Exit Wounds

An open letter to the Canadian labour movement from a discarded trans girl

Photo Credit: Joshua Berson

Brothers, sisters and comrades,

I’m writing you today to talk my experiences coming out and transitioning as a member of Canada’s labour family. I write from a place of pain, but not malice. It’s my hope that by writing this letter, this post mortum of my time with you, the labour movement can grow and learn to honour and respect our trans women activists. Some of the ideas and memories I present are provocative, but just realize that the pain and discomfort you may feel is a reflection of the pain I have as I write this.

If you find the words I say to be uncomfortable, unfair or hurtful, please spend some time alone with that pain and discomfort. Reflect on the place of pain it’s coming from. If you can feel this pain as I’ve written it, not maliciously but rather with hope that we can dismantle disposable trans girl culture, then perhaps we can avoid exposing other trans activists to similar pain and abandonment.

The labour movement was my support network for the first six months of my transition. The loss of a support network is common for trans women and one of the most painful experiences we share. In fact, the loss of a support network is a contributing factor to transgender people turning to self destructive coping mechanisms or leaving us too early. Whether it’s friends, family, colleagues, or an adopted queer family, transgender people often learn that a support network is fragile, that the risk of losing our support network is very real, and the consequences of not having a support network are serious.

The start of the journey

About two years ago I attended my first Hospital Employees Union equity conference. At the time, I was a closeted transgender person, and few activists in the union were aware of my gender. I attended the event in clothes and cosmetics that I felt safe and comfortable in, and came out to my peers as genderqueer. At the time, I was elected to sit on the union’s Pink Triangle Standing Committee, I was the only openly transgender member on the committee.

About 10 months after I began serving on that committee, I came out as a trans woman. I started documenting my transition very candidly and publicly on Facebook, and received praise from fellow activists for doing so. I was so happy to be able to begin my medical transition, as well as live openly. It was around that time that I also started to notice that I was losing friends on Facebook as well.

I started my transition at work. The process was difficult, and I may talk about it one day, but out of respect for my comrades I won’t go into detail in this open letter. Suffice to say, the process of transitioning at work and how staff and stewards handle a workplace transition could use serious improvements.

I attended my first union event as Lisa in May of last year. It was called Solidarity & Inclusive Leadership and at the event we learned about the importance of listening to marginalized voices, platforming them and centering them, even when it’s painful or inconvenient for us to lose our relative privilege. We learned to not be ashamed of things we can’t control. We learned how to analyze our own oppressive behaviors and how to gracefully acknowledge when we use our privilege to hurt marginalized people. The executive of the union was not invited to attend this event.

Over the following months I noticed microagressions from cisgender lesbian and gay activists in the labour movement. They started very subtly, but grew. In November of that year, one activist from my union, and a leader in the labour movement, approached me when I was alone at the BC Federation of Labour Convention and made it very clear that she personally has a problem with me.

In October I ran for executive of my union, the Hospital Employees Union. Before coming out, I had been groomed into a provincial executive position, discussing strategies and working on ways to make sure I made it onto the executive. When I came out as genderqueer, those meetings and discussions dried up, but I still wanted to run anyway. During my campaign, union leadership met with me, they told me if I ever needed anything to contact them. They explained that I was important and my voice would be featured no matter what happened. My campaign was decent but I ended up losing by a landslide. Following the election, those same union leaders stopped talking to me or responding to my texts. I wasn’t a threat. I was ghosted.

Erased and ignored

The microagressions continued, and eventually manifested in actual oppressive behavior. I found my voice being silenced at meetings using trans exclusionary feminist dialectic. I would try to raise issues important to the transgender community, only to be told by cisgender people, “you don’t speak for every transgender person,” “how do you know I’m not secretly transgender?” and, “we always hear from an MtF, why can’t we hear from an FtM?” These are catch phrases borrowed from radical feminism and used to discredit and silence transgender women, as well as take our seats away from the table.

