Some Things You Oughtta Know

I'm going to be honest right now about my situation. This week...I am selling my services/writings for survival. Perhaps honesty is the best policy because 1266 people on facebook saw my post about the Genderqueer Files episodes and I have yet to sell a single download on etsy. (By the way- it's a .pdf file...you don't need a kindle or any kind of fancy reader besides adobe.) 

It's been really difficult and I'm really dealing with a lot of emotions around self-worth as I find it harder and harder to find a job and people look at me as if I'm not pulling my own weight in life because I am an organizer and an artivist. I spend about 20-30 hours a week organizing in various connected movements. Salary=$0. People say..." Well stop organizing and go get whatever job you can get to sustain yourself". And I think to myself...'Geez I never thought of that'. 

Of course I've thought of that.

Of course I have. 

I've applied to grocery stores, retailers, custodial jobs. I know it's a tough market but there's something else complicating my search. It's the fact that I'm brown and genderqueer in a racist, homo/transphobic pseudo-liberal pseudo-progressive town (called Austin). People like to act like something is wrong with me because I have this experience and these qualifications and can't get a job. And though deep down I know that systemic oppression has seriously limited the jobs I can have in life (or is it just in these pseudo-liberal towns?), I just keep internalizing the rejection experience and white people's judgments (because my experience is not their experience, so it must not be true or valid) and my family's judgments until I start to ask myself “What is wrong with me?” It's really psychologically, emotionally and spiritually damaging.

I try to pull myself up by the bootstraps I was never given and instead of complaining about this racist, transphobic, pseudo-liberal, pseudo-progressive town that will not hire me no matter my qualifications because of my marginalized identities, try even harder to sell my writings and pull my weight if you will. But all the while I continue to internalize that many people don't think that artist's work is valuable and believe that it comes easy to us and that it should be free. 

I struggle constantly with wondering if my work has value and it's the people I meet in person at book fairs and on tour that remind me that it does resonate with some people. I get affirmation that my work does matter, even if it's not sustaining me the way I would like it to.

It's damaging when our communities seem to want organizers, activists, artivists, etc. to do all this work x3 for free.99. That also goes for submissions  to publications and workshops and donations to archives and projects. We know that funding is scarce but we've got to try to work harder to find ways to pay people or make even exchanges. Also, organizers who are parents need support. People who are sacrificing a ton of time for their community and who are getting burnt out, need emotional, psychological, and spiritual support. Community members who can't eat or pay their bills yet work 2-3 jobs need financial support!

I have to say that it is really disheartening feeling like when I actually try to “earn my keep” by selling my services/my writings/art, etc. to survive- that people are turning up their noses and thinking I should just get a “real job”. I know I don't work at an office or a restaurant or whatever institution, corporation or non-profit but it is mentally, emotionally and spiritually exhausting work to organize across issues/movements, write, continue my education as a healer, provide resources to multiple communities, support my friends and created family's emotionally and spiritually, AND manage my lupus symptoms and take good care of my own self. 

If this strife sounds normal to you and you are thinking what my mom always says when I tell her about being overwhelmed with pain or stress- “And?What else is new?” - there's a serious problem. We should not be running ourselves into the ground, folks. We should be supported in using our gifts, skills and abilities. If we have the time to step up and organize within our communities, we should not be left in the cold when we need emotional, psychological, spiritual or financial support ourselves. We need to hold each other accountable for this. No one should be left unsupported.

It makes me extremely sad and upset when I think about my financial situation and my inability to sustain myself despite how hard I work to support myself and others. I think about how just 2 weeks ago, my health “insurance” (it's really from a charity/foundation) was taken away and when I went to pay for my meds- I had to tell them to recount them and only give me a months worth because now I couldn't afford it. Or...I think about how I've had this infected tooth for months now...and 2 dentists that help lower income folks said they don't do root canals, but that they'll pull the tooth (which I've had happen waaay too many times over the last few years due to my economic situation)- and another charitable organization that does sliding scale fees said the minimum amount I could pay is $400-500. Yea- I can't afford that. I can't afford my rent this month. I can't afford to apply for residencies that might help me to be able to focus on my art and organizing. 

I can't focus on my writing and all these ideas I have for sharing knowledge and co-creating vibrant communities because I feel so broken spirited over finances and am constantly having these negative, circular thoughts about my worth and am trying to strategize about how to hustle and make rent and feed myself- and from that dark place.

I broke down in tears just yesterday because a friend reminded me of my steady commitment to providing resources for my communities: workshops, skillshares, constant, tireless organizing across issues in different movements, healing work and the emotional support and overall investment I've made and yet...I am still here struggling and barely surviving and finding it hard to pay for my life-sustaining medication and rent. All the while trying to keep resources accessible to those in my situation...those of you who look/are like me or who are in similar situations to my own.

