Speech given by Mandy Romero at the Museum of Liverpool

I’m going to be honest with you and say that this is not an exact transcription of my speech as given on the day. Public speaking is an imperfect art and there are always things that get included and things that get left out in the fluster of the moment so what you have here has been nipped and tucked, and plumped out a bit with what went missing. I offer as justification the thought that if my speech was going to have an afterlife I wanted it to have its best life possible. I’ve called it, retrospectively “All of Us, Everywhere”. Honestly, you’ll be glad I did it. So, with thanks to Brendan and Barry for the recordings which helped me to put this together, – here we go…… ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ I’ll tell you a story. Quite some time ago, but definitely in this century, I was in Shanghai, in China, and I was there, amongst other things, to represent Liverpool City Of Culture. I was in China as the Liverpool Queen of Culture, to persuade the Chinese that something was happening in Liverpool, – but I had some other things to do as I was an artist. That meant going round Shanghai with my Queen Of Culture cloak showing off for Liverpool but also doing art actions, and one I did which I had done several times in Southern China was to be Kuan Yin. Now Kuan Yin is a Chinese, – a goddess, you might call her, but the Buddhists call her a bodhisattva, which is a heavenly being who spends their time on earth helping people. As a bodhisattva people go to her to see if they can get help. Kuan Yin is like our Virgin Mary, our Mother Mary, and women go to her for a blessing to get pregnant and everybody for help and support and kindness, consolation and comfort. One important thing about Kuan Yin for a transgender world, – she started out as a bodhisattva, because she’s Buddhist, travelled from India where she was a man to China where she became a woman in the process. I had been in China for a while, doing art actions in the Pearl River Delta, and in Macao, and Guangzhou and Hong Kong I had been Kuan Yin – she’s dressed in white, carries a lotus flower with her, and she stands in public spaces. And I decided that I would stand in front of one of the Buddhist temples in Shanghai, – I should say that I was travelling with a brilliant photographer called Vincent Assante di Cupillo and as well as taking lots of photographs he was watching out for me. I went to one of the biggest temples on one of the main city avenues. I stood there, and naturally people looked, and people in their cars slowed down and stared and everybody was looking at Kuan Yin. And then the police appeared. A car pulled up and they got out and headed for me. They came in close to, – well, I assumed to arrest me. And luckily I had Vincent with me, and he spoke Chinese, and he spoke with them. Then he came to me and told me that I had to go inside the temple. I trusted Vincent absolutely so I moved inside the temple, and the police went away. Then I asked him why that was important, and he told me. I now understand that it wasn’t a crime, nothing to be apologetic about, that I was being Kuan Yin, or being transgender. I was in trouble, not because I was – let’s say that my sexuality was not in question – I was in trouble because I was stopping the traffic. The cars were stopping, the traffic junction was blocking up. In China, which is becoming almost daily a more controlling place, what threatens the great Chinese order is disorder. So transgender fine, LGBTQ fine, but don’t stop the traffic. I’ll have another temple story to end what I’ve got to say, but I’m telling you this because we are not always threatened by the things we think we are. Well, hello, and I’d like to say that I’m very grateful to be invited to make a speech today. It’s not often that we trans get together these days, and it’s great to be able to talk with a gathering of trans people, and trans sympathizers. Also I’ve done a lot of thinking about issues which affect us and I’m glad to be able to share my thoughts with you. I don’t expect you to agree with all of them but I’m glad to be able to share. And I’d like to say something about Imogen, to pay a tribute of my own, and I want to do that because, as far as I’m concerned, Imogen was an activist. Actually I had to apologize to Matt because when he first invited me to speak I thought I was going to be at an event for the Transgender Day Of Visibility and he had to remind me that it was International Pronouns Day. But I wondered why I had made that mistake. Well, I’m here to talk about my own visibility in the photographs you will hopefully have seen downstairs in the Foyer. I thought, I’m being visible and so I should talk about visibility. Visibility and pronouns were both big things that Imogen campaigned for but of the two the one I feel most able to talk about is visibility. So I do feel a bit justified, and you’re going to get a lot about Visibility and a bit about Pronouns from me today. I want to start by talking about Activism, because Imogen was an activist. I define an activist as someone who invests time, energy and commitment into making the world a better place. That’s what Imogen did and that’s why we are celebrating her today. Now I’ve been wondering, what is the job description for doing what she did? So here’s a run-down of what I think you need to do or be to be an activist. Item One, – you need to have a Cause, – something to fight for – and although we trans have our own cause, – it’s our rights, it’s our visibility, it’s working to gain acceptance – this is an intersected world and there’s no reason why trans shouldn’t support other causes, like Climate Justice, or Black Lives Matter, or abolishing World Poverty. I gave a speech about Activism at a Storytelling Conference a while back