iekenner.com

​So…I live in an area of Australia once described to me by a gay friend and long-time resident as a “gay ghetto”. He was referring to the fact that our suburb (throughout the 70s & 80s) was a VERY rough neighbourhood into which gay men (mostly), but also lesbians & trans people moved to escape persecution elsewhere. The people in this area were poor and had bigger things to worry about than if their neighbour was gay. I mean who gives a fuck, right – the other neighbour is a drug addicted pimp with links to organised crime!

Over time, the sense of community in LGBTI+ people encouraged so more and more LGBTI+ people to moved into the area and, over time, the neighbourhood changed from a rough, scary place to one of the most inclusive, beautiful places on Earth (well that’s my opinion).

Yes, I get that this was perhaps gentrification of one marginalised group by another, however, our area is still such a mix of gay, straight, rich, poor, euro, asian, indigenous, immigrant and not I feel this process has not been a negative one.

It was into this neighbourhood that myself and my partner moved in 99/2000. We have never left.

Part of the gay culture in our area (I can call it “our” after 20 year I think) has always been drag shows.

Drag shows have been a part of the Sydney gay scene since there was one. The most famous period is still probably the 70s & 80s when Carlotta was twirling out on stage in a feather boa.

Drag and drag culture has influenced LGBTI+ culture worldwide and we have to keep remembering that for YEARS trans women who were not accepted almost ANYWHERE were welcomed and celebrated presenting as who they were on the stage of their local drag show.

Drag has allowed thousands of our trans sisters (& brothers) to be themselves for fleeting hours and though this learn how to accept themselves. And for many, this happened long before many of us had learned what gender was. Long before many of us had learned to crawl.

Many drag performers leverage their link to LGBTI+ culture to make crass jokes & some of these affect trans women negatively – and while this is not cool, I think trans people generally need to try to keep in mind the past and how the world we are slowly educating has changed already. We need to have to look back, take a look at what drag and drag culture has given us as trans people – without drag, without that embryonic phase of self-exploration for so many of our trans sisters and brothers – the concept of transition would still be be all but unheard of. The idea that a person could present themselves as a gender other than that into which they were born would be anathema in far more places than it is.

Please, particularly my gorgeous, brave, strong trans sisters – don’t take drag as an insult to you, nor your identity. I understand that some drag performers are insenitive and hey – if you’re one of those drag performers, please try to do better – but we as trans people need to also learn to have a thicker skin. Tranny is an ugly word, but my Dad used it used to use it far more to refer to a small transistor radio than to a trans woman.

Words have only the power you give them.

Try to look at drag as a form of performance that has, as part of its history helped SO MANY trans people to escape the shackles of their birth sex and societal gender role and learn to show the world the person they have always been inside.

Drag has also allowed people who have never thought about gender before to see another idea and learn that gender is not fixed by a person’s genitals.

PLEASE understand that drag has been a crucial part of our ability to be accepted as the people we are.

Also…laughter is good. Try not to ever let it hurt you, even if it’s an arsehole laughing.

❤️

— IEK

I tried to stay clear of social media yesterday (Monday in Australia). Early on Monday morning, the world had crept up on me and punched me in the face. Not the first time I’d been punched in the face, but the first time I’d had no idea it was coming (I’ve been in a few fights, let’s just say).

Yesterday morning my Dad called and he was terribly upset. A relative who I had known since birth and with who’s family I had spent a lot of good times as a child had died. It was a shock. His family are some of our closest relatives, despite the distance between us. I’d known he had been experiencing heart trouble, but I guess things like that are never real until all of a sudden they are. I was immediately and very deeply saddened.

Later in the morning, I read about the massacre in Orlando.

50 people.

One dipshit and an assault rifle.

Again.

It was too much, so I stepped away. I needed to process.

Once I’d had a chance to at least get a sense of my own grief and was able to think about the Orlando shooting, my immediate reaction could be summed up in one image:

Because fuck that dipshit, fuck his assault rifle and fuck the people who would support him and encourage his viewpoint. Fuck people who think that lesbian, gay, bi, trans, intersex or any other group discriminated against because of their gender, gender identity or preference should be treated as anything other than equal to every other person. The time for love was done and the time to fight was now. I was going to change my avi to this fist and start fighting for the rights of LGBTI people – people like my friends, like the victims in Orlando. People like me.

But I wanted to stay away longer. I wanted to stay out of the storm which was happening on social media and spend the time just with my family. So I did and in that time, I realised that I was just buying into the same mentality which had created this dipshit – the same mentality which creates and drives a lot of these dipshits with guns: that the world is against you and you have to fight it. You have to fight, hurt and kill if you want to be heard, you have to fight, hurt and kill if you want to be taken seriously.

Well it’s not true.

It’s a lie.

It’s a lie built on centuries of macho self-importance and the desire to be stronger and/or more heavily armed than everyone else because it’s the only way some people can feel safe.

