TRANSGENDER DAY OF VISIBILITY
Trans people are being targeted… not because we lack, it’s because we love. And we have the audacity to love the parts of ourselves that other people hate in themselves. (Alok Vaid-Menon)
Trans Day of Visibility (TDV) was created to celebrate members of the transgender, non-binary and gender diverse communities. It was created in 2009 by activist Rachel Crandall, who wanted an addition to the annual Trans Day of Mourning. It is a day of joy and celebration, every year on 31st March.
Today Geelong Writers is celebrating trans and gender diverse writers of our Geelong communities, by publishing a special, featured-writer piece. Geelong Writers acknowledges how important this is right now, in this time of hateful public debate and some high profile at denial of trans existence. Geelong Writers stand in solidarity with trans friends, family and members of our communities.
Celebrate the lives, loves and joys of trans and gender variant people today. Join in local and Melbourne events. Come to the Q-Lit Queer Festival of Words Geelong this Saturday.
As amazing stylist and trans advocate Alok Vaid-Menon says, ‘… there was nothing I could change about myself, that would make people accept me, because that is not acceptance, when you have to change yourself, that is erasure.’
Trans rights are human rights. They are not up for debate.
You can find out more:
Geelong Rainbow: https://www.facebook.com/GeelongRainbowInc/
Trans Day of Visibility Australia: https://tdov.org.au/
Transgender Victoria: https://tgv.org.au/
Minus 18: https://www.minus18.org.au/about
Queerspace: https://www.queerspace.org.au/
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
BY NICK LAWSON
First, a big thank you!
From one outcast to another, I thank you for being a source of sanity and connection. For being as you are and having nothing to hide. Allowing yourself the vulnerability of such honesty to share your work with others who needed to see it, to hear it. To know they are not alone in the way that they feel, they see and interpret the world around them. Not alone in the fact that they too were afraid to share that which they have created, maybe to protect their already fragile hearts. Outcasts are the ones who make the world worthwhile to belong to, they have a sense of knowing things that we don’t see in ourselves and somehow they guide us to the gold to mend our broken pots.
Ideally, I would have handwritten and sent this in the post but alas, I know not your name or where you call home.
As I lie awkwardly here on my couch trying to find a position in which my back doesn’t hurt, I spot your work within arms reach. I look back over it again, knowing there was so much I wanted to say but could not. I could say I am shy but it isn’t that at all. I am tired I suppose. Tired of never having found anyone who would appreciate what I had to say, be patient enough to let me finish and encourage me to say more. Let alone understand me. Maybe I have got you all wrong but somehow I know that is just not true.
As I reread your words, I find those which you left unsaid and it fills a before unknown void. There was no need for me to search for the beauty within; it was glaringly apparent. Just waiting for someone to discover them like the answers to a crossword puzzle. I had forgotten just how much I loved to read, to write, after years of squandering my gift. Forever chasing my next high in lieu of any form of intelligence.
I’m not sure what it was exactly that drove me here to Geelong, I could have chosen anywhere. I could have resigned to living where I grew up but a little voice nudged me forward. “Keep going! Not much further!” Here is where I belonged. Here is where I have found all the things I needed to grow into the man I have become and will grow to be. Here, I go to places and get a sense of déjà vu. Each more intense than the last, leaving me disoriented but content in a sort of knowing way that maybe my wandering soul is not far away. Maybe one day soon it will return to me, the me that set off with a stone over their heart all those years ago. A heart that was guarded with vigilance. Afraid to let another inside just in case they broke me in two. I could do that all on my own. I could not have hated someone for breaking it if it was already broken by my own hand.
And so, I wonder about the type of person you have become after I left you to your own devices? What kind of books would you give me to read? And what of God? God as you understand him or of whom we are told? Did you find yourself as I found myself, as my heart guided me? My stone protecting me from dropping my heart, so obviously worn on my sleeve? And I’m curious as to who it is that you would miss? Her or me? Does she haunt your dreams like the woman who sometimes does mine?