In January of this year I witnessed a serious transmisogynist attack against a friend, a member of the NDP, by two people who had identified themselves as associated with that political party. They accused my friend of using her “male privilege” to perpetrate violence against women and make them feel uncomfortable. When I mentioned this attack among friends, a member of the party asked to speak to me in privately, saying she could help me. When I opened up to her, in good faith assuming that she would help, she accused me of slandering the NDP, harming unionized employees, and lying. I had been canvassing and scrutineering for the NDP for about 6 years, but it was at this point that I decided to no longer support the NDP in upcoming elections.

Later in January, the Women’s March on Washington was being organized here in Vancouver. I had been critical but optimistic of the event. I wanted to attend. I have a partner who’s a nonbinary American of color and I wanted to be there for them, because they were afraid to go back to the United States. The march was plagued by mainstream lean in “white feminist” stumbles, erasing sex workers from their platform and failing to include trans women and people of color. The night before the march, I received a text from one of the organizers who I reached out to in an offer of support that read “people like you are so quick to criticize but never offer to help. Good thing you’re just a minority.” The message was perfectly clear, the march was not meant for me. I was just a minority. I stayed home.

The next day I received text messages from women unionists, some from my own union, blaming me for the feeling of exclusion and marginalization I felt. Blaming me for being hurt. Not knowing what I had heard, or knowing but not caring. I was being divisive by not attending. I was ruining their party. I was also told that it’s not the job of people of privilege to include marginalized people, that marginalized people need to reach out and ask to be included.

That same month I ran for election to my union’s local. The previous year, I had been acclaimed chair of my local, but I decided with my transition I wanted to step back. I ran for the position of trustee, and gave a three minute long speech about what it means to be a trustee and my experience with union finance. I lost to a candidate whose speech was, “I work in the lab.” She got over 70% of the vote. A member of the maintenance department approached me and told me that he was sorry for my loss, he voted for me and supported me, but some colleagues had been transphobic behind my back, and the local probably just isn’t ready for a transgender leader. I sent a long message to a leader in my union who had met with me for coffee or beers on several occasions in the past, and told me that if I ever needed anything, to write. I explained to him my concerns about systemic transmisogyny in the union. He never replied.

Effects on my mental health

Over the following months, my public transition became a bit more dark. I started to talk more about my dysphoria, expressing the anger I was feeling, and the fears that I had. I also began losing friends from the union on Facebook. During these months, I had expressed my frustrations to individual activists but felt ignored. My text messages were not being replied to. I even approached one activist and was told, “I don’t have time for your stuff.” It was clear that my comrades didn’t want to see a trans woman in pain, they only liked me when I was happy, or they only liked me before I transitioned, when I was pretending to be somebody else. The only time I felt listened to was at a mic or on social media, and as I was not being listened to when I tried to address the systemic transphobia in my union in person, I expressed it at mics and on social media. I’m sure this led to me being labeled as dangerous or unstable.

Not one of the good trans girls

I attended my union’s Pink Triangle Caucus meeting in late May. We were supposed to spend a day getting to know each other, but instead that entire day was monopolized by a single activist, therefore when the vote came, nobody knew each other and we were unsure of who we were voting for. The terms of reference stipulate that our committee must have at least one transgender member, however those terms were ignored and both openly transgender members who ran were voted out. We elected an entirely cisgender committee. We ignored our committee’s rules, it was not said why, and we lost our moral mandate to speak on transgender issues, particularly issues of concern to trans women.

Over the next weeks, I had several newly elected committee members reach out to me for free emotional labour, asking me to advise them on trans issues. My response was the same, the Hospital Employees Union Pink Triangle Standing Committee no longer has a mandate to speak on trans women’s issues, and if they wanted my help, I would need a voice and a vote, or financial compensation. I was not going to be a token. It was at this time that I reached out to the leadership of the Hospital Employees Union and informed them that if they attempted to speak on transgender issues, particularly trans women’s issues. I would hold them accountable.

