Trans Radiance: Sharing Food As An Act Of Love

Trans Radiance is a new, limited series of positive, empowering stories of trans people doing important, uplifting things, intended to counter the mainstream media’s obsession with our deaths.

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance (and Resilience). November 20th, 2019, marks the 20th anniversary of the original TDOR, created by Gwendolyn Smith in 1999 to honor lives lost to anti-trans violence. At least 22 trans people have died to violence this year, most of them Black trans women. It’s important to remember and celebrate the lives of our fallen sisters, and reporting on our deaths may be useful to spur political leaders to action. But other than mourning once a year, what can allies on the ground do?

This series was conceptualized in response to and as an extension of TDOV and TDOR. Increased visibility will potentially be a net positive in the long run, and remembering us after we’ve passed is important. But we’re more than murder victims. We can also focus on the love, beauty, brilliance, talent, activism — the radiance — within our community. This month, we’re talking about food.

I first attended Black Folks’ Dinner around 2014 in Oakland. At the time, I was trying hard to reconnect with my Blackness (as a mixed person who grew up and went to college with mostly non-Black people) and my nascent queerness.

A woman I was dating invited me, saying it was run by Black queer and trans people. I figured I could feed two birds with one scone — connect with Black and queer people — and I did. But it was also transformational.

Hosted in a softly lit, open and inviting, wood beam-exposed BFD member’s home, and run by ChE and Emanuel Brown — who I met that night and with whom I’ve organized, worked, and communed with ever since — I stepped over the threshold and into a vision of Blackness that I’d never before witnessed.

Black people of all colors, body types, genders and gender expressions, and ages communed over snacks and drinks. Chill music backgrounded lovely, powerful, intentional conversations. When the dinner actually started – a lovely, home-cooked potluck  I met older people who shared their wisdom and younger people who shared their enthusiasm. I met some of the first Black trans people I’d ever had a chance to really speak to. I broke bread with my community for what felt like the first time. I laughed — a lot. Later in the evening, a former Black Panther, now in his twilight years, shared wisdom and reflections about the still-emergent Black Lives Matter movement.

Later in the evening we had a song circle. Anyone could start a refrain, either original or from a classic, as long as it was simple enough. It was repeated over and over, so that eventually everyone could join in. We harmonized effortlessly. As the chorus of voices enveloped me, the reverberations shaking my core, I transcended. BFD was queer, Black, trans, intergenerational, visionary, revolutionary.

A few years later, I moved to New Orleans and tried to recreate some of the magic I’d experienced in Oakland. I hosted a Black Folks’ Dinner of my own. But because of housing instability, and my own mental health crisis, I wasn’t able to sustain it.

When I lived in New Orleans, I primarily functioned in survival mode. Rent was cheap, but housing was seemingly lawless and usually sketchy; I lived in five different apartments in the year and a half I spent there. Jobs paid minimum wage. So I hustled, by selling art at various street markets, doing sex work (this was pre-SOSTA/FESTA), delivering pizzas, working in a tiny kitchen in the back of my local bar, being a barista, and briefly holding down “real” jobs at non-profits when mental health allowed. Eating enough, and well, was always a concern, especially when my depression was bad and ordering delivery seemed the only way I could eat. My credit card bill skyrocketed.

This was the third time in my life I survived without starving because of EBT (food stamps), but the first time I signed up out of desperation, not because I was a volunteer or a grad student.

$200 a month — the maximum amount a single person can get per month on EBT — sounds like a lot. But spread over 30 days, it averages out to around $2 per meal, which is almost doable if you can eat rice and lentils every day. When so many of your peers, lovers, and friends are also struggling, though, it’s even harder. Not everyone can get on food stamps — because of immigration status, because they have a low-paying job that regardless pushes them over the income threshold (about $12,000 per year after taxes), because they are disabled and can’t cook, or get to the grocery store, or for some other reason. So we shared our EBT cards as a community resource.

