A Latinx, trans-femme looks at the camera seductively. She is wearing a pink scarf underneath a furry pink jacket. She is wearing black cat eye glasses and colorful makeup.
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Episode 10: "My Vulnerability is Buff!" feat. Lilac Vylette MaldonadoLilac Vylette Maldonado is a cultural worker and zinester. She comes on this episode to talk about self-authorship and how she creates herself everyday. We talk about life as a Latinx, trans, Two-Spirit femme and the disability community that holds her dearly. [Transcript is available below the audio.]
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POWER NOT PITY
A podcast for disabled people of color everywhereWelcome to POWER NOT PITY, a podcast that centers and celebrates the lived experiences of disabled people of color. Season 2 is here and it's better than ever!
This time around, the show will spend time exploring the worlds of people in our community who dare to interrogate the dominant narrative of what survival feels like for a disabled person of color during these trying times. They all demonstrate what it means to thrive fully and authentically. Let's dismantle ableism by listening to each other's stories. |
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Transcript of POWER NOT PITY Episode 10: My Vulnerability Is Buff! feat. Lilac Vylette Maldonado
THEME CHANT: Power power power not pity pity pity power power power not pity pity pity.
(electronic music fades in)
BRI: Welcome to another episode of Power Not Pity! This is for all disabled people of color to feel respected and reflected, and I share their stories with one sole aim-- creating more community. I’m so glad you’re here! My friend Lilac Vylette Maldonado is coming on the show for this episode and If it seems like I’m only interviewing my friends this season, you might be right! Haha, it’s only because I want to share their brilliance with you. We are world builders, shape shifters, and ones who cultivate power through our very existence. We... are the culture roots of the future.
But before we get into it, I’d like to give a special shout out to my Patreon supporters this month, Shreya Shah, Naomi Cartier, and Manny Rivera. Big thanks to the three of you, your support means the world to me! Patrons receive extra access to the show through exclusive posts and takeaway videos. If you, dear listener, would like to get a little closer to the show and want a little more crip love in your life, check out my Patreon account! That’s www.patreon.com/powernotpity.
So Lilac and I go a long way back. All the way back to right before this podcast debuted in 2017! I had received a copy of her zine, Access Granted, from another disabled friend of mine and the rest as they say is history--or should I say cripstory? (chuckles) Y'all already know how corny I am!
After I received her zine, I knew I had to get in touch with her because her work really taught me about the principles of disability justice in a really cool way.
Here’s a little bit about Lilac:
As a community organizer and culture worker who identifies as a sick & disabled, neurodivergent, Two-Spirit, Chicanx femme, she has been actively organizing since 2009 around many intersectional social justice issues such as racial justice, gender justice, disability justice, LGBTQIA+ issues, and body autonomy and acceptance. They are an avid zinester who has written and created artwork for various academic and social justice themed DIY booklets. She is a co-founding member of, core team member and logistics coordinator for the Los Angeles Spoonie Collective, a grassroots disability justice group connecting disabled activists and artists to community organizing and education opportunities. They are also a part of the education team at Fireweed Collective, offering mental health education and mutual aid through a healing justice lens. She serves on the Board of Directors for Reclaim UGLY, educating local and global communities about uglifiction, and inviting them to uplift, love, and glorify themselves. Outside of work, they are an avid history buff, an adventurous multimedia artist, a lifelong pop culture geek, and a loving mom to three black cats. So remember that zine that taught me so much about her and about disability justice? We start our conversation there, talking about the community that means so much to the both of us.
(electronic music fades out)
BRI: When I started to come into my understanding as a disabled person, I found out about the disability Justice community and you know, it was just like whoa, I can be a part of this? You know? I can I can be a part of a group of people where we all come from the basic understanding that like Patty Berne and Leroy Moore and Mia Mingus and all these really notable, like, amazing, brilliant and beautiful disabled people of color have said, you know, like all bodies are whole, we come to each other, where we meet each other where we're at. I just I just love that and I feel like our friendship is also based on that principle. I just love that too because it really changes the way that we communicate with each other, in and the ways that we care for each other too.
