The Trangender Experience in Fierce Performance
So. Incredibly. Moving.
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I have NO sound in teh office, someone please -if you have the transcript-post it.
Here you are!
Melissa sits in the back of the classroom afraid to speak up,
She pulls akwardly at her extra loose khaki cargo pants,
She doesn't want the boys to notice her.
James finds himself at the back of a classroom,
His baseball cap casts a shadow on his pimple stained forehead,
A wide shirt hangs from his broad shoulders,
But no one ever noticed him.
Melissa
The teacher asks,
And she says nothing because she is not here,
And Melissa has never been here,
Because Melissa is just some abstract jumble of syllables that doesn't fit her position,
She is not what she seems,
She doesn't want to have to explain to her mother for the 232nd time why she doesn't want to wear a dress to prom,
Doesn't paint her face it's cause her whole body is painted on.
Melissa, Melissa
James doesn't want to have to explain where he came from,
Cause with the exception of Melissa he has been deemed an abstract reality by everyone,
All he wishes for is to get to wear a tuxedo to prom.
And Melissa has been tucking in breasts that will be growing for three years now,
Been using duct tape to press them down and mould them more into pecs,
She just wishes that people would understand that at birth her genatils didn't know which way to grow,
Mad at God who couldnt relay a message directly to her hormones that they should produce more testosterone,
The only person who understands her is James,
And they have been playmates since the age of four,
Around the time girls notice boys and boys notice girls,
See James' family wanted daughters instead of sons,
And Melissa was always like that male beetle that everyone called a ladybug,
Melissa, Melissa where is she?
Sometimes she wishes she could rip the skin of her back,
Every moment of everyday feels trapped in the flesh of a stranger,
Melissa,
As she stands to her feet wanting to say
"I'm here, I've been here since I was born, so quit asking me if I'm a him or a her, Cause when you combine the two pronouns you get H.I.R,
Hir,
And God combined the two genders and put me in this body transgendered,
I'm here so quit talking about me like I'm not here."
James falls back into Melissa's skin,
And the two comfort each other in a syncapated heartbeats,
Waiting for the day when Melissa can finally scrub off this made up genetic make up,
When the teacher asks for James and he can say "I'm here."
That is an awesome poem!!! *snaps* When I scoured the internet searching for the words all I could find were comments about how there was a longer version of this poem. Anybody knows where the longer version is or who originally wrote this piece if it weren't the two performers?
Here's a full performance of the poem; I haven't gotten around to transcribing it yet. The performers are the original writers, if I'm not mistaken.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP55zB-sDUo&feature=player_profilepage#
awesome
That was amazing! Thank you for posting it.
This was amazing and heart wrenching, thank you for posting.
This was so freaking powerful. I'm definitely passing this to everyone I know. Damn.
Shit guys. I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch it because poetry can make me cringe at times, but goddam that made me cry.
amazing
Oh, my god. I cried, too.
That was so phenomenal.
I'm a little troubled by the title "The Transgender Experience." Of course, there is no one trans- experience just as there is no universal experience along the lines drawn by race, class, perceived gender, etc.
I thought the poem was performed really well, but I wanted to look closer at how it constructs the protagonist as two separate entities. Describing trans phenomena as "being born in the wrong body" relies on the assumption that our bodies and minds are essentially disconnected and while some people do identify with that feeling and I definitely don't want to discount that experience, there are plenty of trans folks who do not feel that way at all. I think that the emphasis on the disconnect between the mind (gender) and the body (sex) reaffirms binary thinking that says that a person can only be one sex and only be one gender, when in fact everyone experiences their bodies and their genders (and the interactions of the two) in much more complicated ways.