We spoke with Kai Cheng Thom – Artist, Activist, Therapist, Performer – about her journey being queer, trans, Asian, her relationship with feminism, amongst many other things! Here is a sneak preview of the clip:
”[…] When we can talk about being loved, and when we can talk about loving our bodies, and loving other people’s bodies outside of how much they are valued sexually – then we can talk about equality.”
A few months ago, we spoke with Kira about her journey coming out, and she generously shared with us her life and her dreams. As a Trans* woman who came out and transitioned in adulthood, Kira explores some of the things she went through, and what it meant to come out later in life.
As they ask, “But what are you?”
“Now if I was speaking to you on the phone, I would never have thought…”
And so begins an attempt to reclaim… but reclaim what?
An identity that you don’t know the identity of?
Who am I to me? Who am I to you? The confusion resurfaces.
by: Samantha Cheng
As Toni Morrison writes: “Deep within the word “American” is its association with white… American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen” (Morrison 1992: 46-47)
And if Africanist Americans, what about being Canadian? And Asian?
Wo shi huayi zhongguo Jianada ren.
As they ask, “But what are you?”
“Now if I was speaking to you on the phone, I would never have thought…”
And so begins an attempt to reclaim… but reclaim what?
An identity that you don’t know the identity of?
Who am I to me? Who am I to you? The confusion resurfaces.
This land is my land/This land is not my land
My arms are flung out to the east and the west.
If meaning is constituted through binary hierarchical differences, what do you become if you are slipping through the cracks, neither one nor the other?
Suddenly inauthentic on both parts, according to both sides.
Tossed back and forth, rejected on all fronts.
Stretching both ways, dancing on the shifting line,
A strange creature caught in the strange light of transgression, of interpellation.
A transition, not a conclusion.
Maybe I am more of a mix than I once thought.
These strange roots, this heritage, this so-called culture that ties us down as much as we struggle against it.
And when we stop, stare on in wonder, amazed that this, this, in embracing it, is the only way we stand at all.
How we stood at all in the first place.
How we stand when we find our way up from kneeling, buried in the clay and mud.
Our resistance?
There is hope after all – after all, there is always hope.
Beyond the black and white, the day and night
There will always be the grey, the dawn, the dusk, twilight.
The creation of limits and labels necessitates the transgression of said limits.
This past Monday, I was walking through the streets of Chinatown, and someone yelled at me “You’re going to starve in World War Three, you yellow piglet!!”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
This past Monday, I was walking through the streets of Chinatown, and someone yelled at me “You’re going to starve in World War Three, you yellow piglet!!”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
It was a painful reminder that no matter where I am, even in “Chinatown”, as a person of colour I don’t belong.
I don’t need to list the reasons why reclaiming culture for a person of colour isn’t popular. It’s much easier – and safer – to “be more white”.
Which is why for me, reclaiming my culture was more than just a journey to embrace my Chinese heritage – it’s an act of resistance:
This video is for every time I was called a “chinky faggot” (by white gay men),
For every time someone laughed at the food I brought to school,
For every date with a rice queen that I’ve ever subjected myself to,
For every time someone is “shocked” that I’m Chinese and I suck at math,
…This video is for a safer future for everyone – including yellow piglets.
Duane R Stewart-Grant is Haisla from Kitamaat Village and Nuu-Chah-nuthl from Port Alberni. His Haisla name is c’ee’hixid and he is from the Raven clan.
Introducing our newest collaborator and team member – Duane 🙂
Duane R Stewart-Grant is Haisla from Kitamaat Village and Nuu-Chah-nuthl from Port Alberni. His Haisla name is c’ee’hixid and he is from the Raven clan.
In 2006, when he was living in Kitamaat he worked for Kitamaat Village Radio (KVR 96.1FM), where in 2008 he became the radio station manager until 2010. While working at KVR he started learning and growing closer to his culture.
In 2006/2007 he participated in the Star in Your Own Stories with Chee Mamuk, Hello Cool World and 11 other youth from the Haisla Nation. In three days they produced and stared in their own little story called Stand True. Stand True talks about how rumors can spread around like HIV/AIDS. Through Stand True, Duane was able to travel all over BC and he even traveled outside BC for the first time!
