An Open Letter to Karla Sofía Gascón
Dear Karla Sofía Gascón,
I’m writing to you as an activist who has been an out queer person and involved in the LGBTQ community since 2001. Before I discuss the dark side of the rainbow that your reprehensible online comments represent, I’d like to share a memory with you so there are no misunderstandings about my purposes here. Your shocking comments about George Floyd in particular forced me to consider my own history and memories vis a vis trans people and the trans community. This may come as a surprise to you, but there are Black trans women who exist, and this memory concerns one of them. During the winter of 2006 I was living through a personal crisis after returning from living in Germany for an extended period of time. Because of my complicated family situation, and due to feeling like a burden on my friends, it was easier to seek the help I needed through the shelter system. While at the shelter located on cheerless skid row I fell in with a group of queer people who all slept in the same area and shared the same table during meal times. One of these queer people was a Black trans woman; her presence there was an indictment of the limitations of the shelter system at the time because as a trans woman she was being forced to stay in a shelter for men. What I remember about this person is that despite the harsh circumstances she was always cheering people up. She was always sharing her cigarettes, always letting people borrow her music CD’s, always trying to lift our spirits. When, with the help of a social worker, I transferred from the shelter to the hospice facility that would be my home for the next year as I rebuilt my health and my life, she came to visit me a few times to see how I was doing. This, despite the fact that as a homeless sex worker she certainly had her own serious problems to deal with. Some folks simply have that sort of generous, giving spirit even when they have nothing themselves. I wish I knew where she was today and how she’s doing…
Ms. Gascón, when I think about all of the selfless and good-hearted queer and trans people I’ve met over the years who have been burdened by poverty and had their dreams crushed by this capitalist system, it really highlights how fucking unfair this shitty world is. Good people who actually care about other people are often destroyed and thrown into the gutter while people like yourself are elevated and given everything. Queer folks who need help and upliftment often don’t receive it; we’re forced into sex work or other aspects of the underworld; or we’re found sleeping under a bridge while the privileged, racist asshole queers live on Easy Street in their comfortable lofts & McMansions. Considering the nature of this society I’m not surprised that someone like you is the first openly transgender woman to be considered for an Oscar. Racism, Islamophobia, classism and xenophobia are certainly not redlines for an institution known for the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. Maybe a racist institution like the Academy gravitates automatically and instinctively towards those with opinions like yours.
With Donald Trump and his fascist forces waging open war on the transgender and queer communities, now is the time for us to come together and work together against our common enemies. But before we can do that we need to clean house within the queer community and address the dark side of the rainbow. There are certain things that can no longer be swept under the rug. Ms. Gascón, your comments, while terrible and awful, present an opportunity for addressing some long standing issues. Like how plenty of LGBTQ people in our community have deep seated racist, classist and xenophobic attitudes. And the more privilege these people have, the easier it is for them to get away with their bullshit under the cover of shallow identity politics. Instead of talking about gentrification, returning stolen land, paying reparations and other issues related to resources, we end up discussing privileged people’s feelings ad nauseum. And that’s because for these folks, discussing feelings is much more preferable than discussing white privilege, where people’s inheritances come from, the so-called “wealth gap,” and the fact that white queers are pushing folks like me out of our rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. While I’m sensitive to people’s feelings, someone like me can’t ignore the fact that there are transgender people working as cops, greedy landlords, cutthroat capitalists, CIA agents, FBI agents, military contractors, gentrifying tech bros, IDF soldiers, you name it. We all have to survive under capitalism, so it’s not about judging people based on their work — it’s about judging people based on the impact their work has on marginalized communities. It’s also about judging people who know they are causing harm and simply don’t care because they’re profiting and living comfortably off the situation.
