For our archive project we rewrote the song Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus into an overtly transgender song called Enby Dirtbag. An inspiration for our project is how many specific songs with queer undertones are universally loved by members of our community, yet rarely have any explict queer/trans lyrics. Teenage Dirtbag is a great example of this, for it is loved by many queer people despite it’s cishet narrative. Many of us feel a nostalgic connection to Teenage Dirtbag; likely because of the teen angst, longing for unrequited love, and androgynous voice of Wheatus’ lead singer. Queer and transgender artists too such as Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, Cavetown & Chloe Moriondo have also released their own covers of this unintentionally queer ballad. Despite our love for songs like this, we both wish for more music by transgender artists that tell different transgender narratives. We want more stories about people who happen to be trans, rather than their identity being the center of who they are. Being trans is an important part of our identity that greatly affects our experiences and that recognition is important; however, we want to hear about more aspects of trans lives rather than just our gender identity. When writing Enby Dirtbag, we focused on creating a song that had similar same teenage angst but from a trans perspective. The main character in the story feels unnoticed by their crush, and is frustrated watching them date someone who just isn’t right for them. We hint at the queer/trans energy the main character senses from their crush, yet their crush is dating a cishet dude who just doesn’t get it. Enby Dirtbag’s lyrics have a T4T undertone, which felt empowering and refreshing to write about as two trans people ourselves. Though having a trans
identity clearly is important to the main character in our song, it is not the point of their story. They are an angsty teen singing a love song and just so happen to be trans. We had so much fun writing and recording this and hope you enjoy listening!
Throughout the term I took inspiration from many of the courses readings. These including Salish Wesley‘s, “Twin Spirited Women: Sts’iyóye smestíyexw slhá:li,” Eli Clare’s “Resisting Shame, Making Our Bodies Home,” Smokii Sumac’s “’Just Make Me Look Like Aquaman’,” Micha Cárdenas “Sick,” as well as Kadji Amin’s “Temporality.” I was particularly fascinated with Amin’s essay as I feel temporality supports the notion that the trans experience is a non linear path with multiple start and end points. Class discussion inspired me to curate a song about how my growth and trans experience will last my entire lifetime and I cannot do it alone.
I would like to write extensively about the community it took to get me to a position where I could create a song for myself but that would be a very long read. Thank you Rain Ezra for all of your time, focus, guidance and help. I would also like to thank my friends and my peers in this course who encouraged me to take on this incredibly exciting, new challenge. Although I spent many hours working alone on the piece, I also spent many hours with others, being reminded of the beauty and power of community. This piece could not have been created without all the support and help I received from my friends; yet another reminder of how much can be done with solidarity and support.
Trace Peterson is a trans poet, who’s work focuses on trans and queer studies. She has worked on poetry since 2004, where she edited journals for EOAGH. She continued her work with poetry winning multiple awards, like the Lambda Literary Award, and went on to teach at Yale University. She’s written two poetry books, including Since I Moved In, along with other smaller books of poetry. Trace Peterson is also affiliated with many poetry organizations like the Queer Poetics Research Center.
This piece shows my internal struggle with feeling a part of the Transgender community. When I first created this, I was in the mindset that I did not see myself in this community whatsoever. I gave into my feeling of “otherness”. I felt that I didn’t care for the way people within the community continued to gatekeep what it means and what it doesn’t mean to be considered a transgender individual. I started HRT when I was younger and felt like I needed to “conform” to what people said made a transgender man, a man. I was worried that if I didn’t say something right, then I wouldn’t have access to the transgender health care that I needed. With respect to others’ experiences, I personally began to relate being a transgender man to a medical term. As I got older, and more comfortable with my body, I started to think outside of what it meant to be a transgender man. I realized how cruel others would be in the community. Saying terrible remarks like, “Well if you dress like this- then you aren’t trans!” and other gatekeeping remarks. If you ask them why they felt this to be true, it often resulted in them saying something that a cisgender person told them. This made me think: “Well, why is it that cisgender doctors get to decide what makes someone transgender? Why are people listening to them? Shouldn’t they listen to those within the community?” I kept witnessing gatekeeping within the community to the point that I felt I was observing the community from the outside in. Thus, this led me to this sort of queer perspective of myself. I’ve had multiple conversations, with those also in the community, that were related to my (what I considered at the time) ““issues”, and managed to get some feedback on my feelings.
The response I got was that people’s expressions vary. The way they express their inclusivity varies. Their relationship with the community varies because everyone’s experience is different. Throughout history people had different ways of expressing what it meant to be trans to them. It’s okay that I am comfortable having ‘trans man’ as a medical label rather than that label being considered my gender. On the outside, he/him is comfortable to wear around in society. That feeling inside my chest is something that I can’t put into words right now, but that feeling does prove enough for me to know that I am valid.