and the climax of my speech was to mention one of the most important recent activists, Chelsea Manning, who as we know came out as trans when she was imprisoned for her activism. For me there is this connection between trans and activism which appears a lot. I also think you need to have a moral sense, to know right from wrong, good from bad, fair from unfair, – to be an activist. I first met Imogen nearly twenty years ago – before she was Imogen actually – but in that very first encounter I was struck by something which I’m sure made her a good activist, – a huge quality of determination. She was determined that change would happen and she was driven, you might say. You can have a cause and a moral sense but if you don’t have determination things won’t happen. But then I had a strange thought – if that determination is carried through, through to the Imogen we know and love – where did it come from? If you’re a person who’s dedicated to making things better for everybody now, it may be that sometime back in your earlier life things weren’t right for you, there was something you wanted to put right, and maybe couldn’t. And your sense of social injustice came from your experience of personal injustice. Those of us who are activist are maybe activist because once something had to be put right in our lives, and the energy we got from that spreads out into this, and we take the journey from personal complication to public resolution. So maybe that kind of determination comes from earlier in a person’s life, – I don’t mean something like injustice or poverty, though I guess it might be, it could be neglect or lack of love, or whatever – and from having to deal with that people develop this real energy which in later life they dedicate to wider social change. I’m not saying that was true of Imogen – I didn’t know her well enough to say – but that journey, that progress from “me” to “we”, does correspond to what we call dysphoria, to a sense that something is not right in our trans lives. If so, this seems to be a classic life-journey for an activist, – perhaps we trans are naturally destined to be activists. And the final thing I think you need to be as an activist is, you have to be prepared to be visible in society, at least semi-public in your actions, and Imogen was certainly ready to be seen campaigning and to meet many people in person. Now I know that if I asked how many people here were prepared to be publicly visible as activists there would be some hesitation, – it’s not easy to do. But even if we aren’t sure that we can do that there is one thing that we can, and, I’d say, must, do, – be visible to ourselves. Which is to say that we must know what our story is, and what story we’re part of, and what we are saying when we present ourselves to others, – what’s our purpose, what we mean. To be asked to say who we are – it’s not an easy question but it’s an important one, one we’ll come back to later, and it’s important not least because it’s the threshold to our connecting with the world. I sometimes think of who we are as like a code – you know, those QR codes we get on products and things – and it’s almost like every one of us has got a unique code, a unique “we” or “me/we”, and if we know what that code is we are somewhere along the way to being an activist. Again. if I asked you now to put up your hand if you know who you are I think there would be a lot of hesitation. I think all we are is a work in progress. If we get any way along that way then we are on the threshold of joining the world. Crossing that threshold is a negotiation, the beginning of a lot of adjustment and adaptation, but it is also how we shape the way we present ourselves. If we can say who “I” am we can say who “we” are. We can join in with “we”, us all, we can go on marches, go to meetings, be part of an audience, together in strength and belonging. And if we’re comfortable with that we might even carry a placard, or lead a march, or address a meeting. And then we’re on our way to being activists. All this, it seems to me, is about realism. Not realism about who we wish to be, but realism about who, every second of every day, we are in relation to the other people around us. It’s about negotiation on both sides, and it’s about achieving a “fit”. A fit is when who we consider ourselves to be and who other people consider us to be are the same thing. We’re working towards those two things being the same thing and if we want other people to consider us, we have to consider the other people out there and they are, often, confused, confused by us trans, and many of them are subject to false certainties. They believe things that most of us would say really are wrong, but they really do believe them. They’re saying, Never mind what rationality or empathy says, I am really believing in these things, and they’re stuck in these false certainties. The question is what do we do to factor into our attitude the confusion they may feel? I’m not here today to start that whole discussion about how we deal with all the abuse and misrepresentation and prejudice against us, but I have a feeling that we have to say the word, Yes. The response to theirs may have to be – in my view needs to be – “yes”, – to insults, “Yes, that’s the way you see things.” To them saying “you’re strange” or that we appear as we wouldn’t like to be considered, “Yes, very much, yes – but so what?” Unless the answer has to be totally and patently, No. There are one or two things where we would have to say, No, and go to the police to report them. But generally I think we need to keep ourselves as Yes-sayers. But it’s also my opinion that we should be aiming for Visibility Plus, – using our visibility to make things happen. owning our moments in public, claiming spaces. So that’s visibility, but for me there are two what I might