Some might say, well, you’re a Black cisgender guy — what about the harms being committed against trans women by this community? Sure, we should talk about it, and the patriarchal violence of Black men vis a vis trans women is of course a problem we should more urgently address. The problem is, when the harms are being committed by privileged white people there’s often a coordinated conspiracy of silence that allows these harms to continue unchallenged. Too many folks want to keep the peace with their problematic brunch partners, coworkers, housemates, etc. The harms white queer people are enacting through their participation in this violent, racist system should be taken as seriously as the harms committed by cis Black men. Chelsea Manning is an example of that rare type of white person who saw the harmful nature of the system she was involved in and had the courage to refuse to be a cog in the death machine; and we see that they made an example of her. Imprisoned and tortured. If she had been a violent racist and xenophobe she might be a four star general in the military right now, or maybe even Vice President or something. Or maybe she would be in line to receive an Oscar.
Ms. Gascón, perhaps I should be grateful that your unearthed tweets helped bring clarity to a little situation in my life involving a Spanish person I met randomly at the gym. In light of your shady comments and the reality that even trans and queer Europeans can harbor tragically backwards opinions, I’ve had to question whether or not I’ve misread the situation. Because now, after looking back over our interactions and this person’s behavior, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve been too charitable. I’ve had to face the fact that it’s entirely possible that this Spanish individual shares your horrible opinions, Ms. Gascón.
Your behavior has helped me notice something I was perhaps subconsciously avoiding. And what I’ve been avoiding is the reality that race and class color everything, especially for privileged white folks. There’s no escaping from this, even at the gym. In this case, when I saw that my repeated attempts to connect with this person (who at first I assumed was from Brazil or somewhere) were repeatedly rebuffed, my first instinct was to back off; but mixed signals and some strange coincidences related to my art project and Spanish colonialism convinced me to not give up on trying to make a connection despite the ongoing stonewalling, lack of reciprocation and lack of communication. After wracking my brain I began to wonder if this Spanish guy’s weird behavior was possibly due to social anxiety. Being attracted to him and also not wanting to be an asshole towards someone who is possibly neurodivergent is what convinced me to be patient with his antisocial behavior, but after reading your despicable comments I can’t help but wonder what’s really going on. I should thank you, because now I realize that the situation is not worth wasting my time and energy. Anyway, with my own little Spanish connection there’s surely a joke in there somewhere about reincarnated conquistadors, especially considering the history I’ve been uncovering vis a vis the Spanish Inquisition against the Mayans. But all jokes aside, what is very noticeable from everything that’s going on is that colonialism is far from a thing of the past. The conquistadors of yesterday are today’s privileged upholders of this white supremacist system.
I’d like to begin bringing this to a close by highlighting the irony of a Black Muslim woman being the one to unearth the racist, Islamophobic and xenophobic tweets you certainly were not hiding.
It’s incredible that you felt so secure with your bigoted opinions that it never occurred to you to clean up your social media. The really ridiculous thing is that as someone who is older than I am, you certainly should know better. You’ve inflicted incredible harm on the queer community, but especially on the trans community. Thanks for creating a situation where instead of honoring the achievements of trans people in the arts breaking a barrier, folks are now doing damage control. It sickens me to think of all the much more deserving transgender women who have been passed over for opportunities while people like you are being uplifted. Ms. Gascón, I hope you understand why people are angry and I hope you do some much needed reflection. You should be donating large sums of money to organizations that serve marginalized transgender people at the very least. Fix this shit.
Let me end by saying that what this situation (and others) tells us is that we need to get much more serious about decolonization. When we consider the historical role of trans and queer people in Indigenous societies going way back, we need to understand that our gifts and our ways of being are incompatible with living in a cutthroat capitalist, racist, colonial, white supremacist context. This is one reason why so many of us have a hard time maintaining ourselves in this world whether it be mentally, economically, or whatever. This narrow minded, profit driven mainstream culture wasn’t meant for us and is actively hostile to us. Remember when being gay or lesbian was considered a mental illness? Remember when gay men were abandoned by the government and most of civil society during the AIDS crisis? It wasn’t that long ago. The awareness of the precariousness of our “rights” under this system is what makes it especially bitter when white or otherwise privileged trans and queer people throw the rest of us under the bus to maintain their social and economic goodies. What they don’t realize is that at the end of the day they’re shooting themselves in the foot. There’s no secure space for queer and trans people within colonial society, don’t fool yourself. Everything you have now and everything your privilege has given you can be easily taken away if/when open fascism descends. Decolonize.
