Rebent Sinner, page 10
So, let me tell you a little story.
Last fall I was on tour with my new book, and I was invited to a small literary festival in a pretty white-bread hamlet in Ontario, a couple hours’ outside Toronto. The kind of town that hosts an apple cider festival in the summer and is bordered by cornfields and pumpkin patches.
A couple of days before my event, the festival tweeted a link to ticket-buying info for my show, with a caption that read: “Ivan Coyote is coming to talk about diversity.”
I panicked a little in the airport departure lounge and immediately scanned through my emails from the festival. I thought I was just doing a reading, not any kind of workshop or keynote. I thought maybe I had missed something. I messaged the unknown tweeter from the festival, asking them if I had got my wires crossed somewhere. I was just doing a performance, right? Why had they tweeted that I was talking about diversity? I hadn’t prepared anything for that, I wrote, and my event was two days away.
“Oh, sorry,” he wrote me back. “I didn’t mean to worry you. It’s just a new marketing thing we’re working on. Yes,” he reassured me, “you are just doing a performance, but you know, every time you get up onstage you’re kind of talking about diversity, right?”
Silly me. And here all along I thought I was just talking about my life, my reality.
So, here’s the rub. Straight white male authors get to write about what they write about. They get to answer questions from journalists about the things that they write about. They get to be on panels talking about the things that they write about, and they get to be experts on the things that they research and think and write about. Nobody ever asks them to be a spokesman for all straight white men all over the world. The rest of us are expected to write about who we are. We can write about other things, but we will always be asked to comment on what it is like to be a woman who writes about politics, or a woman who writes male characters, or a person of colour who writes about medicine or feminism or war, or a queer person who writes about professional football, or a trans person who writes about their family. We are always expected to have wise, compassionate, and patient answers to any kind of question about who we are, in addition to what we write about. Most of the shit we get on Twitter about what we write about has nothing to do with what we wrote and everything to do with who we are. If you don’t believe me, then follow Laverne Cox or Roxane Gay or Wanda Sykes or Chelsea Manning and witness it for yourself.
And if you are even thinking about tweeting any of these lines, please, for the love of everything sacred, speak to me afterward and double-check that you have quoted me correctly.
I guess what I am really saying is I will continue to talk about being a non-binary person in a very gendered world until the beautiful, shiny day when people are only interested in my opinions or my characters or my prose and cease to wonder about my genitals or what my parents think about all of this or where I am going to pee after this event is over and how they feel about peeing in the stall right next to me.
What a sweet, sweet day that will be.
And here comes my caveat, okay, and I really do mean it. Some of my closest friends are straight white men. For reals. One of my favourite people in the world is my 350-pound, red-bearded, ham-handed, heavily tattooed heterosexual cousin Dan. He’s more like my brother than my cousin. I’m not a man-hater, not by any stretch.
I do hate the patriarchy, though, and I’m not afraid to use terms like “rape culture” and “toxic masculinity” and “cissexism” and “white supremacy,” and “genocide.”
But I also don’t believe that we will fix any of these things by excluding from the conversation those who benefit most from the world’s unbalanced power structures. In fact, because so much of the time I am mistaken by much of the world for a straight, white, middle-class man, I believe that it is my obligation to engage with these guys, because in the right light I look just like one of them. I sometimes am allowed fleeting grasps at male privilege, and I also know what it feels like to have those privileges revoked, sometimes in mid-sentence, so in a way, I am ideally suited, if you will pardon the pun, for this work. I’m like a double secret agent.
So, I just called and read all this to my cousin Dan to see what he thought, and he said that I sounded angry, but that it was okay because this is important stuff.
Funnily enough, though, I don’t feel at all angry writing this. I just feel tired.
I just googled the definition of the word “diversity.” The first thing that popped up was “the quality of being diverse or different; difference or unlikeness.”
So if we aim for diversity, what we get are people who are defined by what they are not, what they are not like. We are included because of who we are not, because of who we are unlike.
I think it’s well past time to change the language.
Because queer means so much more to me than just the absence of straightness.
Being trans is so much more complicated and nuanced for me than just not being a cisgender man or a woman. And for some trans people, being trans means that they do simply see themselves as a man, or a woman. I don’t want to erase anyone because we share a word that means different things to each of us.
I want to flip the word “diversity” over and look at its underbelly. I want to start talking more about reality. I want to talk about what we are really talking about. I want to talk about what it costs marginalized voices when we step up to write or speak our truth to an audience that often does not include many faces or bodies that look like ours.
I write and speak about my experiences as a trans person. This by its very nature involves writing and speaking about things I was taught we are not to ever write or speak about: My body. My desires. My period. My body. Where I pee when out in public. My body. Where it fits. Where it belongs. How it doesn’t.
So, this brings me to the story I want to tell you.
