I am a trans woman of colour standing at the intersections of visibility and violence; I am surrendering my strength to softness, humbling myself for the magic of my heart and spirit would not be in its glory without the black and indigenous mothers and femmes, as well as the 2SLGBTQ+ elders that have came and fought before me... As a settler-immigrant surviving in a colonial-capitalist state, I wish to acknowledge the complicity of my being, the privileges of my access, and the possible violence of my ignorance as I continue to learn/unlearn/grow. It is the aim to come together as a decolonizing collective to dismantle institutional powers of the patriarchy through socio-political freedom of the mind, reform of education, and a firm foundation of compassion politics for the equity and justice of all marginalized peoples.
I am exhausted, of fighting for belonging within a system that's not built for equity and inclusion; I am tired of defending complicity for the performative possibility of change; I am disgusted with shallow lip-services of identity politics, with diversity being for the sake of exploitive representation, and with justice being said for the sake of expression but never action... Education towards Liberation loses its meaning: when they handcuffed a student for feeling suicidal; when they teach critical thinking without knowing action; when students die for believing their worth as GPA numbers; when they say higher learning without knowing unlearning; when they say transphobic violence is not for discipline under student code of conducts; when more than enough students of the ranked "top University of Canada" have experienced instability of housing, food, (mental) health, and the social/medical/psychological resources of support needed but they still say congratulations.
I would understand even if fellow youths/students of academia disagree, but I dare to state the truth as what we know as institutional higher learning is not real: it is not the education built for unity and collective liberation. Yet with acknowledgement to my traumas with systematic oppression, I urge for those able to survive and thrive under such systems to let go of the false powers of knowledge productions and the connections/privileges of colonial-capitalist/elitist access. And if access is truly needed, then may we not lose a second of strive to decolonize/dismantle the institution while navigating through such systems for change. I believe in education through compassionate politics and equity, thus why I say such violent and labouring fight for resources/access is not true education/higher learning for the emotional and empathetic intelligence needed of liberating impact...
Though on a self-reflective and confessional note: I am still fighting to keep myself in academia, for perhaps foolish and hopeless potentials of change and "success", but still failing and hurting from the battles/ barriers of visibility as violence. Maybe I'm afraid of leaving this war with the institutions; perhaps the uncertainty of social dynamics as well as the socio-political and economic stigmas against those "uneducated" still haunts me and my generational lineage... as no matter how she screams death to systematic violence, she has been made part of them... The truth is that the people are not relating to her words no longer, even if they understand and feel the struggle. She asks herself of how she can truly serve the people without knowing their language and sharing their struggles ? bell hooks once said that she "came to theory because [she] was hurting," and as I came to the philosophical studies of humanities on gender and social equity/justice for the pains of surviving as a trans woman of colour, I soon realized that theory is there indeed for us to comprehend the struggles of our existence; however, theory is not of healing nor liberation. I am a femme giving birth to myself, a storyteller searching for softness and for where the light pours in... And I am afraid that such compassionate justice is not buildable through the rotting hierarchies of complicity, that it is not sound for flowers forcing blossoms when showered with acid and planted in poison, that students deserve better, and that youths must begin to build our own tables, creating access and possibilities for the sanity of ourselves, for the honour of those before, and for the glory of those after us...
"Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference -- those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older -- know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.
For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support." - Audre Lorde
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