call “sanity clauses”, – get-out clauses, two times when all that I’ve said doesn’t quite apply, because everybody has their own journey to take. The first is that most of us most of the time don’t quite fit, and I’m not just talking to people who are trans but also people who are cis, or trans-sympathetic, – we don’t quite fit. We’re working at it, but, we’re not quite there. And people notice that, – they see us as different, as representing difference, and I’m pleased to announce to you that, as far as I’m concerned, that is a Good Thing, – for the very simple reason that Society learns through addressing difference. Society learns to be better through realizing that not everybody fits, and society learns how to do the future from recognizing difference in the present. So if you don’t fit – accidentally, deliberately or in default of all the efforts which have already been made, – you’re doing something to help things be better. And some people deliberately won’t fit, are happy not to fit all the time. Well, Society will digest you – think of the little bit of sand in the oyster which produces the pearl, growing something new round something different. Not fitting, not fitting in, is FINE. If we can’t or don’t wish to fit, if we rejoice in our difference – that is also a good thing. It’s not a failure, it’s a service to society – because society learns from difference, learns from dealing with the unexpected. If everybody fitted, moved about in perfect harmony, nobody would develop the flexibility to deal with change when it comes at us. So to be visibly different is a good thing. The second sanity clause is that some of us have chosen to take a journey that moves from invisibility through to a further invisibility. The ambition, the destination, is to be fitting in absolutely. We’re not all in the business of standing out, sometimes we’re in the business of fitting in, and we must fit in to the best of our abilities. When we’ve travelled through transition, whatever transition we’re on – and we’re all on one – our destination is to be ultimately invisible, in the sense of not being noticeable, and not being noticed as different. And all I would say, if you are on that journey, – I’m not criticizing this, it’s one of the ways we achieve fulfilment as trans – but I do ask people who travel that journey to not forget the cause, and to always stand up for people who are trans – because even if you have emancipated yourself from the struggle, there are always people, – somebody coming down the road behind you – and they will make their own choices. They will need all the support we can give them and if they can arrive in a more accepting world so much the better. And finally, before we get down to my own visibility on that big Asian journey, three resolutions. As I said, what I’ve been doing is to draw up a portrait of “How to be a good trans”. Some of these things you might disagree with. Well, these are things I think we need to accept and resolve. See what you think. First, that our mission is to win people round to our way of seeing things. And since we are emotionally intelligent, creative, ingenious, expressive individuals that should be something we’re ready and able to do. It will involve not automatically dissing people for not agreeing with us – that’s not the way to win people round. Second, we should resolve to avoid being categorical. Being categorized is, after all, at the root of many of the problem we experience as trans – over-simplified, reduced to a binary, an either/or, put in a box and left there. Therefore, from our point of view, we should avoid categorizing people as enemies, haters, opponents, – that’s to fall into the trap they have fallen into. In many cases we are dealing with fellow-victims. It’s all about language and it requires a wise deployment of nouns. In particular I think we should be more cautious and sparing with the use of the word “transphobia”. Thirdly, we should remember that to be defensive is to be aggressive. I know that one of the most famous trans texts is called “Gender Warriors”, by Leslie Feinberg, and I know all about Joan of Arc and other trans from history, but in this 21st Century I’d like to think that we are all anti-war, in fact pacifists. I’m worried that we trans are being associated with aggression – it’s not true but something the media are able to lay on us – so let us, if we are not to be one thing, be something else instead. Let us be resilient, strivers, let us be Makers. We have made ourselves after all. We can make people happy, make peace, make people laugh, make change, make dreams come true. That is the kind of warrior I want us to be. And I think that Imogen would probably have agreed. So enough of Visibility. Let me tell you something about the journey I took, which produced the photographs you have seen projected, – and are being projected behind me. Talk about upstaging yourself! It was 10,000 kilometres long from Xi-an in China to Baku on the coast of the Caspian Sea. It took in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and ended up in Azerbaijan, across what we call Central Asia, through cities, over mountains, deserts, by train, plane, coach, taxi and boat. And all along the way I had photographs taken, only some of which you can see here. To begin with I travelled with a photographer, Nicholas Harter, and when he had to return to China I just had to find photographers along the way. I arrived in places and looked on social media and hooked up with local photographers. Now I’m no stranger to travel, to the World. Let me introduce you to this creature. [furry toy creature, wearing a crown] I was given her at the Way-Out Club in London when I received an award for travelling, as I called it then, “Round The World In Drag” – I have the certificate, as well, somewhere. And I