The point my friend was making is that our communities need to do better in supporting each other physically, emotionally, spiritually and yes, even financially. I see many of my artivist and activist friends struggling to survive, just like me. You may see them everywhere online or in person but that does not translate to economic stability. It actually more than likely means they are hustling and on the grind and probably struggling and trying to survive.

Writing/making art is a full-time job (on top of other jobs) for many of us...and not just a hobby. It is extremely hard work. It is mentally, emotionally and spiritually taxing, especially when we're writing about difficult themes like oppression and liberation or calling out colonialism and systems of oppression and oppressors. Some of us even get threatened and run out of town.

It took me over a year to write Genderqueer Files: La Qolectiv@ and I was working full and part-time jobs on and off. Part 3/Act 3 is still not completely to my liking and I still have so much work to do on making it a community workshop and a novella so people can engage with it's themes and not have to be reading through stage directions. I am also working on a number of other resource guides like Queering Herbalism 2, zines about decolonizing food justice and white supremacy in pseudo-liberal towns, wellness fairs, herbal freedom school workshops...and much more.

True, some folks might just not be into reading a story about brown queers or reading about q/poc and holistic health or zines on anti-oppression. I'm challenging our Q/POC community and allies to be more supportive of art that centers the experience of queer and trans people of color. There's not a whole lot of it out there...there's more than there ever was...but it's still not enough.

I know that some aren't financially able right now. But those of you who are, please see and respect that this work is valuable and that we artists/artivists/activists need to survive and can't write or give all our writing/art/services for free. Many will attest that I do at just about every event but this isn't sustainable.  Printing costs money. And I've spent many hours writing, researching, and organizing non-stop and it deserves to be compensated just like anyone else who is working a 9-5 or over a 40 hour work week.

It is hard for some of us to reach out to our communities for support because we're afraid we'll be judged or rejected. I know this is true for me. I am writing this because I have no choice but to reveal my vulnerability and to let you know that I struggle just like you no matter how many hundreds of people around the world read my writings. I am the embodiment of many of those statistics about brown, queer people who can't get health care or who are unemployed due to discrimination. I am the embodiment of those statistics about transfolks of color that you read about online or in class or talk about with your rad buddies over dinner. Even if I am sitting with a bunch of middle class, educated organizers and activists who make assumptions that we are all thriving, that is not my story. That is not my reality. I am barely surviving and fighting to exist. Fighting to not be erased every day.

Thanks for listening. Reaching out like this has been really healing.

Here's more information about the Genderqueer Files episodes:
http://www.afrogenderqueer.com/#!genderqueerfiles/c160u

You can purchase Part 1 episode 1-3 HERE until 12/15. Part 2 episodes will be up 12-15 til 12/22.

My other writings can also be found on the Etsy website. And you can get printed versions of my writings (*everything except Genderqueer Files and Queering Herbalism) through the shop&cart page on the afrogenderqueer website HERE.

And if you have found value in my writings or in the free resources I've compiled (on queerherbalism.blogspot.com)but you aren't interested in buying anything but still want to support, there is a donation button on the afrogenderqueer webpage HERE.


Email me for other purchase options/methods of payment.

Thank you again for reading/listening.

Toi
AGQ
Philosophactivist

Joys of Job hunting while Trans- Part 1

As much as I wish that people were clamoring to hire me for a lucrative position at some ridiculously amazing think tank or organization, I have to be real and say that with this shining, stellar economy, pickin’s are slim. I can’t quite figure out which part of my identity is keeping me from landing jobs, either. Is it my skin color? Is it my visible queerness- i.e. transmasculinity? Is it the long list of queer-related or identity-oriented organizing on my resume? Is it the ethnocentric degree? All of the above?

Many don’t seem to realize the additional barriers present when I’m applying for jobs. Some think that it’s about toning something down. As if I could hide my transness, wipe off my brownness or have some skeleton of a resume, missing the last 5 years of the activism I’ve done. (Though you can be sure I've tried these things, unsuccessfully...all but wiping off the brownness, of course).

When did places start asking your gender (they mean "sex") and “legal” name? I didn’t realize how upsetting that can get after a few weeks. I mean…when I show up I’ve already set the stage for being misgendered and they’re calling me a name that hardly anyone has called me this decade. It’s annoying and it makes me feel shame. Shame for not paying the hundreds of dollars to have my name changed years ago. Shame for feeling shame that I don't look the way they expect me to look to call me by the proper pronouns.