My opinion might change on this feeling in the future. Maybe it won’t. Maybe i’ll find words for what I am feeling deep inside my heart later. Maybe I don’t need those words. I am ok with this. Wherever this journey takes me, I am excited to experience it.
For my archive project I created a collage that represents a timeline and gives understanding to the popular saying, “The first Pride was a riot”. We often hear this and think of the Stonewall riots of 1969 and although these are certainly a valuable part of queer history, they were not the first. In the year 1966 in San Francisco a riot broke out when a cup of coffee got thrown at cops who were removing queers, most of which were trans women of color, from their regular hangout spot, Gene Compton’s Cafeteria. This building is pictured in the lower left hand corner and illustrates the base of Pride’s history. Next to Compton’s is Stonewall Inn and on top of both of these buildings are individuals such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Tamara Ching. These women blaze a trail up to a dumpster which they are tipping over. The dumpster represents the disappointing turn Pride took and the rioters of the past are rightfully throwing out the trash that Pride has become. The people involved in the riots that we like to claim Pride originated from were not fighting for the inclusion of police and their long history of brutality against trans folks, specifically trans folks of color, many being poor and/or disabled, or for capitalism, represented in the collage by all the rainbow logos companies slap on their brand every June to play into the illusion that we have achieved equality, and also by the Trojan condoms which were the only brand allowed to be passed out during a Toronto Pride, promoting the idea that we have a choice of a certain brand of condom or unsafe sex. They weren’t fighting for future queers to be able to imitate heterosexuality by gaining marriage equality, or for a wealthy white cis woman to be the face of that “equality”. Their fight was not for the inclusion of any district attorney, especially one who repeatedly puts trans lives in danger by imprisoning them nor was their fight for Black Lives Matter to lead the parade just to have their demands ignored by the same person who gave them the lead role. These revolutionary women of the past were unfortunately fighting for many of the same things we are today. So instead of waiting for a parade in June to roll around every year, let’s celebrate our community everyday by building relationships, spreading knowledge, and taking the actions we can to move the fight forward.
I first heard Ezra Furman’s striking voice and unique musical sound on Spotify in 2014. You know how when the album you were listening to ends and Spotify takes it upon itself to go ahead and keep playing music that the algorithm thinks you’ll like? Sometimes I get really annoyed with that feature and other times, it makes it possible to discover an artist that is destined to become an all-time favorite. When “The Queen of Hearts” by Ezra Furman came on after the end of a Rilo Kiley album one random day, I immediately picked up my phone, added the track to my “liked songs,” and went to the artist’s page to follow them.
All over the land now known as Portland you may have seen a certain graffiti tag: PENIS GIRL. This tag has become super popular and has even been featured in Willamette Week back in July of this year – check it out here. As a Penis Girl myself, I quite love this tag and I wanted to document it! So I set out on an endeavor to find a collection of these tags.
The project started out simple- take polaroids of PENIS GIRL tags as I find them. This first collage consists of some of the PENIS GIRL tags that I found. Check them out! It was a lot of fun to walk all around for hours on end searching for tags. I often found myself looking all over on every surface trying to find them.
While searching, I started to run across other tags that were rad and trans related. See some of them below. Also, below them there are photos of the ones that are hard to see. I specifcally liked the Anarchism and Trans Symbol overlap. I feel like it plays into the radical trans politics that Dean Spade discusses because anarchism is a radical politic for the future. Also, the VALID tag in the FMH gender neutral bathroom seemed like a neoliberal stunt of PSU. I walked into the bathroom and thought, “you gotta be kidding me.”
Below are even more tags that I found. Some things I want to note, the “Vag Boi” tag uses Boi with an i which is African-American Vernacular English and should not be used by non-black people. Additionally, the “Vag Boi” tag has notably come after the PENIS GIRL tag. I feel like this both feels like a rip on PENIS GIRL and also plays into much larger theme of trans mascs benefitting from and stealing the labor of trans women. PENIS GIRL has become an iconic tag, and within the first few “Vag Boi” tags it started spreading and being equated with the PENIS GIRL tags. I feel like this is one of those transmisogynistic things were trans mascs do not recognize how they are stepping on trans femmes toes. It is just a multilayered piece and I want to name that I did not document this because I felt it should be added, rather to bring attention to this transmisogyny.
Similarly, I love the “Trannies kill cops” tag and its important to know that the t-slur is a word that should only be reclaimed by trans femmes, especially Black trans women. The t-slur has mainly been targeted to trans women and is often paired with a much more violent attack from the same men who fetishize us. It is insulting when trans mascs – especially white trans mascs- use this slur but do not really really understand their privilege that they have. Mascs – stay in your lane and don’t prepatuate transmisogyny here.
