba woman said.

That very morning it was dicey. Straits start out the

Same way daily like putrescent corpses wallowing in

Excremental death of Stunned minds.

Their minds are frozen in the grasp of antediluvian Paws

Fearful of preceding ancestral, natural laws.

The fearful forage feverishly like

Inheritors since infancy -cursed.

Nobody cared to warn them

About other worlds. “What other worlds?”

They inquired. Nobody cared to.

The explanations of VOA in

A radio talk show tolled

A selfsame game of

Wedlock and wealth’s

Longevity over all else

-in preacherly histrionics.

The focus was committed

Meant to keep straits in line.

A mother danced the hypocrite’s

Conditionality clauses into

Her over eager son‘s head.

Facile, while her little

Boy laughed, chuffed,

Stuffed with copses for friends.

Clapton Pond drew near. A pair of straits imbued

Felt well placed to snigger

On unstudied news like they cared.

“Who will marry a dog?” She said,

subtle as hell bird. How cowardice cloaked in

Merriment misleads the merry

“only the dead of excrement,”

As the Yoruba would say.

“Would stoop that low.”

Diasporaic diversity knew better,

Only human beings, beastly inhumanity

Will dare to

Palea in the excremental

Deadly stew of fear.

Mia Nikasimo (c) September 2009

You won’t hear of mermaids in folklore
Not to mention in naijan
Daily life. “It a western thing. It’s not for us,”
Said my naija nymph
Sweet as fleshly harvested honey. I smiled.
If only that were true?
“Naija isn’t impervious to
Evolution like the West it
Will break free of itself,” I
Said savouring sanity over delusional desires to
Be pure, secure, never ever obscure! “Does that
Mean, ‘past progress’?” I
Said gingerly as a puma.
My dearest naija nymph
Wasn’t ready to see the country grow, grow.

Mia Nikasimo (c)

Feminism is an activism
In the service of equal
Rights for all women with
-out exception; all of us.
Congratulate yourself
When you hear echoes of
The gunshots pow, pow followed by a ring, ring,
Hits concrete or metal,
Setting my nerves on end.
Don’t call yourself a
Feminist.
You de-feminist yourself
Everytime you turn the
Vocal screw sreaming
With hatred because I
Became a woman,
A woman in a body of one’s own out of the 20s
Or the lonely wells of the
50s.
When Jen said she
Always thought of me as
Such you sizzled & hissed.
I saw how much burden
You carried, always trying
In complicity & truth at
The same time, yours.
In such a forced, false way
You held me as a friend.
Feminism isn’t intolerant
People are, people like
You who must protect
Other from as if I were a
Insipid Infestation or so?
All that is yours, all yours
Even when you echo the
Thoughts phobic in
others as favour.
Every opportunity your
Pounce oblivious again &
Again only you can’t
Recollect when tasked with what worse you did.
All I want is a body; mine
Governed here by me.
Don’t congratulate me then conflagrate and say
‘Always a friend then put
Me up for the hit.

Mia Nikasimo (c)

Heat rashes populate my
Body nightly, rash bubble
Upon my otherwise flaw- Less skin setting me
on blazes

Of angry nettle weilds.
You found the solution.
Ice cold, heat made of Scorching, red hot heat.

Rashes with a lick of lava;
‘You look like a juju man’
She said seeing the
Damage written on my

Face, “it’s only a joke!” is
All the succour she offers.
‘It’s only a joke, babes’
She said. ‘You can’t live

With Linton Hives, can
You.’ Her prejudices kick
In with more than a jolt.
‘Can we talk, sweetie?’
Said I.

‘You look like a juju man’
Said a t-lesbian’s love -in
A passing joke. It stang so. Still a ticking bomb!

She busied herself
Instead of talking. She put
Her all into tommorow.
Afterall, she was “joking!”

‘What, a joke?’ Said I on
constant trial.
‘If I’m a juju man what
Does that say about you?
If you only you knew the
trauma caused?

Every exclusion wins out,
seemingly
Evidence is a thin horizon
Especially when madam
Was so busy; if only she
knew…

Mia Nikasimo (c) July ‘09

VP is boxing smart
VP is shadowboxing, start
VP is docking in person
Smtms u’r just a version

VP is speaking your heart
VP is speaking without
word art
VP is bearing
burdensome tension
Smtms we cnt hlp our
inversion
VP is not an erasure
VP isn’t pressure’s
texture
VP is survival speak
Smtms naming names
lives leak
As I’m about to sit I know

Mia Nikasimo (c) June ‘09

Gabrielle’s centenarians
Brings our ancestors to us

What can I say? wow
I think of growth and hope
Dignity wisdom and love

I feel the forays
In road from the Impasse
Of youth caught up

In stuff, caught up in stuff
I thought about folk, my
Grandparents, ancestors

I heard all the unvoiced
calls in our minds as we
revelled in their sharing

If only we can emulate
This age old tradition of
Truly living no deception

May we live such full lives
May we live as preciously
May we go beyond

The rigidity of three
Scoress and ten going so
As far s our lives ordain

“Live” I heard these
Strong women saying. I’m
moved, truly moved.

Thank you so, Gabrielle
Mia Nikasimo (c) June’09

Gender…

A single beer was all
It took the throbs set in.
Pounding headache.

Gender is not sexuality
Paranoid community
Leaders hide behind a finger.

It is always, always nice
To meet old friends after
Moments of idle asides

Perhaps I should pipe Down in insipid isolation.
Barking, backing up

Not wanting out, stay put
Ride the tidal wave of
Vituperative avalanches

Run, run, run for dear life
Isn’t that trying to out run One’s capable shadow?

She who lives by chatter
Dies the selfsame way
As the sword bearer

But for me, Osun
Protects indefatigably.
There’s no more running.

Anonymity has become
Me. Attachments are tags
Of communal coercion.

Fear rules, fear prowls &
Closest neighbours count
On its selfish continuity.

Before u say I don’t know
Your directorships, think
What peril u do the “T”.
Mia Nikasimo (c) June ‘09
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