Here's a true scenario-

at a four hour interview three girls and I showed up and the recruiter kept referring to our group as “ladies”.  “So glad we’re all a bunch of ladies…now I can talk about how proud I am that this company was started by ladies.” “Oh all you ladies get it…” etc. When I came into the back room for the group interview I panicked because they’d put our names on the desk and I didn’t see mine anywhere. I was just about to mention it when I remembered…hey, they probably put my legal name. I didn’t even recognize my legal name. Call it cognitive dissonance. It happens a lot lately.

I realize that I’m at an interesting impasse. As a "feminine-looking", masculine presenting person who has decided not to take testosterone or transition, people tend to just assume I’m a butch lesbian. The fact that I’m a different gender doesn’t really register, I find. I get it. But does the application process have to be so highly set up for me to fail? My cursor often hoovers over M or F. Well, if I say F…I’m lying and if I say M, they’ll think I’m lying when I show up at the interview.

I don’t want to put my legal name but it is still my legal name. I could just put what I go by anyway, but I’ve done that before and it’s been a bust. Prospective employers get upset when their paperwork has to be redone and they feel as if you’ve lied to them over something as “trivial” as a nickname. They don’t realize the gravity of it for trans folks. Sometimes we’ve spent decades trying to get away from a name that traps us in a gender that doesn’t match. I have no love for my legal name. It makes me feel hollow. It hasn’t been “me” in a very long time. Like- ever. So, having to always start there during the hiring process doesn’t make me feel all that great. In fact, sometimes I shut down. Sometimes I won’t apply at all. Sometimes I get really depressed and shame surfaces.

Some folks think that I should just be who the job wants me to be til I get hired. They think I should wear feminine clothing. Be less trans. But for me, that’s worse than just being me and not getting hired. At least then I know that the people who thought I wasn’t a good “cultural fit” were bigots. I remember being in my early 20s and having to dress the women’s dress code during the day and coming home and ripping off those clothes and throwing on an undershirt and basketball shorts or a dress shirt, jeans, and shoes from the "men's section" at night. It really began to mess with my head. Who was I? I didn’t want to keep up the charade so I completely started dressing in men’s clothing daily and I felt so much better. It was such a weight off my shoulders, not having to parade around dressed as a gender that didn’t resonate.

I was more confident and the guys I worked with saw this and respected me more. That’s a whole other conversation, though- being inducted into the boy's club (because I slept with women and then this being further cemented as a member when I started wearing ties). It wasn’t exactly what I was going for and once there, it definitely wasn’t what I wanted. Free lap dances at the strip club after work, hearing about them cheating on their wives or wanting to, hearing about how big so-and-so’s breasts were, all the time. Ah the financial industry! Full of bros and misogyny. Such not so fond times over a decade ago when men took me into their fold and thought they’d try to relate to my masculinity in every problematic way possible.

I guess that's another entry waiting to happen...

Stay tuned for part 2 of the joys of job hunting while Trans...I've still got interviewing to do.

Overworked and Underpaid...what else is New?

It is no coincidence that many of the QPOC you know might have 2 or 3 jobs (paid or unpaid) and don’t have a lot of free time. I’ve been thinking about this as the first production/reading of my play, GenderqueerFiles: La Qolectiv@, is coming to a close. With an all QPOC cast and crew, practices were difficult to have since all of us were on the grind and had very little time for run-throughs. I’ve thought about this "time situation" throughout my life. I thought that my mom, aunts and friends’ mothers who were all women of color working themselves into the ground was normal. Everyone’s parents didn’t have time to kiss them goodnight, take them to a park, or put them in girl or boy scouts, right? Wrong.

Time is one of those resources that folks living in poverty can never afford. We pay and pay and pay for it. What’s a little time worth to our community?

Queer folks of color at the intersections of race, gender and sexuality are up against multiple layers of discrimination based on appearance and something as small (or large) as other’s perceptions. Like many POC, we work extremely hard and get paid astronomically less. Many times we are expected (consciously or unconsciously) to work 10X harder by our white (and sometimes even brown) supervisors. Many times we are seen as mere work horses. This is all tied to perceptions of people of color as lazy, underachievers. People (maybe not even people) to bear the brunt of hard labor like we've done for centuries. Sometimes these perceptions are even tied to beliefs that we should be grateful that they’ve hired us or let us work there instead of a white person. And essentially they’re doing us a favor by working us into the ground. We should definitely thank them.

A lot of times we internalize this. We carry these toxic beliefs within ourselves. These beliefs that we have a horrible work ethic and that we must work like a dog and be underpaid and be appreciative for whatever scraps we can get. Sometimes we even feel that it’s normal to be constantly depressed with chronic pain. As a person with lupus, I must say that I know what this is like firsthand. As a person who has worked in a number of predominantly white corporate and non-profit environments, I can vouch for many of these sentiments. 