LILAC: Bringing back the emphasis on its you know for us by us. Our needs come first, Our bodies are honored our stories are sacred and so it's just been a place for me to be able to find wholeness within my lived experience as a disabled person and it's been really given me a lot of framework for understanding where I fit in this world, you know, which is a little bit bananas right now and it's been really just a liberatory like perspective that's given me a whole lot of more room more room to focus my energy on on creating positive change for myself my community.
So that's the disability Justice to me. It's been it's just it's just been a way to uplift me and meet my mom actually needs and all right for me to stand with the people who you know share similar experiences to me.
BRI: I know you fit into a lot of different communities and one thing that we talked about in your survey was this just idea of being a femme. How would you say your identity as a disabled person of color fits into your identity as a femme?
LILAC: Well, yeah, I identify as like a Two-Spirit trans woman and that's my my gender identity and I've always kind of had a femme gender expression my entire life. For me that has always been something tied to femininity. There's been something sacred in healing and something this always called to me about it because of the amazing women that I had in my life that shaped me and I think that as a disabled person and it adds a layer of complexity, even you know, on top of being trans because being trans and two spirit is, it has one layer of complexity where you are not accepted for the body that you're seen in because you're automatically clocked as being you know, one of these things is not like the other, you know, you don't fit into that main Narrative of what it means to be a woman or you know femme, but femme doesn't really exist in the popular lexicon, but I think that that you're automatically like seeing as and other. but when you are Disabled on top of that you have I think, internalized ableism, which I for me shows up and informing ways that I think that I cannot that I am not woman enough or I am not trans enough or I'm not feminine enough. I can't wear high heels. I can't cinch my waist like other femmes do. I can't wear certain garments. I have a lot of scars, I have a lot of, you know, like things that I think mark me as other and for a long time disallowed me from being able to see myself within the you know, the spectrum of femininity because I thought that these things marked me as masculine or marked my body as as this non-gendered being because I'm often times as a disabled person seen as not a whole person. They don't see my gender because that's not I think the on the forefront of their mind. They may see my disability first and because I'm visibly disabled, I walk with a cane and I think that that shows up with me feeling like I'm never... I'm never good enough to feel like a woman and so then if I allow that very limited view of womanhood and femmehood to define me, I'll never find myself within it.
So I have to have been redefine what womanhood, and what transness and Two-Spirit identity and all these things and and find ways to interpret them through my own possibilities and find ways to celebrate them in my body that meet me where I'm at and don't pressure me to conform to things that will actually be harmful for me. That's been a big reservoir of strength for me because I always had to be creative in how I approach my femininity and I've always had to like craft my femininity in a very intentional way because I can't just go to the mall and pick out any dress and heels and just go out and feel in my body and feel like feel affirmed by that. I have to find other ways for me that has been grounding my femininity outside of my body. I had to find a way to find a home in femme that fit me. I couldn't wait to be invited by others. I had to find a way to conceive of myself with it.
And that for me was really healing instead of limiting because then I saw that nobody could constrict my definition of what it meant to be femme-- that lives inside of me and it and it radiates outside. And however it looked that day I was still femme, even if I was wrapped up in bandages I'd still be femme. And that's something that that has been such a source of strength for me because when you have a sense of self authorship, you know, a sense of determination, it really creates a resistance and resilience inside of yourself that can be really lasting I think.
BRI: Do you, do you find that it's the same way for you or different for you? And when you're kinda trying to like come to your own self authorship as a disabled Chicanx person?
LILAC: I think finding like comfort in the in the legacy of people who have come before me and how they've expressed their femininity and and I think that, for me being such a rebellious Spirit, like I had to find parallels that I saw strength in, you know, and some of the like the ideals of womanhood that I kind of really resonated with where the idea of like the soldaderas from the Mexican Revolution who would go around with bandoliers of bullets on their chest fighting alongside the men and often times keeping the camps. Or it could be the pachucas here who were a vibrant part of the community here in in Los Angeles during the time of the Zoot Suit Riots who were oftentimes profiled by law enforcement and mistreated but really held down their communities in amazing ways and continued to do so, you know, well into the Chicano moratorium of 1969-1970. My patron saint a woman who like gives me so much of my vision for myself and my communities and like in the future has always been Sylvia Rivera. Ever since I read the book Stonewall by Martin Duberman. It has been a book that really introduced me to Sylvia, you know, like her entire life from childhood. Not many people know that she was disabled. You know, she had several, you know conditions that like limited her physically and physical and mental health and she was a disabled Latina trans woman who really helped alongside Marsha P Johnson and a lot of these other amazing activists from The Stonewall era and the Young Lords era and shaped the movements that we are in today and really give us precedence for why we're fighting today.