I brought homebound friends home-cooked meals when I could or sent them delivery when I could. I was brought home-cooked meals when someone else could. We had potlucks when we could, I put out calls on Facebook when I was going to the grocery store when I could. When I found a great deal, I’d either let as many of my folks know about it and/or buy extra and redistribute it when I could.

Taking care of each other in this way didn’t feel burdensome. It felt freeing. It felt like community. That’s likely because taking care of each other is a joyful experience, but it might have something to do with the practice of sharing food in particular.

“Neglect is a form of violence. We don’t often talk about how Black people die early because they live in food deserts, but that’s also violence and that’s worthy of examination and conversation.”

“Giving to others fills us in so many ways,” says Michal AviShai, a culinary arts therapist. “And even more so when it’s cooking, because feeding fulfills a survival need, and so our feeling of fulfillment comes not only from the good of the act of giving, but also the fact that we have ‘helped’ in some very primal way.”

Black people in particular, and queer and trans people in general, have long shared food as a survival strategy. Enslaved Africans shared the bits of produce they were able to grow on personal farm plots to supplement each others’ diets. Bake sales and other food projects funded, and helped participants survive, the Montgomery Bus Boycott during the Civil Rights Movement. The Black Panthers famously created free breakfast programs.

The radical tradition of showing love for one’s community by feeding members of that community continues today, and is exemplified by a project conceptualized by Ianne Fields Stewart, founder of The Okra Project, which hires Black trans chefs to go into Black trans people’s homes and cook them a delicious, nutritious meal at no cost.

Ianne Fields Stewart, founder of the Okra Project

“We originally thought it was just going to be a holiday thing,” Stewart told me. “The holidays can be a rough time, particularly for Black trans folks. We thought we would raise $1,000.”

They planned to use the funds to give a few Thanksgiving, and maybe Christmas, meals to Black trans people without supportive family to go home to. But they ended up raising over $6,000 in the first week.

Now with far more resources than expected, and the opportunity to do something bigger, Fields and Nyla Sampson, a friend and collaborator who runs the Black Trans Solidarity Fund, a resource that redistributes donations to Black trans people in need, had to decide what to do with the money.

She sees redistribution of resources, and feeding hungry people, as a concrete response to violence against trans women. “There’s only so long that you can watch your sisters be murdered before you find yourself craving to do something more than just hashtag,” they say. But they wanted to think beyond the headlines. She wanted to expand the scope of what we mean when we talk about violence against Black trans people. “Neglect is a form of violence. We don’t often talk about how Black people die early because they live in food deserts, but that’s also violence and that’s worthy of examination and conversation.”

So they came up with the idea for the Okra Project, named for the popular African vegetable that holds an essential place in Black cooking and Black history.

“I think food, especially for Black folks, is how we express love for each other… Whenever someone cooks for you in your home, it’s like they’re pouring a piece of themselves, their time, their love, their energy into you.”

“I think food, especially for Black folks, is how we express love for each other,” they explained. “Whenever someone cooks for you in your home, it’s like… they’re pouring a piece of themselves, their time, their love, their energy into you. And it makes you feel valued. It taps into a special place for us as Black people. Gathering and communing, and breaking bread with one another.”

After that first holiday season, donations kept pouring in. There was pressure to solidify The Okra Project into a non-profit. But Fields and Sampson were skeptical of non-profits, which don’t have a great track record in queer and trans communities. Not being a non-profit meant that they can do whatever they want with the money and aren’t beholden to funders or stakeholders.

“We continue to do our international grocery fund, which means any Black trans person can apply and we send them $40 so they can get groceries,” she explained. They also have other initiatives, and with the Black Trans Solidarity Fund, utilize funds for other community needs. “We’ve continued to do our ‘By Okra’ event series… ‘Beauty by Okra’ is for Black trans women and ‘Brotha by Okra is for Black trans men.” They’re also launching “Spectrum by Okra” for Black non-binary people. Another way they’ve spent funds was to bail a Black trans person out of prison, or give away tickets to a Broadway show. “We want to make sure we’re feeding people in every way,” she says; even when that means looking beyond food.

