Although transgenderism is an umbrella term for a cross section of identities, I want to use a series of articles to illustrate what this means in a sort of transgender 101 sense; basic transgenderism, if you like. This is also an attempt to dispel some of the myths around gender ambiguity or variance in order to relax those that might be fearful of the doctrine and often this is everyone including those that think it does not impinge on their lives; the truth is that to some extent it impacts on us all.

Transgenderism basically defined is a community then of gender variant people from all works of life. I love this particular definition because it chimes with daily life and speaks to me as I hope it will do for the rest of the world in general and African LGBTI in particular. As an African by origin you cannot but notice the hysterical disposition of your own people in their morbid glee to denounce some wrong doing or the other where no such wrong exists apart from their reaction to anything they do not understand. According to Kate Bornstein in Gender Outlaw, “Gender terrorists are those who bang their heads against a gender system which is real and natural and then use gender to terrorize the rest of us.”[1]

The painful thing is that it is never pretty when your own people start replacing the old guard, even the arch enemy of “racial integration” no longer bearing their fangs look like they are now leaving their dirty work to our own ultra conservative narrow mindedness; a sort of racial Cul de sac that we have somehow imprisoned ourselves in where gender identity and sexual orientation is concerned. They, my people or those I share my racial background with loose the plot to the point that they assume that staring at me as if in doing so they’d scare me into “doing the right thing by them” or something to that effect. My question is when does making such fascistic requests of anyone warrant any attention? The straight answer is that, it does not under any circumstance. Hopefully in the coming weeks transgender 101 will share the reasons why with you: my people whether you live in Africa, in the Diaspora or even somewhere else in the world since transphobia isn’t just an African ailment.

When Asa Johannesson, an M.A student at the Royal Academy of Art recently said, ‘I feel like I’m working with myself,’ I so understood where she was coming from in terms of subjectivity and the narrative form.[2] As a writer, I constantly find myself returning to the script of the ‘personal as political’ with regard to gender identity. It is here more than anywhere else that I find the quintessential transgender but still specifically, for me, as an African translesbian. Faced with daily transphobia especially wherever I’ve lived I find that one becomes duty bound to write about ones experience dues to an insistence on narrow definitions of gender in society at large and in order, if anything to provoke dialogue, where such hostilities prevail.

Transphobia, apart from its semblance to homophobia, is always about hatred. It can be defined as a blind loathing of any individual who questions the fixed gender binary. In a narrow insistence on the status quo the transphobe embarks on a campaign of intense and decisive gossip with the aim of either scaring the said individual out of the area or inciting violence against us. It can take any form including some parents who so far gone that they forget their responsibility as parents in their frenzied attack on something or even someone simply because you do not understand transgender experience.

While I do not want to tell anyone how to be the perfect parent, I think that it is important to highlight a problem where one definitely exists. Can you imagine a mother in the block of studio flats where I live for instance, where yet another mother constantly pushes her daughter forward to abuse me simply because I am an out translesbian? When pulled up on it she offered any of the following excuses to explain her actions away: “She’s only a child! She’s got to play somewhere!” or “I do not want your sort filling my daughter’s head with your madness”. In such close proximity some women, some mothers or even certain lesbians are happy to be complicit with men-folk against transgender people (which minds me of the limitations of the old guard feminists.) This is enough for them to seize on the opportunity to vocally ostracise transwoman or translesbian like me by voluminously spreading the rumour that that they think you are a “man” through out the neighbourhood, on buses, at work or even in the local shops not to mention superstores without considering the impacts such actions are having or not caring for that. What seems to get lost in their narrow world view is the fact that in a moment of blindness they inadvertently turn innocent children into monsters, future gangsters or worse; TRANSPHOBES just like themselves.

On a final note, I return to the old plain idea of human beings and our desires. What is the problem where transgender people are only doing what human beings will do any way? Jude Schell asserts that, ‘desire is born of attraction’ as longs as you do not go flirting with the wrong partner I see nothing wrong with the gender variant getting out in the world too.[3]

Transgenderism as I said at the beginning of this piece is an umbrella term for a diverse subculture of identities which I will look at individually or in pairs depending on time and space availability. I encourage you to watch developments in transgender 101 as it grows.

[1] Gender Outlaw: On Men Women and The Rest of Us, By Kate Bornstein 1995, Vintage Books, P. 71 -73. According to Kate Bornstein, what society holds onto as gender is mundane and a social construct. Her italicised “real and natural” indicates that gender as in transgender space is gender as a fluid activity in nature.

[2] Diva Magazine issue 151, p. 22. I share Asa Johannesson referential standpoint as it is played out among transwomen that identify as lesbian and butch or even gender queer. These areas will be returned to in other Black looks articles in the future.