But I feel safe. I don’t worry that someone is going to take out a gun and execute me and my family. I don’t feel like I have to have an assault rifle to be heard. I’m quite OK without an assault rifle. In fact I rather prefer life without those awful things. I feel lucky that I live in Australia where shootings still occur, but the numbers of dead are 1 or 2, not 10, 20 or 50 because it’s damn near impossible to buy an assault rifle in this country and such weapons are certainly beyond the financial and logistical means of dipshits.

I have realised that if you want to create a better world – a world where everyone can feel safe, where dipshits like this guy who killed all of these innocent people in Orlando don’t feel like they have to fight, hurt or kill to be heard, we need to start by opening our hearts, not closing them off.

I changed my social media avis to a simple Pride flag over the last couple of days to show my support for the community which has shown me such amazing support in my times of need. I haven’t started any fights online and I haven’t become involved in any (yet). I’m sure there will come a time when I need to stand up for the communities and for the basic human rights I believe in, but I have come to realise that violence and the promotion of violence is not something which can ever truly end violence.

I commend the people who have taken this stance of love over hate even as I was boiling away in my indignant rage, ready to punch on. I commend them for not letting their anger get the better of them, for directing their passion toward making the world a more loving place, not a more hateful one.

So from here on, I’m going to try to follow their example.

I’m going to try to love just a bit more and hate just a bit less.

— IEK

You may well ask: How can someone who identifies as a trans person support an organisation which allows a person with clear and stated transphobic opinions to give a lecture?

To me it’s obvious – she is not being asked to speak about transgender issues.

Germaine Greer is an icon of the womens’ liberation movement; a product of a very ugly time in our society’s past when women were treated as little more than property, an accessory to be admired, yet not heard. Greer grew up, as all women did in those days, seeing the hatred and violence directed at the suffragettes who came before her, suffering and seeing the hatred and violence directed at her – all for nothing more than being female and daring to imagine she could have a say. Greer chose to use all of that frustration she felt as a woman living under this oppression and to direct it into making a stand.

Many of the things she has said and written have been bold, confronting, angry and made her the target of hatred from almost every male who heard about it. This seemed to make her only more staunch in her views. I don’t agree with a lot of the things she says and yet I respect Germaine Greer for what she has done and the voices she has allowed to be heard.

Like many heroes of a time and of a moment, however, Germaine Greer is not perfect. Obviously for all of you people who are flawless of character, this must seem strange. Greer harbours many opinions which, though they allowed her to focus and drive through the ocean of negativity she had to navigate during the infancy of feminism as we know it, they have no place in the world today. Greer’s belief in herself and her bravery in the face of untold opposition is what has made her a hero of feminism and she will not change her stripes today just because a comparatively small number of people demand that she do so.

I don’t believe Germaine Greer will ever change her opinion of trans women (though it would be interesting to know her views on trans men). From what I derive from her stance, she believes that to be a woman, one must face the challenge of being a woman from birth – make your way through sexism, the absurd expectations of society that you must “look your best” all the bloody time, menstruation – all of the challenges faced only by those who grow up female.

Though I may not agree with it, I actually understand this argument. I don’t believe that being born with a vagina necessarily makes you a woman (there are many exceptions to this rule), but I understand that very, very few trans women could possibly understand what it truly is to be born as and grow up as a female.

Equally, though, very, very few people born female could understand what it truly is to be born in a gender you do not identify with and face the hate, violence and negativity which so sadly often accompanies the lives of trans people.

In this respect trans people and women are not so very different.

In looking over all of this, you may well say “But hey – you just said her opinions have no place in the world of today!” and you’d be partially right: her stance on the very existence of trans people has no place in the world of today, in fact she has not repeated her hateful opinions for decades and she said as much very recently. She is an intelligent person and I believe she realises her opinions don’t gel with today’s more open and understanding society which is why she hasn’t aired them for a very long time.

And her lecture at Cardiff University IS NOT ABOUT TRANSGENDER ISSUES – the lecture is entitled “Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century“. It is a historical look over the womens’ liberation and feminist movement in the 20th century and how women have managed to fight their way to the right to vote, to legislated (if not real) equal-pay, to legislated equal rights and to the highest, most powerful jobs in the world. It is also a lecture on the work still to be done. I personally think it would be fascinating.

But now (misguided, in my opinion) activists are backing Germaine Greer against an opinion wall. If I know anything about Germaine Greer it is that she is at her most vocal – her most forthright when she is backed against a wall. And so she has made it clear that she has not changed her opinion of trans women. Important note: her opinion.

But if her task at the university is not to discuss transgender – why must we silence her on all subjects? In reality the trans movement only started gaining traction in the last 5 years, so it has little place in a brief university lecture about women in the 20th century!

I would absolutely support a ban on Germaine Greer if she were being asked to speak on the subject of transgender* because I feel her opinions are deeply negative, spiteful and ill-informed, but this lecture is absolutely not that. It is a lecture the subject of feminism and womens’ rights and on the history of the issue. On that subject, I think you could find few more important voices than Germaine Greer.

— IEK

*  Unless it were a debate because I love arguments and I also love winning them