It's because you know, she loved fiercely and even though she was hurt and scarred by a lot of her experiences as a stable trans woman, especially a sex worker, a justice fighter. She really had to home craft her femininity and and find a home for herself within her body where the world would not make one for her or allow her to have that place. And that sense of honoring yourself at the deepest level where you are able and willing to put up with so much of the gas lighting that we put up with as disabled people, as trans people as people of color where you're told that you're wrong about who you are, but having access to somebody who's a role model who was very headstrong and very sure of who she was-- that gives me courage, that gives me motivation to keep pursuing the same.
BRI: Yo, this is so real already! Our Black and brown disabled ancestors have a way of burying knowledge inside of us and it is only waiting to be watered by self-awareness. I know for many of us however, that self-awareness comes through loss or something life-changing. When Lilac received the news that she didn't get a job that she was banking on after needing us surprise ER visit., it was just one of the things that led her to jump start putting her ideals into action. This story is part of the context that led to her creating the Los Angeles Spoonie Collective.
LILAC: I applied for a position that was really important to me at a nonprofit that was run and started by some friends of mine. They had lined me up for an interview and the first interview was great. I think that we myself or any one could say that I did really well, knocked out of the ballpark. It was for a job to be a career advocacy counselor working with trans people of color and helping them get access to career opportunities, which is like right up my field, it was exactly what I wanted to be doing at the time and what I had experienced in doing for a very long time. I was on my way to the second interview when I had an emergency nosebleed that I ended up having to stop my Access ride and go into a hotel and I came out of that hotel bathroom in a stretcher going to the emergency room because I was having like a massive nosebleed. All my interview clothes was was like like soaked in Blood and I had to tell the person that I was going to be late to the interview as I was in the ambulance in a text. I'm getting a doctor's note, I am I want to be able to make up this interview, it's really important to me and I got ghosted.
The next week on Facebook live, I was recuperating and I was trying to like I had sent in my doctor's note and everything-- nothing. And I had seen the person go on Facebook live introducing their new career services program at there, you know, and it was another trans woman who had been very competitive with me at the first group interview. I was not even given the opportunity even though I was I was an excellent candidate. I felt disposed of, and in fact was disposed of because I was never followed up with. I think it's really, I think harmful because I thought that I would be protected in a situation because the person who ran the nonprofit was a friend of mine. It was really hurtful to feel like even the people who I
trusted and who I thought would honor that part of my truth and understand that my humanity isn't perfect and that I need space and time to be able to take care of myself when things happen that are not expected. That person didn't show up for me and make space for me to have that imperfection that they would rather have somebody who would be able to show up on time to the interview then to have somebody who actually was good for the job.
I think that's part of the culture of, when you when you expect people to perform in this way, it's especially nasty to us because we get left on the sidelines. We don't get opportunities often oftentimes, we don't even get considered for them because they think, they already discount us as you know, not being capable beforehand and that this shows up all over community. Having to perform wellness to be able to be to be even be seen as valid in any way-- whether it's for dating, whether it's for community hangouts and whether it's grassroots organizing or or anything. You're seen as somehow deficient human being, you're not able to perform at the same levels, even if you're able to contribute amazing things and even if you're able to fulfill your deliverables with you know with with accommodations, there is a lack of human empathy behind that that is kind of informed by capitalism and and informed by this idea that everyone should be a cog in a machine that once you start to break down, well we could just replace you.
Having access to these concepts of disability justice has given me, has allowed me to live, you know a more whole life where I am able to understand that I have to take care of my my body and you know, like meet my mind and my body were they're at. And that can be sometimes an arduous process, but it's also allowed me to kind of, to find my own voice, you know into a fight and to be able to make my own way and that's been really liberating to because I've been able to then create with my friends this collective where performing wellness is discouraged and we you know, we always find ways to pick up the slack when one of us needs help and I think that for me if that's what Liberation feels like in a lot of ways. Because I feel safe that if I, my body isn't performing the way that I want to, that somebody else is going to be able to have my back.