The project has gotten backlash for focusing specifically on Black trans people and not expanding to support other deserving communities, but Fields isn’t fazed. “The work cannot and does not happen without conflict,” they say. They appreciate criticism and accountability from the community. “Community is all about the good and the bad. It can be painful, but I think that accountability keeps us honest in the work that we’re doing. If I’m holding someone accountable, it’s because I care.”

What’s coming in the future? Fields doesn’t know. “I wasn’t trying to create an organization,” she says. As long as the donations keep coming in, they’ll keep feeding Black trans people with them. I asked her how people who want to support the Okra Project can do so.

It’s simple: “Money and resources.” One of the best ways is by signing up to be a Patron, as recurring donations provide a consistent base of support to pay for operational costs. Also essential: 100% of direct donations to the Black Trans Solidarity Fund go to feeding Black trans people in need.

Black people, and Black trans people in particular, have always taken care of each other — in order to survive, but moreso because loving and caring for each other is and has always been a part of our culture. It has also been one of the primary ways we’ve shown resistance, ever since Europeans set foot on African soil. We hid okra on our bodies, brought it to this country, and shared the bounty when it was harvested. And we continue to feed each other.

Projects like the Okra Project tap into this cultural lineage by sharing food as a form of resistance, resilience, and love.

Today we will be bombarded with images and articles about Black trans women’s deaths — but fewer about Black trans women loving, supporting, and feeding each other. Fewer about how we keep each other alive. Few about how radiant and glorious and lovable and brilliant we are. A common refrain in trans activism is to “give us our roses while we’re still here” instead of just honoring us upon our deaths. Donating to, uplifting, and otherwise supporting Black trans-led projects like the Okra Project is a tangible way we can do exactly that.

Trans Radiance: What’s in a Name?

Trans Radiance is a new, limited series of positive, empowering stories of trans people doing important, uplifting things. Elizabeth Warren’s mention of 18 Black trans women who have been murdered in 2019 at the recent LGBTQ Forum, arguably one the largest, most mainstream discussions of queer and trans issues in American history, was important and historic. But its power as a viral moment is also reflective of mainstream and social media’s tendency to report on trans women’s issues only when they’re sensationalist; as we near the end of the year, all of the major networks will be writing stories about Black trans murder (the New York Times has already begun). But we’re more than just murder victims.

This series will attempt to add to and shift the narrative by providing another, under-reported perspective: we’re also community members, artists, leaders, activists, and regular-ass women; we love and support each other and our community members, and we do amazing things. Simply put, we’re radiant.

A couple of months ago, my father and stepmother took my girlfriend and I out to dinner for my birthday, and our waiter was a total sweetheart. Because we arrived before my parents did, we chatted a bit as he took our drink and appetizer orders (dad’s paying! I get to eat appetizers!), and he asked my name. “Abeni? It’s beautiful,” he said. “I chose it myself,” I replied, as I usually do.

Later, during the meal, he returned to the table to check up on us. “I looked up the meaning of your name,” he told me. “It’s lovely.” I blushed, speechless. Never had I been so affirmed in that way — and the fact that he took it upon himself to look it up, rather than ask me to attempt to explain its meaning and significance, felt like being seen.

My name, by the way, is from the Yoruba language — native to West Africa — and means, essentially, “We prayed for her, and behold, we got her.” I chose a West African name as a means to superficially connect to the ancestry my people were forcibly disconnected from via slavery. As I searched around for a name, Abeni — and its meaning — jumped out at me as though the universe had highlighted it.

“Our proper name is as much a part of us as our own skin. It travels with us like a passport, testifying to our unique presence on this earth,” asserts Mavis Himes in The Power of Names. Before we have anything else — personality, agency, gender — we are given a name. It’s evidence, usually, of our membership in a family, a culture, a community. So when it doesn’t fit — whether because that membership is problematic, has been severed, or, as is the case for many trans people, it doesn’t accurately reflect who we are — it can create an existential crisis.

