Coffee + Snow

U.N.I.T.Y

After dolling up and heading to Notting Hill Carnival. I became curious about a piece of writing I felt compelled to write before my transition started. It concerned the music that resonated in my heart and soul but whose culture I always felt so distant from.

I heard people with a real voice talking of heart ache, struggle and the courage to be themselves. I started to think about the universal nature of struggle and rather than look for division to instead look for unity.

I am an outsider to the culture of the music I listen to, to the lives I live in my daydreams. I’m kept at arms reach from all that resonates with me. Only left with the memories of my mistakes and reminded that I am not wanted as I am by ignorant voices.

I make mistakes in all my decisions it seems, and I feel like I walk on egg shells through life. I worry about upsetting a careful balance and offending someone, but I need the space to make those mistakes so fragile is my sense of self, so repressed are my feelings and emotions, so timid is my true self.

While I search for my voice, I am left to embrace that which resonates with me. So much of my musical aesthetic appreciation comes from black music. I wonder if I can one day stop worrying about what that culture thinks of me and start to speak my mind with a voice as powerful and resonant.

- Originally written Before my transition (2010) and edited (2011)

Hip hop and reggae music resonate with me, not to mention funk and soul, blues and more modern predominantly black dance music. Often discussing the struggle in living day to day and the struggles of days gone by, I can identify, even if I may be looked on as an outsider by most and unable to relate to the pain expressed.

Growing up as transgender I had to repress my desires and latent femininity and had the norms of being a man imposed on me by society. My female self is kept well and truly locked up and kept in check out of fear. Step out of that norm and you are soon lampooned, misunderstood or subject to ridicule and even physical threat.

I live in fear of physical threat every time I walk out my door but that’s because I live in Hackney. Just listen to Professor Green’s ‘Upper Clapton Dance’ if you need to find out what life is like on the streets here.

I’ve had a gun pointed at my face a knife pulled on me and have been attacked by youths. But just imagine what life would be like walking down the high road in heels and a dress. I would surely be noticed and would likely risk death with such an adventure.

Black people growing up in segregation were told how they could act and what they could do. This segregation exists in the gender divide too but thanks to the work of the suffragettes and feminists all over the world women have been able cross this divide to some extent.

As recently as the 50’s and even 60’s people would be shocked to see women in predominantly male cloths but these days no one bats an eye. Many girls in my area rock tracksuits and hoodies but put a boy in a dress and you have something to talk about. Feminism went a long way to break down the gender divide but I feel that it only happened in one direction.

Woman have equal rights now but socially we are still unable to accept men who blur the gender divide. It’s often considered sexual “he must be gay looking like that” or considered a joke, something played for laughs, let alone being something that must be pointed out.

So what about segregation, here was a divide put up between two groups of people, the divide was arbitrary, there were few real differences in black and white people but it was imposed none the less.

The divide helped to repress black people and keep them subservient but throughout this pain black people built a culture based on their mutual suffering from blues to funk and eventually hip hop. This culture gave them an identity and a voice with which to express their pain, delight, suffering and joy.

How many transgendered people can be said to have such a voice. They live day to day as (wo)men and have the rules of society drilled into them on a daily basis. It is often the ‘men’ who are worst hit. As you walk the streets you would be hard pressed to find a man blurring the gender divide.

When men do transgress the social norms they are treated with a pinch of salt by most around them and the media. There are few honest stories about crossing the gender divide in the media. The story of two cage fighters out on the town all dolled up being attacked and then slamming their attackers with their physical prowess only made the news because it was funny.

Had two transvestites been punched in the face and they had only been able to defend themselves the same as the majority of men it would have never have made the papers. Again we come back to the comic element of cross-dressing. Only when it’s funny can it be accepted, and heaven forbid if it makes the person feel good.

So we have an artificial segregation of the genders enforced by a playground mentality. Women managed to slip the noose of repression off of their necks as a group, although many still suffer at the hands of men who think that stereotypes are there “because they are completely true.”

So, I identify with a lot of black music by both black men and women and the struggle of black people in America and the Caribbean particularly. I long for a transgendered voice to open up and be able to sing about the hate and contempt levied at them by even those who are close, often unaware of their comments personal sting.

Like colour was just a generation ago, gender is treated as a binary. And much has been done to try and open up peoples minds to the wealth of colours of skin in this world. Seldom is the same done in an honest and gritty way to express the wealth of genders in the world.

Solidarity is important but sadly the hip hop and reggae community has been slow to accept the existence of even gay and bisexuals amongst them. The expression of black suffering in music has a honesty and unquestioned bona fide truth to it. I wonder though how far its artists can see beyond their own hate. Few would like to acknowledge the link to the LGBT community.

Some reggae artists still want to kill the chi chi man and I’m sure if I turned up to a sound clash in a dress and make-up I would be rocking the boat more so than just being a white face amongst a sea of black ones. But I think solidarity is something to be cultivated.

Too often we want to express our differences but I’m all for realizing that we are just people, all of us. Some have suffered great trauma growing up and we should share our pain not try and compartmentalize it and brand it with labels.

I’m all for individuality but as humans we have so much that connects us. Pain is pain. Repression is repression. We should realize these simple facts and embrace our common pain and sing the truths we find bond us not the differences that separate us.

Maybe that is one step too far. People like to feel they are part of something and music can help do that, but expressing individuality also helps to widen the gap with others. I don’t want to loose my love of black music just because I am transgender and there is a culture of hate towards the LGBT community in some elements of the hip hop and reggae community.

All I can try to do is educate both sides through my love of music. And I hope more urban artists can begin to freely admit they are L G B or T and continue to create positive music, perhaps talking about their own struggle. I’m sure I would listen.