BRI: Something I've learned from them is that us disabled folks of color? We can build and shift the narrative around disability when we create collectives. It is because we know that we can lean on each other and that our strength comes from the power of community not just from one individual who championed everything on their own. So there's something I didn't mention. As if all of her bio I read before wasn't enough, Lilac is also a poet! Let's take a break with a performance, why don't we? Here she is with one of her favorites Brick by Brick:
(music fades in)
Brick by Brick
LILAC:
Bricks,
With narrow hips that house an epic tempest and swish,
With broad shoulders held high with dignified feminine poise like the goddess Athena,
Softness is your Birthright.
Bricks,
With large hands that gesticulate eloquently,
Manicured talons intact,
And with elegantly long feet perched confidently in perilously high pumps,
Femininity is your native tongue.
Bricks,
With deep voice unashamed to laugh indulgently,
With mahogany fullness as they read you for filth,
With stubborn stubble that won't submit,
Or who display their beauty and bounty boldly.
If gender is a performance, then Bravo.
Bricks,
With receded hairlines and bald spots blessed with lace front freshness,
With square jaws anointed lovingly with powder,
Bitch, you beat that mug like it's stole something.
Bricks like me,
Bricks like me aren't supposed to exist.
Brick's like me are taught to deny our Truth,
Live as men perhaps,
Never knowing the simple exhilaration of the summer breeze catching the hem of our skirt.
Bricks,
Bricks Like Me are accustomed to having your speech, their mannerisms policed since childhood,
Stop twirling your hands like a faggot,
No camines con marica!
Speak like you got a pair.
Bricks,
Bricks like me are hunted like prey,
If we don't take our lives first.
Bricks Like Me,
Are familiar with icy, revulsed stares,
Cruel whispers and hushed giggles in public,
Deafening silence, and soul wrenching isolation in private.
Bricks,
Bricks like me... sometimes our minds betray us,
Berate us, confuse us.
Bricks Like Me,
Your binary couldn't hold us,
Passing culture couldn't detain us and your hatred could not break us.
Bricks like me?
We paved the road for Liberation.
Bricks like me,
We create Bridges towards access.
Bricks Like Me,
Reform the pillars of Institutions.
Bricks like me?
We are the movements Foundation.
Bricks like me,
We will assemble the future,
Brick by Brick.
(music fades out)
BRI: Wow, my community is dripping with Brilliance and I can't believe I get to Showcase it! There's something that's been on my mind lately, and I've been talking about it with my therapist. We talked about being enough. Being enough as a Black person, being enough as a disabled person, being enough as a non-binary alien.
And while it's easy enough to fall into the trap of internalized racism, cisexism and ableism, what's more fulfilling is developing ways to show up authentically in the world. What's even more fulfilling... are the ways that you create that self of your dreams.
Some of the most brilliant parts of this interview came from us talking about self authorship and the ways that disabled folks of color recreate themselves into a new understanding. So what is the meaning of self-authorship for a Latinx disabled, trans person? Listen in as we talk about it:
LILAC: When you are left out of, I think, so many of the mainstream ideas of what it means to be normal or successful person you automatically at first, If you're anything like me, you try to like cram yourself into this, you know? There's this idea that I kind of got from, I do a lot of disability justice and eating disorder advocacy. And one of the things I learned was: you cannot deny who you are. You cannot deny the truths of the vessel you embody, and the spirit that you have inside of you. You cannot deny those truths.
I still have my life in front of me and I still want to live a good life. I still want to be able to work through some of the dreams that I have. If I don't fit into this this framework of what it means to be a productive and healthy and valuable person, then I get to define it for myself and I then get to play by a different set of rules because I can conceive of new realities.
I've had to kind of like creatively craft everything about my life, you know, from my gender to my career as a historian. Whenever I would find little bits of information about people who are also disabled, It would, I think, that it would maybe like, make me feel like there was a possibility for me to still create a life that has worth and meaning and where I can you know find happiness and wholeness and still contribute to society and in a way that I wanted to.
BRI: Something that I really loved about what you said, I think you might have been on the "Chronicles" podcast, but you said something to the effect of, I wrote it down because I just had to, I just had to have it written down somewhere. You basically said "I reattribute the energy of being at war with myself towards Joy instead." and I just was like PHEW! That just brings me to all sorts of places! I am so interested to know what is, what is bringing you Joy these days? Like what are you reattributing this energy, this possibly negative or destructive energy that you may have, towards joy?
