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Words in Motion
Words in Motion
by Eli Clare
Eli
Clare delivered the powerful opening plenary speech of the University
of Vermont's Translating Identity Conference on March 5, 2005. He graciously
agreed to provide a shortened version so we could print it here.
Translating. Identity. I want to start today
by picking up those two words; they make me curious: what do they mean
side-by-side? The identity part is simple enough, at least on the surface.
We talk about identity all the time these days, usually referring to whom
we know ourselves to be, each of us as individuals. Identities hinge upon
many things: where we make home, the languages we speak, the food we eat,
the beliefs we hold dear, the people we love, desire, want to romance,
our very bodies themselves, how we feel inside our skin. There are so
many ways of naming, telling, our identities, and often we try to squeeze
them into single words.
In the trans community, we're in the midst
of creating a myriad of words: transgender, femmeboy, ftm, transwoman,
transsexual, genderqueer, trannyboy, mtf, crossdresser, transman, transie,
two spirit, femme queen. I could go on and on; the list is that long.
Some of these words we've adopted from doctors and sexologists; others
we’ve found in the dictionary; and still others we have created
ourselves or stolen from the bullies and bashers.
Instead of a single word, I want to start
like this: At eight, nine, ten years old, I took my kite down to the sheep
pastures, flew it for hours on end, spinning the line out. I can still
feel its tug on my arm.
There is something so futile in trying
to name the whole of our gendered desires and realities in single words,
even as they are powerful and necessary. Activist, writer, and this afternoon's
keynote presenter Leslie Feinberg writes, "For me, branding individual
self-expression as simply masculine or feminine is like asking poets:
Do you write in English or Spanish? The question leaves out the possibilities
that poetry is woven in Cantonese or Ladino, Swahili or Arabic."
(Trans Liberation, pg. 9)
For now, let's leave the single words
behind. Tell it as a story: once I stood in front of my sister and asked,
"Do I look like a boy or a girl?" I couldn't see myself in the
mirror. I was a tomboy with a bold and unsteady gait I never grew out
of. And you, how will you tell it? Whatever our stories, let's tell them,
but not make them simple. Identity doesn't grow in nice neat rows.
I am the guy who gets to take off
his shirt at public beaches to warm his bare chest. But listen, I have
also been the dyke who had a harsh critique of masculinity, defending
women's only space with barbed and unfair words. I am the genderqueer
who lived for many years without pronouns, who believed in pride but always
cringed at the questions I could never answer gracefully. But listen,
I have also been the butch, suspicious of trans people, even as I liked
being called "sir." Tomboy, dyke, butch, woman, genderqueer,
guy: I have inhabited all these places, claimed each as home, none of
them a detour.
And you, where do your breaks, ruptures,
contradictions live? I mean to ask this whether you're trans or not, whether
you think about your gender every single day or not at all. Identity is
a shadblow tree whose branches twist and turn, tangling toward the sun,
never symmetrical. Really it's too much to squeeze into any single word.
And so let me continue like this:
I used to take my kite down to the sheep pastures, fly it for hours on
end, red-tail hawks keening on the updrafts, sun and wind reaching through
me. But I wasn't just a tomboy; I was also disabled, queer, white, working-class,
English-speaking. Identity is always multiple.
Gender folds into disability; disability
wraps around class; class strains against race; race tumbles into sexuality;
sexuality hangs onto gender; all of it finally piling into our tender,
resilient human bodies. There's no real way to separate my genderqueer
self from my white self: me, a guy sitting in meetings among women and
people of color, aware of my passing privilege as a white man, even as
I may hear ma'am on the next street corner. There's no real way to tell
it without my disability: the everyday gawking as folks try to figure
out what's "wrong" with my slurred speech and trembling hands.
Me, the white disabled genderqueer guy: identity is a tangle.
We need to listen hard right into
the center of that tangle, which brings me to the other word in that phrase,
translating identity. To translate is to shift a story, idea, understanding
from one medium, culture, or language to another, words in motion, cracking
open ideas and experiences that otherwise would be inaccessible. Translation
is about crossing divides and is important because by itself identity
isn’t enough. Certainly it's important to tell it, to say: I used
to fly my kite for hours on end. And still today I can feel its tug on
my arm, the beckon of wild blue sky. My gender is that tug, that beckon.
But by itself, this story is not enough. There are so many ways to tell,
talk, translate our genders. Tell it like a story about trouble, a story
about joy. Talk it as a training for health care providers. Translate
it as policy, rebellion, a poem sung in the streets. Translation is unfolding.
Tell it, talk it, translate it across
divides of power and discrimination. Here at UVM we're working hard to
make campus a friendly place for trans people, to put an end to transphobia.
From identifying gender-neutral restrooms to amending non-discrimination
policies, from creating procedures to change names on identification cards
to educating folks at the health center, this work is about crossing divides.
I remember a meeting on-campus where we were trying to iron out a system
for changing names on transcripts and class rosters. One administrator
kept expressing concern about how complicated this might make the lives
of trans students, how they might end up with one record in one name and
another record in another.
I finally turned to him and said, "You
know, if when UVM had hired me, I had been required to submit transcripts,
the human resources department would have seen three different names on
four different documents and wondered what I was doing with a BA in Women's
Studies from a women's college. I would have had to write one long letter
of explanation. It's just complicated, regardless." As I talked,
I could see something change for him, see him begin to understand the
ordinary experiences of trans people navigating a trail of identity papers.
He agreed to reshape the system. Translation is a demand and a hope for
understanding, respect, change.
Tell it, talk it, translate
it into politics. Me, I want to start with how the gender binary joins
with patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. How these systems snarl
together, leave us with injustice at every turn, from homelessness down
the block to the war in Iraq, from racial profiling to transphobic-motivated
murder. And you, how would you start? Translation is dialogue.
But we're here not only to translate
across divides of power, but also across differences among trans people.
We need to speak boldly and listen hard. Every time I watch the tension
flare among us, I want to say: Tell a story, not one but two, and let
them contradict each other. Listen even if you don't understand all the
words.
We need to do this because transphobia still
roams free. Because community is worth struggling for. Because the space
we create here is necessary: the space to tell it – I used to take
my kite down to the sheep pastures, fly it for hours, that tug, that beckon
– the space to be heard and understood, the space to make it bigger
than any single story.
Identity is a shadblow tree, a tangle. To
translate is to communicate, challenge, bridge divides, connect. Translating
identity. Let's do it.
Eli Clare works at UVM's LGBTQA Services and is the author of Exile
and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation. He is also the featured
speaker at the R.U.1.2? Queer Community Center fundraising dinner on April
16.