And a practical one. For reasons that are somewhat understandable, it’s a difficult process to legally change one’s name. When people change their names to reflect a marriage, it’s usually straightforward, if cumbersome. For trans people changing their names (and sometimes legal gender markers) to better reflect their gender(s), however, the process can be expensive, frustrating, sometimes traumatizing, and often downright confusing.

For this piece, I talked to some trans women about their names and their experiences changing them legally (or choosing not to), as well as a couple of the incredible organizations attempting the make the process more accessible to all of us.

Serena Sonoma

“I always knew I would choose the name ‘Serena,’ — the blonde-haired shero of the Sailor Moon saga,” Serena Sonoma, a writer for Out magazine, Vox, Teen Vogue, and other publications, told me. “Growing up I wasn’t allowed to express my femininity and so I would often use Sailor Moon… [w]atching Serena transform… I’d often muse that I could, someday, too.”

Sonoma’s given name was “unisex,” and she “never had an issue with it.” But she felt such a strong connection to Sailor Moon that she still chose Serena. “It served as a reminder of where I’ve been… The kid who wanted to redefine her own path, who always felt lost or didn’t quite fit in, the kid who wanted to transform and start anew.”

The act of changing one’s name can sometimes feel threatening to those from whom we received it. When I legally changed my name, I decided to use my mother’s first name as a middle name — partially to mitigate the sadness she felt when I “rejected” the one she’d chosen for me.

Mey Rude

A similar consideration was in place for Melínda Chavela Valdivia Rude —who goes by Mey — a writer for Out.com. “I asked my mom if she had picked out a girl’s name for me before I was born, and she said Melínda, which was the first M name I found that I loved… Valdivia is my mom’s maiden name.”

It was incredibly important to her for her mother to be involved with her new name. “I absolutely ABSOLUTELY love that my mom picked out my name. Before I came out we weren’t very close, but since then we’ve become best friends and I love her so much. Reconnecting with my mom has been a huge part of my life since coming out and so I’m glad my name reflects that.”

Drew Gregory, a fellow writer for Autostraddle, decided not to change her name at all. “I thought a lot about my name when I was first transitioning. A name change can be such a powerful declaration of a trans person’s identity,” she explained. Growing up, she didn’t like her name — people thought it was short for “Andrew,” even though it wasn’t! “I really didn’t start liking it until I transitioned and saw myself as a female Drew… I also can’t pretend that Drew Barrymore didn’t play a major role in me keeping my name… she represents a certain easeful femininity that really appealed to me… I like that I’ve taken a name that was given to me and made it my own.”

Annie Mok

For some of us, though, changing our names is about disconnecting from a community. “It was important for me to choose my own girl name, as well as having a last name connected to my family without being connected to my immediate, abusive family,” Annie Mok, a Twitch streamer, musician and writer/artist, explained.

“[Mok was my] grandfather’s original last name before being changed to Choy at US immigration.” When asked how she feels about the name she was given as a child, she answered simply: “horror.”

Given the intense introspection, relationship negotiation, and practical impact of changing one’s name, the decision is almost never made lightly. After the decision, however, comes the next step — pursuing whether to change it legally, and if so, navigating the labyrinthine, opaque, and expensive process of getting legal identity documents that match.

That’s where organizations like the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, the Transgender Law Center, and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project come in.

“In most cases, it’s really difficult for most people to obtain [a legal name change] without some form of help or guidance,” explained Ian Anderson, Legal Services Project Manager for the TLC.

“That’s true for a number of reasons: the process involves several steps, the forms use very technical language, the laws relating to name/gender change court orders sometimes change year to year, and the process or forms can vary county by county.”

AC Dumlao

According to AC Dumlao, Program Manager at TLDEF, the name change process in particular is incredibly outdated: “New York’s name change statute, for example, dates from 1847… newspaper publication was required to alert creditors to a name change.”

Some states still require a newspaper publication, even though technology has made this completely unnecessary.