And who is to say what is normal? The ones who scream the loudest, to point out the differences of another to detract from themselves? Of the things they are unable to accept in themselves? To feel a sense of belonging, commonality and fleeting connection for but a brief moment? The connection that they so desperately desire and yet find so foreign?
Do you ever feel a growing sense of belonging to Mother Earth? Over time maybe you’ve come to understand that you’re a beautiful being of light? In solitude to remember your truth. The truth the world so furiously tries to keep from you, distracting you with unimportant things and lies.
Chaos and panic is where I feel most at home, a place set out for me amongst it. But being in that constant state is to destroy the vessel in which we reside. I lived that way most of my life and even so my body could no longer keep up with my mind. Slowly, eventually, it took my mind as I plunged into the darkness.
I feel I live on borrowed time and as long as I make sure to repay and make my amends for a life lived in the shadows, I will be granted more and given safe passage.
I used to think God had abandoned me. How could he allow these things to happen? I only ever saw lost adults full of contradictions. Never finding the love promised or the messages others told me about. How could this all be true and so revered yet so totally misconstrued and manipulated to suit the individual? The guilt instilled into whole congregations for donations and attendance on a Sunday. I can see now, without someone else’s rose-coloured glasses made with hope and fear, I see my truth. I feel a peacefulness and a presence, I see all that is of this world is also all of me, of you, of us, of everything. This world we have manifested as our heaven on earth. No amount of money could have gotten us here, it is with love, humility and that of humbleness.
The intergenerational trauma stops with us; we do not carry it on. We see the places it hides and quietly set about to counteract it. We have no need to be violent in return. We read, we create, we educate, we change and we evolve. We love in order to change what has been so brutally forced upon us.
To make art is to love. To love yourself, to honour yourself. As with love, art is honest and vulnerable. It says so many things without ever having to speak. In silence, it says more than one could utter. Love is not what the world tells us it is, it is not demanding or something we find after relentlessly searching for it in everyone we come across. Love is to share with anyone you choose. And anyone you choose will allow you to share that love and respect those you share it with. They will hold only compersion for you. Seeing your glowing aura will fill them with such warmth. A warmth that rises from their toes slowly spreading throughout the body like that of intense orgasm after hours of love making. There is no room for anything else in love. To be loyal to another, two converging souls but separate and loyal to all that you are. Honouring all of you and those you love. Never to be replaced or put aside in the hope of something more. To be had in passionate embraces, picnics in the park, watching the sunset and the moon rise.
Just as your art would never betray you or let you down, it is not pretentious and always has time for you. Satisfyingly messy just as love is. Like the gentle stroke of the brush on the canvas as to the fingers against a lover’s bare skin.
Maybe I am not who I once was, maybe I’m in a different form and time has long since passed from when I was a blonde-haired little girl. The little girl with a mean family and a dog as her only friend. She died long ago but I remember her as if it were just yesterday. I honour her for all that she was and all she will never be but yet is and will always be.
And then I wonder, was it all a dream? To teach me what it is to be human, to love, respect and nurture. A lesson in the virtues from the Divine or God? No matter who, I am acutely aware that patience was never a virtue of mine.
And If we are all one, we have not suffered alone and now as we wake up from our dreaming into our newness we do so collectively. Together but separate just as love is supposed to be. To be passionately, unconditionally and unforgivingly in love with ourselves and each other. Not to be deceptive or judgemental just to be as we are in all of our glorious shining light-filled souls.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nick Lawson (He/They)
Living on unceded Wathaurong lands, they are an unapologetic trans, non-binary disabled neurodivergent weirdo who is owned by a cat.
They enjoy a multitude of artistic mediums including but not limited to photography, illustration, graphic design and zine making. They are currently involved in creating a dedicated zine space in Geelong for any and all zinesters.
A world builder and storyteller, Nick started writing from a young age and is now the co-editor/author of the recently published anthology In Flux–Trans and Gender Diverse Reflections and Imaginings.
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