This last February I did a tour of small-town theatres in Alberta. Rural Canada. Sort of by accident—it’s a long story. I wasn’t talking about trans issues, I wasn’t supposed to be an activist; I was an artist, I was a storyteller, I was doing a show about my grandmother. The kind of show my agent thought he could sell to medium-sized theatres in small-town southern Alberta. And he was right, and so he did, and so there I was.
This tour had been block booked, they call it, which means that several municipal theatres all agree to bring an artist or show to the area to do the rounds, thus sharing the costs of travel and accommodations. Most of the theatregoers hold season’s tickets, which means they go to every show the theatre presents, so they often see performances they might not have sought out, or artists they are not familiar with.
So, basically, I was a trans person telling family stories in small farming and resource towns to people who mostly had no idea I was trans. This is supposed to be what I dreamed of, right? But I wasn’t invited to perform because nobody cared I was trans. It was because few of them knew I was trans. And that is a very different thing.
This is the part where you all study me and see if you even believe I could so-called pass as a man well enough for me to tell septuagenarian farmers and their wives stories about my dear departed grandmother for seventy-five minutes without them figuring out I wasn’t exactly the clean-cut, granny-loving, nice young man they might have thought I was at first. Go ahead. Study my stubbleless cheekbones. Peruse the curve of my hips. Listen to the gilded timbre of my voice, and note my unusually long eyelashes. Observe the slender width of my wrists. It’s okay. Really. I’m used to it.
I’m just going to stop here and read you a letter I received from an audience member who did figure me out:
Good morning, Ivan:
WOW!
What a performance last night. Let me say first that you are one great speaker. You touched me very deeply. I, too, am a storyteller; however, not in public. I have been told that I tell very good stories. For the most part, they are true stories, relating experiences I have had. And I think most people would think I am full of shit. Often, I wonder myself how all of this could be true.
Shortly before showtime I saw a post on Facebook indicating that a friend of mine had been given five tickets to the show, and she was looking for people that could use them. Being that I have always wanted to attend something at this theatre—I have never been before—not to mention the fact that I am attracted to this particular friend, I responded that I would love to go. She called me before the show and told me that the seats were not all together—damn, I would not get to sit with her. Then she told me that she had discovered that you were transgender (is that the right word?), and after some vacillating about attending, she decided she would go, and admitted that she had some prejudices about transgender people. I must admit that I am not sure where I stand about this either. However, how can I back out now? We did not sit together, but we spoke briefly as we entered the theatre after intermission, and she mentioned something about her reservations—I can’t remember exactly what—and I jokingly told her that I might get kicked out. I said if that happens, just pretend you don’t know me. She replied, “Too late, we have already been seen together in public.”
Now to the point of my writing you. I have a couple of questions.
When you were talking about your grandma’s heaven, and you said her heaven did not have a husband who beat his wife or fucked his children, were you referring to your grandfather, or perhaps your father? Or both, or neither?
What a bombshell that was, but I am sure you know that and intended it. I was shedding tears from that point on.
Here is the other question. Did you make eye contact with me several times during the course of the show? I was sitting in the front row slightly to your right of centre. I had the very distinct feeling that you did. And if so, do you do that with every person in the audience?
I went into the theatre with reservations, as I have said. And at first I was looking at you and thinking, OK, he has the hips of a girl, no breasts, no whiskers, I wonder if he has a penis? Anyway, it was not long until all I saw was a loving, caring, brilliant human being.
I felt compelled to share that with you.
Have a great day,
Darren, the Spiritual Redneck
Now. This is the part where some of you—and I know you mean well, I truly do, and you are partly right—tell me that this is evidence of progress, that this is a good thing. That Darren, the self-appointed spiritual redneck, had his moment, that he learned something, and that all of our hard work is paying off and we should feel happy. We should feel grateful.
And this is the part where I tell you how guilty I feel that I haven’t had the time or heart to write Darren back yet, and what kind of a goddamned ambassador for all trans people everywhere am I that I haven’t been able to swallow everything this letter makes me feel and write him a heartfelt and loving response thanking him for taking the time to treat me like a human? Sort of.
So, I guess part of what I’m saying is that part of taking care of myself enough to do this work has lately involved acknowledging just exactly what this work involves.
Putting my body under the spotlight to be perused and pondered and debated, even when I’m attempting to talk about something, about anything, else. Pretending that as we engage in these debates—and we have to, I know that, to keep from being disappeared, to fight for our space and our rights and our dignity—I can be calm and reasonable while casually discussing whether or not I exist. All the while knowing that what may be armchair philosophy for some means actual life and death and liberty for trans people. Being polite and patient while knowing that my liberation is just someone else’s learning opportunity.
And remembering that when I hear others—fat activists, feminists, black activists, Indigenous people, assault survivors, and people with disabilities—speak up, it is their bodies up there, too, their flesh and memories being questioned. And that the only way through is for us all to listen better.
