If It Ain't Broke...

If you can't understand this simple concept, YOU are part of the problem.

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If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website.

If you’d like to send Christina Engela a question about her life as a writer or transactivist, please send an email to christinaengela@gmail.com or use the Contact form.

All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2019.

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Personal Statement: Divisions Within The Community

In the past I have called for more active interest and participation from the Pink Community, and I am happy to say that in recent months the community has risen to the challenge by and large, with new Pride events taking place, new community support projects springing up, and new activist voices shouting from within the wilderness to speak out against the injustices faced by our community. However;

There is an ongoing feud between the organizers of a community pageant  and other members of the community, a feud which is both unproductive and insensible, and which threatens to tear a rift right through the community. I also find it puzzling and disgusting how many people who wouldn't be seen dead voting or supporting anything political openly in defense of their own rights, have jumped in neck-deep in supporting either of the parties in this recent dispute which has been threatening to divide and weaken us as a community.

An Inconvenient Home Truth

It's odd how for years, articles by Melanie Nathan have been highly prized and circulated and promoted by local human rights advocates, and how for years we have welcomed her campaigning to assist our cause, and her application of public pressure from outside the country - and now we can suddenly just turn around and say something like this:

"A condescending American [Melanie] Nathan based in America, who has no jurisdiction whatsoever in dictating to South Africans what to do (as what so many Western countries are prone to do), even if she was born in South Africa, she left this country three decades ago and has no business interfering. We're not listening - go write about the problems LGBTI face in the US. There's lots." - GaySpeak Ezine.

 

An email from Mr Gay SA did the rounds in the early hours of this morning, laying out in point form "the official stance" of a Pink Community leader figure in South Africa. 

 

Point five said: "We support what Melanie Lowe and Cobus Fourie from SA GLAAD wrote about standing together, but this has become an all-out attack against Mr GSA driven by people who are serving their own interests and shamelessly using this issue of the traditional leaders to promote themselves, their blogs and their brands." 

The email closed with "Please remove us from this mailing list - we will not respond if you do."

The quote at the top of this article was then posted on numerous Coalition and LGBT Facebook groups.

Bollocks And Bellyaching

Recently I saw an article posted by a transsexual sister activist about the failings of the alliance of the Pink Community. The article was very melodramatic, bordering on the hysterical. In fact, I feel it was nothing short of a load of bollocks and bellyaching.

A Place In The Sun

No matter what I am or what I have done, I am also just as human and just as flawed and vulnerable as anyone who thinks they are perfect, or stronger, or better than me. 

 

Nevertheless, it seems there are always people who think that because I am not straight like them, and not living the gender I was born in, that I am "anti-social", have a persecution complex, a huge chip on my shoulder, and am either less intelligent than they are, or that I am just plain stupid.

Broad-Spectrum Anti-Idiotics

"Before Carol was a Carol they were a David, strange but true. Make some hard cash and any transexual can become a woman."

This is broadly speaking the comment someone made about somebody else in a discussion I was part of recently. 

 

They had it in for somebody whom they didn't agree with on some or other matter, and went around posting articles and comments venting their dislike for them - and in each case pointing out the detail that they were "transsexual", only to later have it pointed out to them that they had it completely wrong - "Carol" as it turned out, was intersex, not transsexual.

Personal differences aside, it made me wonder why some people find it necessary to pick out a particular characteristic of somebody they don't get on with - and then use that as an insult and a judgment, or even a blunt instrument - at the same time insulting and judging all other people who have that feature in common too.

That is like saying "Joe Soap, who is an Aquarius, is an incredibly bad cook - and therefore all other Aquariuses are too". Make any sense?

Who Are We? Why Are We Here?

I sat down this morning wondering what our community is all about. I'm thinking about the Pink Community of course. Pink, because of the confusing array of acronyms we apply to describe ourselves, that almost always put some sub-groups before others, and invariably leave someone out. Pink, because of our association with the feminine, with the notion that we break the boundaries set for us by society, and because it flies in the face of some beliefs that pink represents weakness and inferiority - an idea some are growing to realize is not the case at all.

Agents Of Change

What are we in this world? Agents of change? 

 

Do we make things better, or worse? 

 

Or do we sit back and moan all day, doing nothing constructive and even worse, leaving the world unchanged and no better for our passing? We could go even lower by referring to our friend IdiOT Amin's "bloody agent", but I'm sure we can do better than that. So could he.

Leave No-one Behind

We often refer to our diverse community of sexual minorities as "GLBT", including main groupings such as Gay, Lesbian (also gay), Bisexual and Transgender. 

 

Sometimes, when we feel generous - or remember to, we add on the I for Intersex. Perhaps when we run into groups that confuse us, or defy classification into the other main groups, we quickly tack on the "Q" for Queer or Questioning - although I sometimes have to wonder who it is that is doing the actual questioning? Us? Or the folks on the outside of the community? 

 

But mostly, I often wonder why is it that we as a community seem to be struggling so much with framing and understanding (or even accepting) our own diverse identities?

Community Building

Recently I wrote about cohesion in our pink community, and over the weekend I was again faced with the exact opposite. Some trans-women seem to feel that I have been remiss in campaigning for transgender rights and focusing only on gay rights. They feel, as I do - that there are some rather prominent advocacy groups, some of them advertising that they stand for all GLBTI rights, some not - and that these groups are abandoning trans people.

A prime examples of this is the ENDA (Employee Non Discrimination Act) in the USA, which has failed to pass in the past - and from which transgender rights were conveniently removed by some of our gay allies in order to see that the act had a "better chance" of passing. Hmm. I have to point out that (duh) this is not the act of an ally. The dust around this issue still has not settled, and I wait with bated breath to see how it goes down.

Rainbow Unity

Last week I noticed for the first time that people refer to the rainbow flag as "the gay flag". I have often heard it referred to as such, but for the first time I really thought about it. Is it really?

We have quite a diverse community, consisting of gay men, gay women (or lesbians), bisexual people, transgender people (including transsexuals, drag queens, transvestites, she-males) and intersex people. There are also other sub-groups such as pansexuals, panromantics, the gender-queer and asexuals. And if you think that's all there is to us, you're mistaken. There are also some lesser-known sub-cultures within our community, such as the bear and leather groups.

And yes, while we may be gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex, we can also be part of more than one of these groups at the same time. 

Rainbow Flag = Cohesion

It is a simple fact that if members of a community stop socializing together, we soon stop co-operating and standing together as well. Pretty soon we stop thinking of ourselves as being part of the same community - and not long after that, we start acting like rivals - or worse yet, enemies.