Finally, I also included “Bug Man” because that felt like some enby shit that I love.
Below are some more PENIS GIRL tags that I found but they are just harder to see! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy these tags as much as I do.
Maliyah/Joy (they/them), cultural worker, graphic designer/artist
Greer-x (She/her), graphic designer and performing artist
Vaginal Davis (she/her), zine maker, performing artist, filmmaker
Aries Moross (they/them), graphic designer
Amos Mac (he/him), writer, filmmaker, publisher
Graphic design is one of the fastest expanding art forms, ranging from illustration to UI and UX design. Having the ability to be fully digital, traditional, or a mixture of both, graphic design can give people the tools they need to alter and create to their minds extent. Unfortunately, graphic design as an art form and career is dominated by white cis men. Historically, and currently, the whiteness, cisnormativity has attempted to push away queer, trans, and BIPOC from this art form through white supremacist and colonial structures, an example being capitalism in the graphic design industry. This includes using fees and subscriptions to keep resources, programs, and learning experiences away from various minority groups, those living in poverty, or the intersection of the two. The designers I have made collages of are constantly breaking down barriers both in and outside of the art world. While not all of them might identify as or technically be considered a graphic designer, all that they focus on requires the consideration and application that a graphic designer would have (typography, accessibility, design principles and elements, critical thinking, etc.)
My goal with this project was to show everyone the pure talent and perspective of trans and gender non-conforming individuals, as I see our view of graphic design as something that variously expands past the technical and binary view of the white and cis dominance seen in graphic design.
As we continue our fight toward intersectional justice for all, it is important to remember those before us who paved the way to have made it to where we are today. Lorena Borjas is a perfect example of someone who faced and tackled multiple facets of marginalization through her community-based activism.
Early Biography:
Like many people who immigrate to the United States, Borjas arrived when she was young and looking for a brighter future. She knew that in the United States there was a chance that she would be able to find a doctor that could give her hormones to medically transition. In 1986 she was granted an amnesty to stay in the United States under Ronald Reagan. Then, in 1990 she had a permanent residence status, only to be barred from renewing her residency or pursuing a citizenship that same year due to her prior false convictions of trafficking, of which in actuality she was the victim. She did not let these hardships stop her; on the contrary she used her experience as motivation to pursue her path as an activist.
Activism History:
Borjas did not just rely on already existing organizations and nonprofits, and was known for taking matters into her own hands, going as far as bringing women into her own home when they were kicked out of their homes by their family for being trans. One of the most significant things that Borjas contributed to her community was weekly HIV testing in her own home and passing out condoms to other sex workers she met on the street to protect them against HIV and other STD’s.
In 2011, Lorena Borjas collaborated with Chase Strangio, lawyer and fellow trans rights activist, in order to establish the Lorena Borjas Community Fund. The mission of the organization is to collect money (provide funds) in order to pay for the bail of transgender people, often women like herself that are immigrants that have been arrested for some form of sex work. Keeping undocumented immigrants out of jail was an especially important objective for Borjas, because with arrest and interaction with the police, comes the harrowing threat of deportation. Her experience with being an undocumented immigrant fueled her passion for helping those in a similar situation. By gathering money to bail out these individuals, she helped to create a barrier to prevent them from falling into the cycle of poverty, jail, and possible deportation. The United States has the same systems of power working to marginalize trans and immigrant individuals, so people who are a combination of these identities become especially vulnerable to persecution and violence. Therefore, people like Lorena Borjas are especially important to highlight, uplift and protect these communities in our fight towards intersectional justice.
Pardoning and Journey to Citizenship:
Although quite a few of her convictions had been wiped off her record by the Queens criminal court because the charges were related to her time being trafficked and forced into prostitution, there was still enough on her record for her to live with the fear of being deported. With the legal help from the Transgender Law Center, Lorena was able to get a pardon from the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, which allowed her to become a legal resident, remove the risk of deportation and also pursue citizenship. In 2019 she was finally able to get her citizenship.
The video above is a short video about Lorena where she talks about her life and experiences.
Her Legacy:
She was an inspirational leader that helped her community organize and fight for their rights. She dedicated over 25 years of service to the most vulnerable in the community and her work was recognized by many. After her death in 2020 due to covid, a street in Queens was renamed after her in her honor. The organization the Lorena Borjas Community Fund continues to help support the community so that her work continues on, and I’m sure that her story will inspire others to take part in their own community and find unique ways that they can support each other.
Trans Studies Archive 