Duane came out to his family on May 4, 2010, but knew he was two-spirited at an early age. Through his travels he did with Stand True he met many other Two-Spirited people who were out, strong and proud to be two-spirited, he looked up to them for guidance during his journey.
When he moved to Burnaby in 2013 he started dancing with the Git Hayetsk Dancers and started apprenticing with Mike & Mique’l Dangeli. He now is learning to carve, paint, create regalia, dance, and is drawing First Nation art. Duane hopes to one day bring his knowledge back home and start teaching the next generation what he has learned!
If patriarchy teaches men that we need to take up space to “win”, then feminism gives us the opportunity to learn that if we have a voice, sometimes there is power in silence, and in allowing other people to speak
In response to the Feminist Current article by Meghan Murphy “Laverne Cox’s Objectified Body ’empowers’ No One“.
“[…] If women or transwomen were truly allowed to love themselves, I doubt they’d be spending thousands and thousands of dollars sculpting their bodies in order to look like some cartoonish version of “woman,” as defined by the porn industry and pop culture. The fact that Cox’s body is seen as “subversive” because she is trans doesn’t change that. Her body doesn’t look subversive. It looks like any other objectified female body, sculpted by surgery and enhanced by Photoshop.” – “Laverne Cox’s objectified body ’empowers’ no one” – by Meghan Murphy
By David Ng
My first encounter with feminism was life changing.
When I was 14 I discovered feminism. It was kind of an accident…I was looking to discover sexuality, but instead I found feminism.
When I was in grade 9, I joined a youth sexual health advocacy organization, where we learned about sexuality through a feminist, anti-oppression lens. It was like I was given a new pair of eyes to see the world in. I already had the knowledge – but now I had the words to articulate my experiences: being a racialized body – a yellow body, a gendered body, and as someone who is queer. All of these things that I was experiencing, I could finally put a name to it.
Sixteen years later, as I read Murphy’s article on trans women’s bodies, I reflect on my own journey as a feminist activist, and how I relate to other people in my community, who intersect with my struggle.
One of the biggest learnings I have had as a feminist, is the power of owning my own struggles. The value of looking at the way my activism starts with my own journey. The only way that I can ever have solidarity with any one, or any other community that is not my own, is through truly engaging with my own struggles, my journey, and my truths.
Yes I may see a problematic situation over there, and over here, but I need to begin my work with my own struggle – rather than speaking about other peoples struggles – yes, they intersect with mine, but they are not my own.
I have to thank the black feminists in the second wave who brought us the notion of “intersectionality” – a concept that this entire blog and video project is predicated upon. Black feminists (like Kimberlé Crenshaw) called out white feminists during the second wave, who were speaking for “women”, while ignoring the struggles that black women were facing. Intersectionality implores us to contend with the multitude of ways that other facets of our journey, such as race, gender, sexuality, what sex we are assigned, affect our access to rights and privileges. Intersectionality allows me to grapple with my own positionality, in relation to my community members, so that I can begin to forge solidarity with other communities – so that we can begin to do work together.
So when I read the way Meghan Murphy writes about trans women’s bodies, I am reminded that we can have a voice without silencing and negating the voice and agency of other people and their struggles. As a cis queer man who is a feminist, this is something that I have to remember and check in on, on a regular basis.
If patriarchy teaches men that we need to take up space to “win”, then feminism gives us the opportunity to learn that if we have a voice, sometimes there is power in silence, and in allowing other people to speak (Gayatri Spivak).
This is why I love feminism so much. For me, it’s not about pointing fingers and making my points loud and heard – it’s not about screaming “this is oppression! this is not right!”. Often, it’s about listening and waiting for the opportunities where we can build community and solidarity… instead of building barriers.
In love and solidarity,
David Ng
In response to David Ng’s response to the Feminist Current article by Meghan Murphy.
“This is why I love feminism so much. For me, it’s not about pointing fingers and making my points loud and heard – it’s not about screaming ‘this is oppression! this is not right!’. Often, it’s about listening and waiting for the opportunities where we can build community and solidarity… instead of building barriers.” – David Ng
By Jen Sung
Sometimes we do need to scream, “this is oppression! this is not right!” Right now Black America is screaming – in agony, in solidarity, in agony, in silence, in agony.
David so eloquently referenced the origins of “intersectionality”, from the depths of black feminist mobilizing. How can we talk about the experiences of others when we don’t occupy the same lived and very real embodiment of racialized and trans* lives?
