January production diary: "Fear of Trans Bodies" postmortem

Happy new year! This month's production diary is about how in my last video, Fear of Trans Bodies, I worked to keep things positive while telling the ugly truth. I recommend watching the video before reading, but it's not required.

Storefront of Le Coin du Perroquet, Montreal

In November, I was catching up on the podcast t4t. It's a lovely show by Hazel Jane Plante about "writing while trans". Before ending the show this fall, she interviewed some people I really admire, including Kai Cheng Thom and Torrey Peters.

...But my favourite moment from the entire run came from someone I'd never heard of: Ryka Aoki, who recently published the Hugo-nominated novel Light From Uncommon Stars.

In the final interview of the series, she said something that stopped me dead in my tracks. I can't find the exact quote, but it was something like the underlying message of my work is "I love you". That's it. Just "I love you."

Whew. How lovely is that, right? It never occurred to me that my work could, despite nuances and digressions, boil down to something so simple. 

It's a goal I aspire to on some level, because I do love you. Not just "you", my audience, but "you", the world at large. I feel a kinship with basically all people (outside the ruling class), and I want us to be good to each other.

While I write a lot about bigotry, I mostly feel loved back these days. On Monday, an older guy on the street wished me a happy new year; a week before Christmas, a barista called me ma chère – "my dear" – and made my day. Strangers send me so many kind messages I can't answer them all.

People have been incredibly generous with me these past couple years, especially you (my audience), and I want to be generous with you in return. If you're going to spend hours of your life with me – or, God forbid, actual dollars on me – I don't want to stress you out. We're all stressed enough as it is. I want to make you feel good. I want to give you a break, maybe offer some hope.

–––

Of course, this clashes with my whole deal. Most of my writing is about anti-trans discrimination, and I'm not too hopeful about the trans community's prospects right now. I like writing about our current cultural landscape, and I think I'm decent at it, but it's heavy stuff; being remotely honest means acknowledging that people want us dead, and that they could win.

This was front of mind while I was writing "Fear of Trans Bodies", a video that explores how a hate movement dehumanizes many people I love. The video describes anti-transition rhetoric as a step towards genocide, because it is, and I think more people should talk about it. I don't want to sugarcoat this stuff, but I also don't want to bum you out more than I have to. 

I was committed to making it a pleasant watch, despite the subject matter, and found myself asking: how do you make comfy videos about the end of the world? 

I doubt I'll ever perfectly resolve this contradiction, but it's worth a shot. In an attempt to hold onto "I love you", here are some adjustments I made to Fear of Trans Bodies. Maybe they can be helpful for you, too.

• Use disarming aesthetics. I sat on my couch in a big sweater and addressed the camera like a friend. I cracked a joke a few sentences in, then led into a personal anecdote about my coming-of-age. I think being chill & familiar helped people settle in. I have no problem with confrontational aesthetics – I adore punk music – but they would've worked against the message here.
• Avoid quoting the bad stuff. Across 36 minutes, I only gave transphobes direct airtime in the 2-minute segment about TT Exulansic. I used Exulansic as my one concrete example because her videos are so blatant, they proved my point instantly. I cut several examples from the script because after Exulansic, I could safely assume the viewer believed me.
• Turn it around on the aggressor. I made it clear early on that "fear of trans bodies" isn't trans people's fault, and in fact, says nothing about us. The rest of the video put transphobes' bodies under the magnifying glass, examining their flaws. I didn't cede any ground, I don't entertain their argument for even a second. Trans people hold the power, if not in the world, at least in this story (well, specifically, I do lol).
• Distill the chaos into a narrative. If you're aligned with me, you already know things are bad. It wouldn't do us any good to explore the full scope of what we're up against every single time. I don't want to overwhelm you or make the issue feel insurmountable. Instead, when tackling social issues, I limit my scope and tell a straightforward story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Most recently, the narrative was "People are afraid of trans bodies > Because we remind them everyone will die > That's scary, but trans people make great use of our limited time"

These are all tradeoffs. They sacrifice precision for digestibility, which to me is worth it, but means I never give totally comprehensive accounts of social issues. Fear of Trans Bodies barely touched on the economic roots of ableism and the nuclear family, because while these things are important, they weren't relevant to the narrative. I also made the tough decision to talk less about trans women in this video. My arguments about fertility and aging map better onto transmasculine people; I find people's searing hate for trans women tough to discuss without getting into the weeds. It's too upsetting for me to spend much time thinking about.

Advocacy isn't always pretty – scratch that, it's not usually pretty. I plan to keep getting uncomfortable, unpleasant, or aggressive whenever needed. But a person can only take in so much human suffering before it becomes impossible to process. That breaks our resolve and, if anything, makes it harder to fight back.

Hope is a muscle that allows us to connect. 

Thank you for helping me stay hopeful. 💜

News + recommendations

• My next video is called MILLIONS OF DEAD VIBES, and it's about an online community dedicated to cataloguing every aesthetic under the sun. It's a sequel to... you know the one. It'll be out next month.
• I've taken a walk on my lunch break every day this week. Highly recommend - even just sitting outside for a minute helps me relax.
• I'm currently loving The hidden piano tracks on Sufjan Stevens' All Delighted People EP. Swirling, timeless, warm. 10/10.