[3] See The Guide to Lesbian Sex, by Jude Schell, Hylas Publishing, 2005. Gender fluidity attracts!! Lets move forward together instead of hugging a compulsory gender binary and the cave mentality that go with it ad infinitum!

Tags:

Transgender
Transwoman
LGBTI

In the Igbo language, Ada is the name given to the first born daughter. Often a suffix is included in the name such as Adanna, Adaaku, Adaeze, Adanma, Adaure. This poem gives praises to the first daughter and the position she plays within the Igbo family and community.

Ada

All over the earth she exists

In every home of the Ibo tribe

And where she is not, she is desired.

The apple of every father’s eye

The pride of every mother

The first daughter.

Looked up to with respect

Precious as gold

Valued like diamond

Cherished like a treasure.

A female! We may lament,

But an epitome of pride.

In the African heritage,

In the Ibo culture.

Addressed with a variety of names

Adanna

Adaaku

Adaeze

Adanma
Adaure

Adaugo

Adaora

Appearance matters not to her

Beautiful or not she is greatly admired.

Tall or short, she stands elegant.

Even if small, she is mighty

Due respect is accorded her.

In a family chagrined with chaos and anarchy,

When all effort to make peace seems futile,

She is sought.

Whether across the seas or in the neighbourhood,

Her presence is hurriedly summoned.

A female warrior!

A commander of respect!

When she speaks amongst her kinsmen,

All is quiet as her voice is heard

And her words of wisdom sink in.

An instrument of peace, to warring parents

And guardian, to erring brethrens

Her words, usually final

She who bears the burden of her siblings

And carries a load often too heavy for her shoulders.

Ever smiling in her sufferings,

And always open-armed to her brethrens.

Always the part, if not full bearer of the family’s brunt

Yet on her wedding day, all benefit from her bounty.

At the death of a father, she is expected

Even when a son exists.

At the death of a mother, ayayah!!! The more interesting

Her presence is demanded at all cost.

No burial takes place except she is seen.

What a wonder!

All is suspended until she arrives and plays her part.

A fascinating scene to be witnessed by alien tribes.

A female! We may lament again.

Yes! A female child

But none measures up to her.

I tell you,

An Ada without these marks is no Ada at all

And should be ashamed of herself.

To you parents who do not value her,

Shame on you!

And you brethrens, who do not know her worth,

Turn over a new leaf!

For no other is like her

None is like her, in your life.

© Chinwe Azubuike

Technorati: Chinwe Azubuike Igbo

Putting the human back into humanity is something worth exploring especially if you happen to be of the LGBTI and have at one time or the other suffered the indignity of having your very humanity questioned. I remember some of the comments one of my posts provoked especially one that came with the suggestion that I was over-indulging my experience as a translesbian. I only have to look as far back as the 1950s, 60s or 70s and the archives hold records in abundance with members of the LGBTI telling their individual (i.e. subjective) narratives in terms of their sexuality, gender identity or even their sex. But somehow African voices about these life experiences were far and in-between. However one particular commentator’s query sounded as if she was cautioning what she saw as my “single issue/identity position”. However, I was offering a view, indeed an experience as a transsexual woman and a lesbian that would otherwise wind up buried in obscurity. If you were a fly on the wall when I went into certain places you couldn’t miss the burden of being made to feel like a roving target as mentioned in Pandering Prejudices if you tried.

Over the week end, I was talking to a friend about race and spirituality. I remember mentioning something about our animal instinct as human beings how we seem to have developed the preference for a standard narrow world view, based on our need for permanence and security or at least so we tend top assume. Even as I write this article I wondered if we have not barked up the wrong tree long enough: whatever we are, wherever we come from, who ever we choose to date in the end we are all human beings first.
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You would think a bookshop such as is Waterstones is an institution that encourages the attainment of knowledge and you would be right to think so. However what would you make of the same institution used by some of its workforce as a platform for their prejudicial wiles? Do they (transphobic staff) act this way on behalf of a bookshop’s agenda of pandering to its own particular prejudices or is this just an extension of whom such individual members of staff are? More than likely so, if I venture an answer based on personal experience.

I must say earlier on in this article that Waterstones transphobic members of staff (and by this I do not mean all staff) are not alone in this. About four years ago I was in an NHS hospital undergoing the surgical part of my transition when I noticed that staff seemed to lose themselves in this sort of subtle abuse. Were they doing so on behalf of the NHS? Probably not but they hugged the elusive limelight. Could their motives simply be to hurt or were they simply acting on the need to be loved? Nevertheless there was no excuse unless they were saying that as employees of whatever organisation they held the mandate on who and who not they chose to serve.

It was basically understood that as long as they bonded together as a “team” nothing would come of any such complaints made against them under the assumption that a single individual, a loner, a minority of one could not harm them. For the first day or so, I was just given cursory attention and then left to dwindle off into the usual obscurity that they assigned me. I became a of none person on the ward. To get anything done I literally had to raise my voice a notch or two. Even then I was lucky if anyone responded.