The TLC hosts frequent legal clinics to help trans people navigate the often confusing process. In fact, attending one of the TLC’s clinics was how I was finally able to legally change my name and gender — after years of unsuccessfully trying to navigate the process on my own. In January, California amended its process to make it easier. I waited to get my documents processed until then for this reason — and it still wasn’t easy. I then attempted to do the same federally — to get a passport — which was a different, much more difficult process that took over nine months.

Ian Anderson

“Each state sets its own laws,” Anderson clarified. “[The process] may involve presenting a doctor’s letter saying that you’re receiving ‘clinically appropriate treatment for gender transition…’ a surgeon’s letter specifically saying you’ve had genital surgery, or a judge’s order… [i]n a few states, it’s still not possible to update the gender marker on your birth certificate at all, and in several states, the ‘revised’ birth certificate will still show the old information along the new.”

Some states allow nonbinary markers. Some don’t. “[M]any states, as well as the federal government, continue to only offer binary gender markers. These laws are being challenged one by one, but lawsuits do take time.”

That’s something else the TLC works on — changing these laws to make the process simpler, easier, and more accessible. This crucially-important work is also about more than the emotional and psychological impact of having a name that aligns with one’s identity — there are practical implications: “If the information on someone’s documents doesn’t align with how people typically perceive them… the documents could out them as trans and lead to discrimination or violence,” Anderson continued.

That’s part of why Mey changed her name legally. “[N]ot changing my name while presenting as a woman was leading to some potentially dangerous situations and discrimination at airports and with police and doctors. Changing my name has improved my life greatly.”

Not everyone wants to legally change their name or gender, though. “The process of changing my gender marker on my license was such a headache, I know I’m very lucky to not have to change my name too,” said Drew.

And Annie has decided not to bother with the whole process: “I’m very lazy,” she confessed. “[A]lso, I don’t want to be targeted by Trump and his cronies for being trans and having my name on a list of people who legally changed their names.” While that might sound alarmist, it’s not inconceivable given the state of American politics and technology right now.

Another hurdle? The process can be expensive. I was only able to afford it because I happened to be on MediCal at the time, and there are sometimes waivers for low-income people.

TLDEF is especially focused on making the process more affordable. “TLDEF’s Name Change Project provides pro bono legal name changes to low income trans and non-binary individuals,” said Dumlao. “More than 65 percent of TLDEF’s name change clients live below the federal poverty line.” TLDEF is usually able to make the process completely free for their clients.

While I was grateful to the TLC for hosting the name change clinic, and helping me apply for a fee waiver, the combination of which made the process possible for me — Mey credits her community for making it possible. “I was blessed to get financial help from the Autostraddle community when I changed my name. Riese was especially helpful and I’ll be forever thankful to her for that.”

Crowdfunding campaigns to raise money for name and gender changes are plentiful, and as is usually the case when trans people raise money for things like life-saving surgeries, medications, or legal documents, it’s usually other queer and trans people and organizations who show up and give what they can.

Trans Lifeline, another trans-led organization, even offers financial support in the form of “microgrants” to trans people to get legal documents. The #transcrowdfund hashtag on Twitter and Instagram is simultaneously a sobering look at financial issues trans people face and an incredibly uplifting example of a community holding each other down and lifting each other up. Trans-led community organizations like BreakOUT! In New Orleans also help members raise money for and otherwise navigate the name and gender change process. No one takes care of its own like the trans community.

One of the loveliest experiences of my life has been realizing that I’ve forgotten a trans friend’s old name. Realizing that I consistently call myself by my own name in my own internal monologue is up there as well. Having government institutions — and, thus, TSA agents, doctors, the Postal Service, teachers, insurance companies — do the same can be transformative.

The impact of organizations like TLC and TLDEF, and the name and gender change clinics that they run, is hard to understate. It often feels like the process is intentionally confusing, difficult, and expensive, part and parcel of the trans-antagonistic culture in which we live. Our names are intimately connected with our identities, and not having access to a name that reflects who we are is damaging psychologically and practically.

These organizations, the community members who fundraise and donate to trans people trying to get access to affirming legal documents, and the family and friends who support us emotionally as we navigate a tricky process are literally saving our lives.