Over the summer is when I started to recieve the rejection letters. “Thank you for your interest in this event / committee, but your application was unsuccessful.” Each letter was a painful confirmation of what I already knew, there was no platform or solidarity for me with my union, and after the fourth rejection letter the message was clear, I need not apply. When I recieved a rejection letter from the women’s committee, I posted on Facebook that I felt my time with the union was done. I suspected that my involvement in the sex positive community was partly to blame. A woman who previously stated that she had a problem with me, and had contributed many times to silencing me using trans exclusionary language, commented that there was many applicants and you can’t know why you are rejected, she then promptly unfriended me. I guess she didn’t need to keep an eye on me anymore, whatever threat I represented had been successfully neutralized.

Performative allyship

In mid November, I read a facebook post before going to bed. It was on the upcoming transgender day of remembrance. That night, I had nightmares about my time in the union, my time in leftist spaces, and being ignored. I kept thinking that my union is going to try to paint themselves as allies on the transgender day of remembrance, and after all I had faced, it filled me with anger.

On the transgender day of remembrance, we reflect on all the transgender people who left us too early. The list consists almost entirely of trans women, more specifically, it’s almost entirely trans women of color. It’s also is disproportionately reflective of trans women from highly stigmatized groups, such as trans women with mental illness, and transgender sex workers. Many of the people on the list we read also live in poverty. It’s important to highlight this because these are the transgender people we’re failing the most, with fatal results.

A dead trans woman is a powerful tool for a union claiming a social justice bent. They can not embarrass the union, they can’t make you question your privilege, they can’t speak at the mic, they can’t write about their frustrations on facebook, they can’t become involved in sex work, and they can’t hold you accountable. To a social justice organization, a dead trans girl is the perfect trans activist. The problem is, if you harm trans women all year, treat us as second class, ignore us and oppress us, then claim allyship on trans day of remembrance, all you’re saying is that you prefer your trans women when they’re dead. That’s the message that the transgender community receives when we see it, and that’s not the message I want associated with the Hospital Employees Union. It is for this reason that I sent a message to my union asking for them to not publicly recognize the trans day of remembrance. If you can’t stand with us when we’re alive, then you don’t get to use us to create the illusion of inclusiveness when we’re dead. Trans day of Remembrance can’t be the only day you honour us, that’s why transgender people say on this day, “give us roses when we live.

Note: after writing this letter, but before publishing it, I discovered that the union pushed ahead with plans to use the transgender day of remembrance to paint themselves as allies on social media, despite my pleas that it would be insensitive and inappropriate.

Hope and healing

I have asked my union’s staff if we could engage in a transformative justice process in an attempt to make sure the mistakes made during my tenure are not repeated. It seems like they may be warm to this idea, but given the way I’ve been treated, I’m cautiously optimistic. I am not going public about this to try and hurt my union, but rather to try and help any transgender people who might follow me. It’s common for trans women activists to be discredited in social justice spaces, then discarded. This is called disposable trans girl culture, and the idea is written about widely, perhaps most notably by Porpentine in her essay Hot Allostatic Load. I hope that by engaging the union in a transformative justice process, a process that doesn’t point blame at individuals or seek retribution, we can transform the union into a body that centers marginalized voices, that’s safe for trans women to tell our stories, and that can have a mandate to speak on transgender issues in the future.

The wounds I've suffered while in service to the labour movement are still open. It's devastating to have your comrades gather around you in solidarity, place you on a pedestal, only to knock it down when you don't reflect the narrative they want to see from a trans woman. When they're faced with the uncomfortable realities of a woman going through a realistic and painful transition. We can't offer that level of support to a vulnerable person only to abandon them when they need us the most. We can't ask them to offer their voices and faces to create an illusion of inclusiveness at the mic, but refuse to listen when they cry out for help from the union. We need to do better.

Transformative justice can be a long and painful process, and we may stumble. There may be anger and blame on both sides, but in the end we’re doing this to make the movement stronger and protect our transgender sisters. I believe this work is not only important, but essential.

In solidarity,

Lisa Kreut