by Alex
Premise
"Basically in Trento (Italy) there was a proposal for a law that amongst other things would forbid to teach at any school level that "sexual identity and biological sex are dissociated". With Arcigaydeltrentino and other associations and unions we had a sit-in on the day that the proposal was presented to the public and since there was a space for personal speeches, I spoke. This was my first public speech. I wrote it on impulse, and I decided to stick to personal experience since I didn't feel like I knew enough about queer theory to actually deconstruct the law in a well constructed way, if that makes sense. I would like to share with the community my speech. It was kind of the first moment in which I realized I might want to get more into activism and it felt really empowering."
Hello everyone [tutte, tutti e tuttu]
I am Alex, and, to use the confusing terms of this bill, “my sexual identity is dissociated from my biologicals ex.” A bit like every person’s identity, considering that a quick search on the internet is enough to find out that the two concepts are, in fact, distinct.
In a word, I am a transgender boy, and I would like to tell the ‘kind’ consiglieri and consigliere promoting this bill how for 18 years the public school has deprived me of the right tools to understand it. How in 18 years the only semblance of sex education has dealt with cis-hetero-normative relationships - and I can only wonder what affective education would look like. How at the age of 19 the unnamed and unrecognised discomfort I carried within exploded, until I learnt to give it a name, how my world collapsed at first, and how getting to know and seeing another trans* person living their life peacefully was fundamental for me. How three years after coming out I have understood that my transgenderism is not just discomfort and suffering, but has an enormous value and beauty in all its shades and nuances, and I want to be able to tell this to those who are only now discovering themselves, so that they never feel like a mistake.
Signori consiglieri, signori consigliere, it is not by shutting our mouths and promoting disinformation that you will 'save children' from the spectre of gender ideology, which you have purposely invented to justify your bigotry. We trans* people exist, we have always existed, we will always exist and it will not be your censorship that prevents us from doing so. Not only that: we trans* people have the RIGHT to exist like everyone else, without any judgments being made about our existence, without any discussion about whether we are three-headed monsters. So what if we are?
We are here, I am here, and I want to be able to shout it out loud, I want to be able to dismantle all your standards, and I want to be able to to teach future generations that YOU CAN be happy even if you do not adhere to imposed cis-normativity, I want to be able to give them the right tools to understand themselves in their own time, their families the right tools to welcome and support them, and those people who will eventually turn out to be cis the right tools so that the burden of education won’t always and only fall on those who experience transgenderism on their own skin.
You want to “think of the children”? Then do not promote disinformation, and think about them regardless of their fender. As we exist, so do they. Let’s help them come to terms with it.
by Alex, translated by ricc
Alex is "a 22 years old transgender guy who finally managed to deconstruct most stereotypes about masculinity and femininity and just explore gender expression as a whole. I'm just now approaching activism and exposure in Trento, the city where I study, so it's all very new to me!"
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