I want to close by saying that I am truly, sincerely grateful for the opportunity to be here, so far away from home, and be offered a stage and a platform from which to speak to you all today. I’m truly glad that each and every one of you has chosen to be here with me. These are necessary and vital conversations, and I hope this one continues after we all leave this room in a few short minutes.
I’m humbled that I have been trusted by this festival, and all of you, to speak to these issues. And I want you to know, on my honour, I’m not angry. Well, not that angry. I’m hopeful and inspired and motivated and grateful. And really, really tired.
DEAR DARREN:
First of all, I want to thank you for overcoming your reservations about trans people enough to come to the theatre that night and listen to an actual trans person speak, even if, as you said, you really only showed up to see the venue, and maybe get closer to your friend. I met her after the show. She seemed nice. She bought my book and wanted to talk about aromatherapy and her homemade soap company. I would never have guessed she had prejudices about trans people.
It sounds like what happened for you is that you kind of accidentally saw my humanity, and I guess that is why I believe so deeply in the power of storytelling, why I am so viscerally certain that the simple act of one human listening to another is the only real way to foster compassion in an unknowing heart for someone who is different from them. Stories are the best tools I know.
I’m home now, sitting on my couch, full of homemade soup, with the little dog snoring beside me, stretched out against my leg like he does. It’s been two years and nearly two months since you got up at 6:45 a.m. the day after my gig and wrote that email to me. My sincere apologies that it has taken me this long to respond. I guess I needed some time to think about it all before just reacting and firing off a response full of the feelings that your letter called up in me that morning. I’m glad I waited.
Before I address your questions, a little context: That was my first, and most likely last, tour of small-town southern Alberta. Bear with me while I tell you more than you probably ever wanted to know about how theatres book the shows in their season.
About a year before that tour, my booking agent talked me into flying to Edmonton with Jon, my guitar player, to do what they call a showcase. You get fifteen minutes to perform an excerpt of the show you are trying to pitch, to an audience made up mostly of artistic directors and volunteer board members of local theatres. The delegates then decide on a few productions they think they can sell to their season’s ticket holders and theatre patrons, and if a handful of theatres all decide they like a certain performer or play, then they can do what the industry calls block book a show, and then several theatres all share the costs of bringing that production to their individual towns. My agent thought that the wholesome grandmother-story nature of that particular show would override the presenters’ reluctance to book a show written and performed by a queer and trans person. That is not exactly how it went down.
What actually happened was the guy who introduced me at that showcase did not read the bio my agent sent ahead of time and instead, after a few words backstage before my set, made some assumptions and went out and introduced me as a nice young man from the Yukon who was going to tell a story about his grandmother. And so that is who the delegates saw and heard that day, and that is the show they thought they had booked. Just a nice young man telling stories about his grandmother.
The result was that I was on tour in small-town southern Alberta and some of my host theatres didn’t even know that they had booked a trans performer. On the surface you could make an argument that this was a good thing, and that it shouldn’t matter if I was trans or not, and you would sort of be right, in a perfect world.
But we both know that it is anything but a perfect world out there these days. Especially in Edson, Alberta, which the internet tells me is a town on the Yellowhead Highway with a population of a little over 8,000 people, most of whom work in the coal, oil, natural gas, and forestry industries. As I write this, your province just days ago elected by a landslide Jason Kenney of the United Conservative Party, who ran his team of racists and pipeline-loving Christians on a platform that also promised to roll back protections for LGBTQ youth in schools.
I’m not going to ask you who you voted for, Darren. I think that would be an invasive question.
I am going to ask you, though, to think about what it felt like for me to spend ten days on the road in small-town theatres where I often had no safe bathroom to use before I stepped out onto a stage in front of a full house of season’s ticket holders, many of whom didn’t know who I was or were unsure how they felt about me or harboured open prejudices about who I was.
I used the women’s room at the theatre the previous night because I was wearing a silk pocket square and was afraid of getting punched out in the men’s bathroom right before my show started. I knew the woman who ran the theatre in that town didn’t know I was trans and had mistaken me for a young man because she kept saying in sound check that she didn’t believe the part of my story about Scotch-taping over the square holes and recording cartoons over my aunt’s Jane Fonda exercise videos because I was way too young to know what a VHS tape even was. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was old enough to remember when everyone thought Betamax was going to be the next big thing.
I remember being very grateful that the theatre in Edson had a green room and a private bathroom. I remember my heart pounding every night of that tour until I locked my hotel room door behind me and flipped the door bolt to the safe position. The hotels I stayed in were mostly populated by oil rig workers and loggers, and at night I was nervous in the hallways and got the side-eye more than once from trios of dudes drinking beers out of coolers perched on tailgates in parking lots. In the mornings, I ignored the stares in the little breakfast rooms and ate my reconstituted scrambled eggs and yogurt cups and hoped that none of those coveralled, workbooted guys would pick a fight with me or Jon before we could finish our coffee and load up the gear and hit the highway. Jon’s not a big guy, if you recall, and he’s not used to being called a faggot like I am.