Right now my body is reacting to the hypertension in America right now. I am not thinking about Meghan Murphy as she narrates the voices of others outside of her own. My body does not know what it is like living in Black America.
But my body knows what it is like to have others paint layers upon layers upon layers of racialized and sexualized expectations, assumptions and stereotypes onto its canvas. That canvas turns into a living carcass. I live and breathe inside the carvings of race, gender, sexuality, and time.
So I learn silence while my body screams – screams to break out of the suffocating coats of paint. It is debilitating.
I do not deny that patriarchy is systemic, and that it perpetuates violence against women. Nor do I deny that rape culture exists.
I also do not deny that I have privilege as a cis-woman who is aligned with her assigned gender. So I listen to those whose experiences are outside of my own. Rape culture affects us all.
I do not deny that I conform to societal standards of what is considered to be feminine, but gender doesn’t make up the entirety of my motivation to conform, and subvert — my race and sexual orientation do, too.
I embody race and queerness just as hard as I do with gender, some days it’s more, some days it’s less. They all live in the same body. My body. And my body is part of a collective of bodies that are living, breathing, dying, suffering, working, playing, listening, dancing, living.
But just because I am part of a collective of bodies doesn’t mean I get to speak for, reason, argue – on behalf of that collective. Complexities make interesting narratives that shape our world. We are enriched by the stories of others whose differences teach us to be more open. I will always have limitations to what I know because I trust in the fundamental truth that I only know what I know, and don’t know what I don’t know. Until then, I learn to listen – and listen to learn.
If supporting those who pose naked in an “objectifying” way is letting patriarchy “win”, then I must be a bad feminist. But I know I’m not. I wrote “Ask me again why I need feminism” because feminism taught me how to listen, and extend my hand out in spite of, and especially because of — difference. That is the beautiful thing about paradox.
Will Meghan Murphy listen too?
In tenderness,
Jen Sungshine
I feel being mixed-race is an opportunity to interrogate how identities can be reconstructed, and envisioned into social change that mirrors the queer rights movement. When being mixed-race and gay challenges how I navigate my own sense of privilege within the queer community that has lacked acceptance, I can only think of where race and queerness intersect.
Being biracial and gay is an interesting mix. By being mixed-race, I challenge categorical thinking and normativity that is too often encountered in our lives:
“What’s your race?” I’m asked.
“I’m half Chinese, English and a bit Scottish,” I reply.
When my biracial identity is neither accepted culturally as White nor Asian, when I am indeed literally Asian and White by blood, I feel this sense of non-belonging:
“Oh, you don’t speak Chinese?” I’m asked.
“No, but I wish I could,” I reply.
And perhaps this sense of non-belonging is perpetuated by my failure to pick up Chinese as a kid, or maybe because non-belonging feels synonymous with being gay, sometimes. When our identity becomes our sense of security, when race is so often embodied as our sense of community, when being gay severs our relationships with others and ourselves:
“So, do you have a girlfriend?” I’m asked.
“Umhh…no…” I reply.
I remember being told that being gay was a choice that would put me on “the bottom of society,” where I would find no success.
I can only think of how culture transforms our identities beyond race. I’ve noticed this insidious trend to normalize “gay culture” into something fathomable by the mainstream: the idealized body of an attractive, middle-upper class, cisgender white man who resonates images of power, authority, and acceptance (see this article). These images and identities that command respect contrast with the insecurity that “gay culture” has had to latch itself to. And in turn, much of what I feel I’ve had to embody as a gay individual has leaned towards this normalized, white, classed, “attractive” stereotyped fantasy.
I will never forget a quote by Fred Wah, a Canadian poet, who wrote about being mixed-race and his fear that his White privilege would make him become “not the target, but the gun.” I’m writing this piece so that as a mixed-race subject, I can tackle the pervasive racism and normalization within the queer community.
Of course, I think it helps that my last name, Holmes, can create this immediate sense of whiteness on paper, but how would that be different if my last name was Wong, my mother’s patriarchal name? Would people have an immediate change in expectation? Would something as trivial as a name convey different ideas about personality and culture? I think to an extent, I have autonomy over culture, but I don’t over race. How people perceive “Hawaiian, Filipino, “White”, “Asian”, “mixed”, Spanish, or however far or close people have been in guessing my “what are you?” will always portray immediate ideas from race that govern how people perceive me.
