This unapologetic performance artist Travis Alabanza is calling attention to the lack of diversity in transgender narratives. ️
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CreativityTranscript
00:00So much of the world is trying to shut us out,
00:04stop us from existing, stop us from thriving,
00:07and already by you saying that you're here,
00:10whether it's in your head or to a hundred people,
00:12or in a Facebook status, or in a chatroom online,
00:14means that you're already succeeding.
00:31Growing up working class, it was the only place
00:33that I had access to the stage.
00:35It was the only place that I realised
00:37that people were listening to me,
00:39whereas often what was being reflected in political norms
00:42was people weren't listening to the opinions of people
00:44that looked like me.
00:45And stage was suddenly the place that I could be
00:47all the things that I was punished for off of the stage.
00:50I self-censor myself a lot in this process.
01:02There's always this question of how much,
01:04like how radical can I be?
01:06If I say this, will they no longer pay me?
01:08There's always a balance between trying to say what you want
01:12whilst also realising that the people are paying you
01:14come from institutions that are embedded in white supremacy.
01:21Gender is so racialised in the UK.
01:24Often what we're finding within narratives
01:27of like a heightened trans visibility
01:29is they miss out the complications of what happens
01:32when race is added into it.
01:34So often trans media narratives talk to us
01:36about trying to call the police
01:38or telling the police when we're harassed,
01:40which completely kind of erases what happens
01:42when the police are a site of violence.
01:44What I want to really stress is that we should start
01:47learning and centring the voices of black folk
01:50that have been consistently erased.
01:52We don't need to learn about more black straight men doing things.
01:55We need to uncover and learn about the roots
01:58that blackness has in queer and trans history.
02:01We need to start remembering that we won't be free
02:03until all of us are free,
02:05and that actually black liberation is not black liberation
02:08whilst it is queer and transphobic.
02:11Transness and new blackness before transness was even a word.
02:15And what I mean to say is that actually being trans
02:19isn't an antithesis to your blackness.
02:21You're trans because you say you are.
02:23You're gender non-conforming because you say you are.
02:25Celebrate yourself. Celebrate the people around you.
02:28Don't let it just become this thing that's up here.
02:30And text all the black friends you know
02:32and tell them you're proud of them.