Even at 16 working at this ice cream place, I remember how my supervisor remarked to my mom “Oh, Toi is such a hard worker.” Back then I was proud. Who wouldn’t be proud of being called that? Later in my adulthood I began to understand the implications of that sentence. Was she saying this because she had a belief that as a brown person that I wouldn’t work as hard and she had been pleasantly surprised? As I saw how hard I was expected to work as compared to my white or male co-workers, the meaning began to dawn on me.

Basically, in the eyes of the “dominant”, we’re still chattel. No matter how far we pretend or wish we have progressed…we’re still in the fields with the cotton and the overseer in many ways. Many of us still don’t own land. Either we never did or we’ve been displaced. We’re having to go back to “folk remedies” because the health care system is not only broken but many times we opt out of much needed care so we don't have to deal with racism, classism and homophobia among other –isms and –phobias. As our country slinks into more and more of an economic depression- we are egregiously backsliding with civil rights.

This false Ameritocracy kills. Do people really get what they deserve? Earn their keep? Are folks living in poverty in that situation because they haven't worked hard enough?People of color are working themselves into early graves. A lot of us are not emotionally, physically, mentally, or spiritually well because we don’t have time to take care of ourselves and many of us are also putting others needs before our own. Many of us live our lives on the grind til we’re in the ground. People are not meant to live their lives this way. Our nervous systems are blown out before middle age because of all that we’re up against. Our bodies give out on us a decade before those living the good life, with resources and power.

Yea, maybe it’s hard to hear- but many of us already knew this…

If you don't believe me or need more facts about the inequity- or just want cold, hard facts for those in disbelief, here’s more:

Important facts to note from Queers for Economic Justice's report “Tidal Wave: LGBT Poverty and Hardship in a time of Economic Crisis:

• White gay men in same-sex couples have poverty rates of 2.7%, compared to 4.5% of Asian or Pacific Islander, 14.4% of black and 19.1% of Native American gay men. While just under 6% (5.7%) of non-Hispanic lesbians are poor, that rate is more than tripled (19.1%) for Hispanic lesbians in couples.

• African Americans in same sex couples have significantly higher poverty rates than black heterosexual couples and are roughly three times higher than those of white people in same-sex couples. Poverty in LGB communities is raced.

• Home ownership rate of black individuals in same-sex couples raising children is 20 percent compared to 63 percent of those in different-sex marriages raising children.

• 12 percent of Black LGBT people in the survey had a household income of less than $15,000.

• In San Francisco, about 10% of Asian same-sex households earned less than $25,000; there was not a large difference between what lesbian and gay male households earned

• Large percentages of the transgender population are unemployed and have incomes far below the national average. While no detailed wage and income analyses of the transgender population have been conducted to date, convenience samples of the transgender population find that 6%-60% of respondents report being unemployed, and 22-64% of the employed population earnsless than $25,000 per year.

• 59% of transgender survey respondents were clearly living in poverty, with the actual number estimated at closer to 65%.When the official unemployment rate in San Francisco stood at 4.7%, more than 35% of the trans community in the city was unemployed.

• Nearly 60% of respondents to a Good Jobs NOW! survey earned under $15,300 annually and only 8% earned over $45,900. 40% did not have a bank account of any kind. Only 25% were working full-time. 16% were working part-time, and nearly 9% had no source of income. Over 57% reported experiencing employment discrimination.

• In a survey of 165 low-income LGBT adults in New York, 35% reported living in homeless shelters, 7% on the street/subways, 3% in SROs (Single Room Occupancies) and 26% with friends/relatives or in temporary living situations

     For the full report you can go here.

Sometimes queer folks of color, in order to feel we can be ourselves or to feel comfortable in a work environment, have to accept less pay. Maybe because we’re at a non-profit or just starting out working for ourselves. If we are doing anything in the arts and expecting support from our community- that’s tough to get sometimes because 

a) our community doesn’t necessarily have the most capital and b) there’s are a lot of internalized -isms that go on (i.e. “shade”) that might keep our projects from getting off the ground for some time. Newcomers usually lack an extensive network of support that queer "veterans" have established. 

If we're going to thrive and not just survive we've got to support each other and continue to build sustainable communities. We've got to create our own jobs and employ ourselves and our community members. We've got to call out these dynamics and hold folks with positional power accountable for their erroneous expectations, ideas, and actions. We've got to address our own internalized oppression and support each other as a community in doing this healing work. We have to continue to wake up and not continue to expect this broken system to be fixed solely by the government. Though it'd be great if they'd acknowledge (and actually do something about the fact) that a lot of us don't earn a living wage and have a poor quality of life because of it. Working ourselves into the ground for less and less pay is obviously not the answer. We've got to continue to be creative with our solutions and we can't let people continue to pretend as if the system is going to change with the "usual" people using the same ineffective tactics and promoting the interests and working for the interests of a very privileged few.