Yet, how, as individuals can we facilitate dialogue and movement surrounding this phenomenon? How do we start talking about race, gender, class, and the continuum of privilege and disprivilege when we are expected as a social justice movement to be focused solely on a singular issue? Is it tolerance, patience, respect, and understanding that are needed to understand each other from a privileged and marginalized vantage?
I think the answer lies within our lived experiences. I think back in history when interracial marriage was banned, when fears of miscegenation in post-colonial North America became a social threat. When homosexuality was greeted by the death penalty.
If anything, I feel being mixed-race is an opportunity to interrogate how identities can be reconstructed, and envisioned into social change that mirrors the queer rights movement. When being mixed-race and gay challenges how I navigate my own sense of privilege within the queer community that has lacked acceptance, I can only think of where race and queerness intersect. I think of how we can construct this façade to normalize “gay culture” within ourselves, and how we can connect historical racism to contemporary challenges faced within and beyond the gay community. Being mixed-race is a product of social change away from racism, and in turn, I see challenges within the queer community as an opportunity to connect in solidarity.
– Andy Holmes
Over the weekend, we met with Jay and Joella Cabalu, who are sharing their story about Jay’s journey with his sister, Joella, his family, faith, and sexuality. They are also sharing part of that journey for Love Intersections 🙂
One of my favorite parts of this story, is how Joella talks about being an ally to Jay and the queer community, and what an important role allies play in the community. Allies are part and parcel of the queer community – and we need more of them!
We are also excited to be bringing on board a friend of mine, Duane Stewart-Grant, a two-spirit artist, dancer, and activist from Haisla Nation, who will be sharing his story on Love Intersections as well.
Thank you to Jay, Joella, and Duane, for taking the time to share your stories with us!
in love and solidarity,
David Ng
Check out our new trailer!
Jen, one of the co-founders of Love Intersections talks about the philosophy behind Love Intersections – the project itself, an intersection of art, activism, and love.
Love Intersections: Art as an Expression of Our Activism from David Ng on Vimeo.
In the pain, difficulty, and trauma of living a life governed by the daily awareness of oppression for being queer, for being a person of colour on the outskirts of normativity comes this beautiful opportunity to taste the bittersweet potential of liberation.
In this poisonous state of oppression, I’m trying to find out what keeps me navigating my interest in queer rights activism despite the immense continuous negativity that fills within me for advocating such a contentious cause.
It’s our annual family holiday dinner and I’m trying to explain what I’m studying in university; I say, “I’m taking a variety of courses, but I’m focusing on social justice”. Usually the conversation ends there. Really, I mean to tell them I’m interested in queer theory, feminism, racial discrimination and the collective spheres of social inequality. But really, who wants to talk about taboo topics without entering a heated argument? I don’t blame them though; these are complex issues and, after all, my mostly privileged family grants an innocent desensitization to what discrimination feels like.
Unlike some friends who pursue degrees in business, medicine, engineering – “respectable careers”, I feel miniscule. I cannot count how many times I’ve heard from people, let alone myself, claim, “What can you even do with studying social justice?” It’s a difficult question that I still have yet to find. But I will say this; there is no better feeling than finding someone who just understands what you’re going through, someone who can feel and comfort you in a world deprived of accepting our identities.
I want to be someone who sees you in the darkness of oppression. There is something indescribable about the paradoxical pleasure of feeling pain for being marginalized. Those eyes that light up when you accept and acknowledge their pain, breathe with them, cry with them, hug them through the ravenous obstacles of life for being queer, for being victims of racial discrimination, for being victims of rape or whatever one may experience that leaves them on the lonely, desolate edges of society.
I want to finish the conversation by saying in the midst of negativity that activism deals with, there is positivity and hope. There is positivity in reassuring someone to break free from the constraints of their internalized fear. There is triumph to be found in places unimaginable. The limitations become endless, and in turn, the way we govern ourselves, treat each other, also becomes a more welcoming space.
My blood is rooted in my veins, reaching to form tributaries to find a confluence of equally important social causes that can be loved, acknowledged and manifested to form the bodies we live and govern ourselves in.
Andy Holmes
Love Intersections 