I’m honored to be among the first participants in MyAcceptance.org, a project by photographer Parker Austin.

“Long before making my gender transition as an adult, I’d learned to mask my gender identity and expression. My childhood was full of love and support, but it became clear by middle school that acting “too feminine” was a punishable offense, with enforcement meted out with anything from words to fists. Though painfully shy, I was accepted by classmates in my early years. I started playing the flute in 3rd grade, and teachers would let me perform plays and puppet shows and stories I wrote for the class.

We moved several times between my 4th and 7th grades, and each time that early peer acceptance despite being different faded more. I’d occasionally been mistaken for a girl throughout my childhood, and as I’d gotten older, adults began asking me more frequently and more ominously if I was a boy or a girl. This reached a peak at a summer orchestra camp. My playing the flute made me an instant target, and I experienced violence for the first time. That was the moment where I realized I needed to change how I moved through the world, for my own safety.

So I sat on my hands so I wouldn’t move them while I talked. I was able to affect a very pleasant but nondescript persona. I started drinking as self-medication. I found a persona where people left me alone. I kept finding ways to distance myself from parts of me that brought negative attention. I became a student of masculinity, its cadences and dynamics. I was pretty good at the role. I was living up to everyone’s expectations, but not being true to myself. After a great deal of agony and introspection, I could no longer deny who I was. Each day of progress in transition felt like a mask removed from a pile of masks I hid behind. I vowed to help others transition sooner and more easily, and that remains my greatest accomplishment.

Many people who transition jump from one closet to another, distancing themselves from their trans history once they have finished. That felt too much like putting on another mask to me, so I have stayed out and open about my past and my present. I am very proud of who I am, and especially of how I got here. My days of hiding and avoiding my personal truth are behind me.”

-Andrea James

Andrea James: MyAcceptance.org
http://www.myacceptance.org/2011/08/andrea-james/

http://www.myacceptance.org/2011/08/andrea-james/

One of the reasons I like to work on biographies on Wikipedia is because people, especially living people, deserve a fair, clean article summarizing their work. Sometimes when I write a biography of someone living, they write back to thank me, and of those who have, my favorite was probably South African artist Leon Botha, who died yesterday at age 26. He’s probably best known for his appearance in the Enter the Ninja video for Die Antwoord, the music group for whom he used to open. After some editors tried to delete his article, some others had written it so it was heavily weighted toward discussing his body, something I have to deal with in my own media interactions. After I rewrote it to highlight his art, Leon wrote in part:

I sincerely thank you for your help! And would like to express my gratitude. It’s always troubling with someone like me when it comes to media internet etc. But I was just particularly paranoid about the first time wiki mentioned me, that all of my work (and me as a artist, which I basically dedicated my life to) would all fade into the background of progeria, and that would mean “defeat” for me in just some of my personal goals/missions. Anyway, it’s a sigh of relief to which I owe you the credit and gratitude.

RIP Leon Botha, a remarkable turntablist, intriguing outsider artist, and wise person.