The Violence in Me is Holy: A speech/performance for the Trans Day of Revenge 2022

Posted by anarcholatina on 2022-11-23

(Originally presented with Pride Rebellion, in a car park under cold rain, in standard-issue antifa windbreaker, latex black pants, pink balaclava covering face, black hoodie:)

My lovely siblings, I’m so sorry my voice is hard to hear. The police took our microphones. Today, you see, is not only TDoR but also Totensonntag, which is a mandatory silent observance. The cops make our dead speak softly, so as not to bother the Christian dead.

I will not speak softly.

Razor-thin, the newspaper says,
the electoral victory was razor-thin,
vote for bombs and petrol pumps
or else the fascists win,
51%, 49%, thin as a razor
this blade that stands between us
and concentration camps.


A razor is the weapon of the travesti
and all sex workers,
a razor tucks into a bra
or silky harness or a sock,
for bad johns, you see,
cos the latina travesti knows she’ll be working the streets
whether we get the 51%, or the 49%,
the latina travesti remembers her sisters
murdered by police also when the Worker’s Party
was in power;
the travesti knows on her skin that anyone in power
wants that skin buried, burned, behind bars, or—worst of all!:—
covered,
for the body of the travesti is of Nature,
is like Nature generous, abundant, unclaimable,
without owners,
the queer body is a challenge to all power because
it exists.
So the travesti knows without words
that the kick on your ribs
hurts the same
if they paint
the boots
red.

My country is number 1! [beat]
in murdering trans people,
I read this poem every year, it’s always true,
every year I hear Germans speaking Portuguese
for one day,
reciting the names of our dead.

And so it is that when I see the stickers
with red-white-black and defaced rainbows
and 1933s and 1488s,
I know on my skin that the life we carved here
is being taken,
& I cannot go back to that life,
afraid of holding hands,
afraid of speaking the language of my body,
afraid of having anything on me
the colour of pink.

I’ve been to where we’re headed.

And so it is that when I pass
by some wanker wearing iron crosses and
cargo pants clashing with shitty Burzum hoodies,
and totally démodé Wehrmacht T-shirts,
I am taken by the distinctly feminine urge of
Violence.

Violence is often not tactical,
  the way sex is not tactical.
Violence is counter-productive,
  like shouting back at a catcall is counterproductive.
[Venomously:] Violence is anti-strategic, like
  refusing to pass as cis is anti-strategic.
[Escalating to shouting:] Violence is hopeless, like
  kissing your friends at a bar when you know you’ll be thrown out is
hopeless.

I am very tired of being productive.

The violence is me is like my femininity,
it asserts itself, it resists theorising,
it won’t be denied.
The Nazi is bigger, and younger, and
better armed, and
protected by police,
and I could be killed or deported or raped tortured—
[shaking head dismissively:] doesn’t matter, nothing exists,
wordthoughts only exist later,
after the violence has asserted itself and the Nazi is running
away.

The violence in me is irresistible,
unconcerned with justification,
whole in itself:
it is, in a word,
holy.

[Sweetly:] See, only after I could finally be the woman I was,
only after I could open my heart,
only after transition I could get in touch with my emotions.

[Bluntly:] Turns out rage is an emotion.

The Kurds call it the fire in the heart.
The fire calls to us, because
there’s a lot that needs burning.

And someone tell me that violence is toxic masculinity.
Sister, masculinity was lack of agency,
masculine is what they wanted me to be,
what they beat me for,
only by rejecting masculinity I could fight back,
sister if weapons are a boy thing
consider where that line of thinking will leave
the femmes,
I cannot resist it but sister even if I could sister I don’t want to,
sister I burn, I burn.

A razor is the weapon of the travesti,
Maria Navalha, the pombagira protector, has 7 razors,
(don’t mess with her, she’s never alone),
in the 50s the police wrote with fear
of our ancestor Cintura Fina,
her body crisscrossed by razor-lines
and beatings,
[In one breath:] because she was a travesti in the 50s and she would never accept an insult and I get it,
this isn’t self-destruction it’s the opposite, each line on the skin
is a lifeline,
it’s either a body covered in scars or the closet,
resistance is life, resistance is life and to be tame
in the face of oppression
is death
before death.

This is my call:
Either people are scared of wearing swastikas
or they are scared of holding hands.
It’s one or the other. You can’t have both.
Fascists should feel uncomfortable coming out as fascists.

Someone has to do the, uncomforting.

In my untermensch noncitizen standing, should I be here making this call? When I can be deported by these words alone, shouldn’t I submit an anonymous indymedia communiqué, shouldn’t I stay home and leave it for the German citizen black bloc, shouldn’t I hide my identity better?

[Continuing to speak while undressing from hoodie and windbreaker and jacket and cardi, throwing gloves and bags and all on the wet floor dramatically, until striped down to pink lacy lingerie, shaking in the November rain and the wind, though not of cold:]

O.P.sec [beat] is -sec for an O.P. It’s not a morality, it only makes sense as a tactic for a given goal. Look, hon, I’m not built for baggy gender-neutral clothes I was made to pour glittery goo over my bouncy tits, I hid for 30 years to protect myself from repression and every one of those years was hell, I look too hot in a Mob Action #ootd not to be on camera, what’s even the point of living without the camera zooming into the body I built with my blood and my life when I come here to tell you: “don’t let them normalise this, don’t just swallow this, don’t wait for them to take power, don’t wait for anybody else to come solve it, it’s on us, crew up, bash back, bash first”——

This right here [countours her exposed curves with her hands] is my O.P., my propaganda of the thicc.

There’s a category of queer, often immigrants, who upon seeing the violence in me don’t get scared, don’t call it macker problematic, don’t try to convince me to keep it cool play it safe, but look at me with eyes that say, (slow nod, side glance). For everyone else, all I can say is, look at these hashtag-TDoR numbers, look around, wander the cruise spots at night ask around, ask our folk: You might be against escalation, the fascists aren’t.

(Performed 20 Nov 2022. Immediately after presenting this speech, news hit of the anti-queer right-wing attack in Colorado, killing 5 people in a nightclub and injuring 25. The shooter was only stopped because clubbers fought back and subdued the enemy.)

Filed under antifa transgender

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