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Africa, my Africa! Where are the people of the LGBTIQ of African origin be that Africans in Africa or those in the Diaspora? Wherever you are, this clarion call is what has led me to create the trans-group known as, “Transafro,” which can be found on Facebook. Although the continent of Africa seems caught up in a “conditioned consumerist mindset” there is more to the continent than this narrow extrapolation of the rich and diverse continent. One of the daily attacks on African transpeople is the regular attempts by our own kin to erase our experience out of hand. Instead of trying to understand us as part of the diversity of African life, they wantonly exclude us.

Why? If some comments I received off the back of Trans-homosexuality are anything to go by, then I’d say because lots of Africans do not know much about human sexuality beyond their own experience which is often hetero-normative in form. What about us? I remember telling an acquaintance that I am a translesbian once and she mouthed the insult, man! I still find this laughable even today. If you think that a transperson that has transitioned from being male to female is a man any more than one that transitions from being female to male is still a woman? You will be appallingly wrong. The correct specifications are: Mtf=woman and Ftm=man; it is time to rethink the delusion of conditioned usages of language. Although this is not an academic thesis it is helpful to contemplate the impact of this kind of language from the simple standpoint of existential expression/narrative and how we are all affected by its use.

I have to say that I have not been in Africa for over two decades or so now. Although, I feel connected to my trans brothers and sisters both in Africa and those, like me, caught in the Diaspora for a plethora of reasons one of which is our actual trans-status and or our sexual orientations (gender identity and sexual orientation are not the same thing, contrary to what so many people assume!) Our status makes it difficult for us to return to the old continent if we value our own wellbeing or even our lives in most cases.

I transitioned first verbally as early as four years old albeit without knowing what gender identity was about because the gender-script we were given had such rigidity enshrined in it. However transition did not end there. At the age of nine I came out to my brothers whose shock minded me of the dangers of talking freely about my gender identity in Africa. I took solace in silence… This does not mean I gave up on my conviction nor did it have anything to do with how I dressed or how I expressed myself.

The next time I broached the subject, I was thirty five but I soon found even Europeans were not fully aware of gender identity as oppose to fixed gender roles. My psychosexual therapist prejudiced in her conditioned stupor forgot the integrity of her profession and said, “go back to those friends you moved away from, get a girl pregnant and get on with it!” to my consternation.

It took me another eight years to talk to anyone about my intentions. During that time, I did a Masters of Art degree in Creative Writing and gradually found the courage to speaking again albeit through the medium of writing. “I’m going to change my sex,” I said to a girlfriend of mine back then -an Asian Muslim woman secretly scared of an impending arranged marriage that awaited her. I felt for her but had to respect her need for life somewhat complicated by the cultural demands. Could I do otherwise, she was respecting of my needs without knowing the first thing about transsexuality not to mention how we fit and embrace our evolving sexualities. At the time, I was still unaware of the trans-lingo but I remained adamant that I was going to transition physically. She thought I was courageous to tell a person I hardly knew that I intended going through with such a life changing procedure but I had to tell someone. A year later, I spoke to my GP about my intension and he made an appointment for me to see a counsellor. Eventually, I ended up at the York clinic with a simple question: “what is the demographic uptake of transitioning?” The response I got was insulting. The consultant merely fobbed me off by the suggestion that an African psychiatrist would be made available to me. What’s new there, I thought?

However, the response to my question has not dampened my interest in finding an answer to it. Rather it has helped me hone my interest in African transitionees. The question I ought to have asked was this: “Are there any transpeople of African descent? What support measures are there? If there are any African transpeople, how can I best make contact with them?” I know the answer to these questions now. I do not think we need to wait for the advice of the psychosexual elite to tell us how we must love, dress and socialise. I’m hoping with time TRANSAFRO will aid us in our efforts to change attitudes.

Four or five years later, with a healthy cocktail of oestrogen and real life experience which involved wearing what are traditionally assumed to be women’s clothing in which I felt comfortable I found my own gender expression. Africans might call it “unisexed” but I call it androgynous. On the 24th of June, 2005, I went under the surgeon’s scalpel. When I woke up from the heavy sedation I had returned home. There was nothing to hide any more. I was a woman from that moment on. I kept my hair short as always and on my final day on the now defunct ward eight, I decided to wear some make up and dress femininely for a change. Some of the people that had distanced themselves from me as I recovered saw the woman I was and warmed to me. Was I seeking that sort of approval? Not quite, let it suffice to say I knew what they wanted to see, and their responses only went to confirm my suspicions. However, in the end, I have to be the person I am, giving into bullies has never done it for me.

Watch this space…

Tags:
LGBTI
TransGender
TransAfro