LILAC: I am a mental health educator at Fireweed Collective. It's an amazing job-- the most accommodating job I've ever had and recently my colleagues were like, well you've been going through a lot. You've been having a lot things going on and we can tell you're starting to fray at the edges a little bit. We need to encourage you to like, take some time for yourself. And so they actually gave me a week paid off of work to take care of myself. It was really amazing because it made me feel like I was given the opportunity to recommit some of the anxiety around work, to care for myself because I know that I have only so many spoons in a day and almost as much capacity and a lot of that gets eaten up by this inner turmoil of performing Wellness.
What I was able to do is take this week and actually, actually rest. I got to play my favorite game Animal Crossing and indulge in some of that, which is great because it's like it's just kind of like my mindless enjoyment or if you just like disconnect for a while and indulge in fantasy. I've also been especially spending a lot of time with, you know, oftentimes because we're all spoonies, like through the phone or FaceTime or you know Zoom or whatever we can with other other disabled trans femmes and being able to like find, like joy and just like being around each other and letting loose and not having to you know worry about you know, like how we are presenting in a certain way because we are just able to be ourselves and I find so much so much joy in that just sharing space with you know with a you know, like with with with other Femmes who know what it's like to like to carry this experience, you know?
I have like a lot of really great femme disabled friends of color who I, you know, Sometimes have you know, like we sometimes have difficulty like finding time because we are all marginalized people, you know? But like whenever we do, it's magic, you know? And it feeds, and it feeds my spirit. One of the blessings of being disabled is that oftentimes, I'm like laid up in bed, like, not feeling so great and what helps me get over my nausea, but, you know texting my besties and being able to see what's going on and offering support.
That is so important for me, for my joy, because a large part of my joy is knowing that I'm that I am taking from my community, joy from my community, but also replenishing that with, and reciprocating that Joy back.
BRI: I want to know Lilac: What is your disabled power? And how do you imagine using it to survive during these times?
LILAC: I'm really excited that you asked because I've actually been listening to your podcast since the beginning and I have always loved this question and I always thought very deeply about it. And at first I thought that I would be like an antihero and I would use empathy as my as my super-power. I would get people to feel like the horrible shit they do to other people and get that to like, I guess like, get them to freeze in their tracks and be like "I shouldn't do this, it feels terrible", you know? but then I thought about it more and I thought about, you know, like the fact that I don't want to be remembered for somebody who is vengeful.
I want to be remembered as somebody who embodied radical love. And I think that one of the most important facets of radical love is radical vulnerability. I think that for me, as somebody who has oftentimes felt very vulnerable in in public, I think that it's shown me that vulnerability is not a status of weakness. It is actually a, you know, a conduit for strength. Because I'm able to, through this experience of opening myself up to people, even though it subjects me to to some possible, you know like harm, it also is so such an such an amazing point of connection to other people who may have similar experiences or who have capacity for empathy and love. People are expected to perform not only Wellness, but perform, you know, like, stoicism, and perform callousness and you know, all these things which is fundamentally unhealthy for for us in most cases.
I think that for me, acting out that vulnerability has been like, it at first feels really scary because I don't know what I'm jumping into and I'm having to invest a lot of trust. It's like a muscle and the strength that you, that you start to build builds strength little by little. As you practice it, you learn to feel at home in your feelings and be able to access those feelings in a mindful way where you're able to be inquisitive about where they come from and then share your perspective of another person.
BRI: Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. I love that. You've got strong vulnerability muscles. I love that image.
LILAC: Yeah, my vulnerability is buff.
BRI: (laughs) Yeah, that's a, that's a perfect title. I'm going to use that okay? My vulnerability is buff! I don't have any other questions, but I am wondering if you would like to plug some of your work for the people? Tell me where, you know, people can find you or they can access your zines.
LILAC: Oh sure! You can find my presence on Instagram at boldly dot femme. That's B-O-L-D-L-Y dot F-E-M-M-E, and you can find LA Spoonie Collective on Instagram at LA dot spoonie collective.
BRI: Well, I feel like you blessed me today. So thank you for this.