travelled Around The World In Drag again three years later, and in 2007 I travelled round Southern China, the Pearl River Delta, with another photographer, Vincent, the one I told you about at the start, and I did all sorts of art actions and we ended up producing an even more amazing set of photographs which have never been shown anywhere. I’ve been trans on several continents, in lots of countries and many places round the UK. Why do I do this? One reason is to show as many places in the world as possible something of trans, so that they have some acquaintance with what it means. I also do it to claim public space for trans, so that places are not no-go areas for us. And I travel with photographers to bring back evidence to show to people that the world outside has experienced trans, and how. And I let myself be seen by photographers as they want to picture me, to learn something about myself, maybe. Which brings us to the big question you may be wanting to ask – when I travel in these places am I always “in trans”, as it were? And the answer is, – of course, No. I’m not always visible as trans on my travels. You can only do this kind of thing if you are realistic about risk. I didn’t get arrested in Shanghai but all across Asia they have strange and oppressive attitudes to LGBTQ and trans. In Kazakhstan you can transition but you must have surgery. In Tajikistan you will be put on a register which is publicly available, which means that you are exposed to all kinds of prejudice and threat. In other countries you may be forcibly sterilized and in, say, Uzbekistan where no trace of even gay activity is acknowledged, or Turkmenistan – a country only outdone in strangeness by North Korea, – you will be put in to prison for your sexual preferences or gender inclinations. So I ran the risk of prison, and all kinds of oppression. But I also ran the risk – as you can see from the photographs, – of being hugged, loved, invited to parties, welcomed and of playing along with others in their lives. And I also took the risk that something I did might- in some small way – bring about positive change. What I learned from the Asia journeys, and from other travel experiences, is that there is – to put it too simply, maybe – a difference between countries which are slowly accommodating sexual preference into their culture but who can’t get past the idea of gender fluidity, and countries where gender is understood to be variable and multiple, – third sexes, hijras, and so on – but for whom any hint of variant sexuality is all but a capital offence against the state. The first countries are ours, and many in the North and West and the second set of countries are, many of them in the East and South. It’s a very simplistic view, but it does flag up the real difference in emphasis between identity and sex. And if you asked me why in our country we still have such a difficulty with transgender and gender variance I would probably blame that old villain, the Industrial Revolution, which set so many of our gender roles into place and kept them there by economic force. And, by contrast, in that much-debated country Iran homosexuals can be pushed into having gender reassignment surgery (homosexuality is punishable by death) – and to avoid it many flee the country. Back a while in this speech I asked us to consider, Who we are. It’s important because, as I found, a lot is allowed to trans that is not allowed to the LBGTQ+ community as a whole. We can, currently, get away with a lot. We should use that Visibility Plus – that, what I might call, magic – to lead change in society. I’ll end this with another Temple story. I was once in Tokyo on a visit, and I went to one of the biggest Buddhist Temples in the city, the ZoZo-Zhi Temple, up by the Television Tower. It’s a big temple – really a collection of buildings, all made of wood, but with heating and electricity, – an impressive place, and I was told that it was 500 years old. That made sense, the style was traditional. But when I asked more about it I was told that it had been destroyed in the Second World War. It had been rebuilt, but it had been destroyed several times over the centuries, and always rebuilt exactly as it had been – give or take the odd power-socket. So it was the same temple and not the same temple – it was always the essential ZoZo-zhi Temple. The wood was new but the building form was eternal. And maybe you can see why I tell this story now. We trans are people who become other people but – I believe – something essential carries on through our transitions. To use a more ordinary comparison it’s like the name written through the seaside rock. We are always ourselves. And if we are going to use our magic we need all of ourselves to do it, all of the temples we have been in the past. We need to live the essential “I”, the essential us. And that’s what we do when we become visible to ourselves. I’d like to think that Imogen, the great activist, hearing that, would be saying Amen. And so now a brief word about Pronouns. My pronouns are I, We, They, and Judy. “I”, for usefulness, “we” is the royal “we” and the community “we”, “they” is for lazy journalists and “Judy” comes from the great American trans performer, Taylor Mac. Now, in this city we have a tradition of men using “judy” to refer to a female, and some people have suggested that Taylor Mac is referring to Judy Garland, but Judy is on record as saying that Judy chose it because in earlier times gay men referred to their boyfriends with female names to cover the fact that they were of the same sex. I don’t know if Taylor Mac meant that only Judy could be “Judy” or whether others could claim the pronoun, but I’m going to assume that I can make a claim to it, and so – for listening for so long, and putting up with so many of many of my crazy ideas – Judy says, Thankyou.