Policing the Coronavirus Pandemic: Trans Sex Workers and the Movement Towards Decriminalization

Presentation from Policing the Pandemic on April 18th 2020

Hi everyone, My name is Estelle I’m really happy to be here with everyone having this critical discussion today. I want to acknowledge first of all that I am speaking from the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka here in Montreal.

The Power of Fashion

The power of Fashion

When I was a teenager I was friends with a really bad kid who made me do really bad things all the time. His name was Kyle and he was kind of my hero. Not because he was particularly nice or courageous or anything like that, but more because he literally didn’t give a shit about anything, except his mom, his friends, skateboarding, and pulling pranks. As an affable and acquiescent tween, his early and impressive manifestations of teenage rebellion were a revelation to me.

Dyke Drama

I recently read a thread on Facebook on Echange Q about LSD (a lesbian speed dating event) taking place in Montreal which spiraled into miscommunications, accusations of erasure, politically vapid queer semantics, and frankly, nonsense. I read this discussion as an obvious extension of the lesbophobia and transmisogyny that is very present in the Montreal queer community. I am going to try and break this trend down here because I believe solidarity is much more powerful than division and I dont believe that these conscious attacks on lesbianism and transfemininity (which I fully understand as false consciousness) are going to help achieve that solidarity by making way for some truly radical “queer” revolution.

Mind Your Own Fucking Jizz (or, the CUM Manifesto)

I have always felt a surprising connection to the the transmisogynist term “autogynephilia.” Not that I ever casually refer to myself as an autogynephile during any of my once every three year ALO’s that I go on, but more that I find a certain power in exploring its history of repression. For me at least, understanding how transphobic discourses code my body and my desires as pathological is key to refuting their logic. The term itself was coined in the nineties by Canadian sexologist Ray Blanchard in an endeavour to delegitimize transfeminine embodiment. According to his “theory”, transwomen fall into one of two possible categories: we are either homosexuals who pretend to be women in order to lure innocent heterosexual men into our insidious loins, or else we are autogynephiles, heterosexual men with  such a deep sexual perversion that we can only be aroused by the image of ourselves as women, going as far as surgically altering our bodies to satisfy our sick and twisted lust.

1. KIMBERLY NIXON and the Canadian Legal Precedent of Transmisogyny

In Canada there is a horrifying legal precedent that has almost embedded trans-misogyny into the law. It goes to back to Vancouver in 1995 when Kimberly Nixon, a transgender woman, attended a training session for volunteers who wished to become counselors for the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter (VRRS). Vancouver Rape Relief is a women only organization that is, according to their mission statement, committed to advocating for women’s equality. The centre “works as an active force dedicated to challenge the social attitudes, laws and institutional procedures that perpetuate male violence against women and children.” Amongst other things they run a 24 hour rape crisis centre and provide shelter for women and children escaping male violence.

Conclusively Gay?

This month, I have decided to once again adorn my furred scarlet robe, attach my full bottom grey wig and dust off my centuries old hardwood Gavel in order to bring you, dear readers, another conclusive, 100% certified, official verdict of GAY or NOT GAY (while retaining my legal right, mind you, in some circumstances to deliver an equally valid, yet certainly less-titillating verdict of MAYBE COULD BE GAY) on some random celebrity of my choosing. It is not very often that I choose to wield this particular type of permanent judicial power (even if I did go deep into debt doing the 12 years of schooling in the most prestigious institutions that the post requires) for I know what consequences indeed arrive whenever I do and it is not my intention to reproduce the logic of the closet. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not at all you see. In fact, I reserve this right in only one instance: to serve the advancement of total queer liberation. As a judge of the highest order it is of course my duty as a Representative of justice to commit myself to the struggle for full revolution (it’s part of our oath we all must take in order to be judges as you surely are aware).

Don’t Shave My Rump

A PIECE OF RETRIBUTION

I really don’t know a single frocking thing about Bruce LaBruce, acclaimed northern darling of the queercore movement except that he’s a creep fuck shitbag. As I’m sitting down to write what I feel like is going to amount to something roughly equivalent to a wednesday evening angsty teenage journal entry, I can honestly only recall that one of his movies was called “Don’t Shave My Rump”, or something somewhat similar, but I wouldn’t cite me on that. I’m not a film scholar, nor a reviewer of cinema, in fact, I don’t care much for celluloid at all, unless it’s an uncut director’s edition documentary about real life with no color correction or weird distorting lenses like the fish one, because, for real life and truth, I much prefer my daily newspaper which I receive a free prescription for (is that the right word) every single day at the nearest metro station, which is either Rosemont or Beaubien, I don’t really remember. I’m not even clear whether or not his last name should be spelled with a space in it or not, like « La Bruce » and to be quite honest, given details that will be revealed as this story progresses, I don’t freaking give a hoot.