(music fades in)
BRI: I have always appreciated that Lilac is so strong in their commitment to community. It’s part of why I reached out to her in the first place. I think her buff vulnerability power is yet another thing that disabled people of color cultivate to survive the constant barrage of marginalization. I know I do, on the daily… Before this current COVID quarantine time, my radical vulnerability would sometimes come out when I actually acted on my needs and told an able-bodied person how to respect me and how to respect other disabled folks in the future. I can’t believe how many times people have told me about my body in the six years that I have been disabled. It is only through my community that I have survived this long! I appreciate you all so much!
I loved what Lilac had to say about survival in the context of power. That it is her desire for other disabled people to be empowered in the same ways that she seeks to be empowered everyday. It takes guts to live in this world when you have to shape your very own being because of the pervasive power of ableism. Now that I’m done editing the episode, I am actually thinking of the ways that I shape myself to shield myself in this world. What are the ways in which you shape and create yourself as a disabled person of color? I’d love to hear from you! Hit me up at powernotpity@gmail.com.
If you, dear listener, like this episode and feel so called to support this Black, disabled, nonbinary alien prince, check out my Patreon! I’m working on it, but it always means a shoutout at the top of each episode, exclusive takeaway videos, and ways to get involved with the show, from voting on the next guest and a chance to talk back to each guest after the episode drop. Like what you hear? Head to www.patreon.com/powernotpity to learn more!
As always, you can find more about Power Not Pity, including transcripts, at www.powernotpity.com. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at the handle powernotpity.
Thanks so much for listening!
(music fades out)
THEME CHANT: Power power power not pity pity pity power power power not pity pity pity.
(electronic music fades in)
BRI: Welcome to another episode of Power Not Pity! This is for all disabled people of color to feel respected and reflected, and I share their stories with one sole aim-- creating more community. I’m so glad you’re here! My friend Lilac Vylette Maldonado is coming on the show for this episode and If it seems like I’m only interviewing my friends this season, you might be right! Haha, it’s only because I want to share their brilliance with you. We are world builders, shape shifters, and ones who cultivate power through our very existence. We... are the culture roots of the future.
But before we get into it, I’d like to give a special shout out to my Patreon supporters this month, Shreya Shah, Naomi Cartier, and Manny Rivera. Big thanks to the three of you, your support means the world to me! Patrons receive extra access to the show through exclusive posts and takeaway videos. If you, dear listener, would like to get a little closer to the show and want a little more crip love in your life, check out my Patreon account! That’s www.patreon.com/powernotpity.
So Lilac and I go a long way back. All the way back to right before this podcast debuted in 2017! I had received a copy of her zine, Access Granted, from another disabled friend of mine and the rest as they say is history--or should I say cripstory? (chuckles) Y'all already know how corny I am!
After I received her zine, I knew I had to get in touch with her because her work really taught me about the principles of disability justice in a really cool way.
Here’s a little bit about Lilac:
As a community organizer and culture worker who identifies as a sick & disabled, neurodivergent, Two-Spirit, Chicanx femme, she has been actively organizing since 2009 around many intersectional social justice issues such as racial justice, gender justice, disability justice, LGBTQIA+ issues, and body autonomy and acceptance. They are an avid zinester who has written and created artwork for various academic and social justice themed DIY booklets. She is a co-founding member of, core team member and logistics coordinator for the Los Angeles Spoonie Collective, a grassroots disability justice group connecting disabled activists and artists to community organizing and education opportunities. They are also a part of the education team at Fireweed Collective, offering mental health education and mutual aid through a healing justice lens. She serves on the Board of Directors for Reclaim UGLY, educating local and global communities about uglifiction, and inviting them to uplift, love, and glorify themselves. Outside of work, they are an avid history buff, an adventurous multimedia artist, a lifelong pop culture geek, and a loving mom to three black cats. So remember that zine that taught me so much about her and about disability justice? We start our conversation there, talking about the community that means so much to the both of us.
(electronic music fades out)
BRI: When I started to come into my understanding as a disabled person, I found out about the disability Justice community and you know, it was just like whoa, I can be a part of this? You know? I can I can be a part of a group of people where we all come from the basic understanding that like Patty Berne and Leroy Moore and Mia Mingus and all these really notable, like, amazing, brilliant and beautiful disabled people of color have said, you know, like all bodies are whole, we come to each other, where we meet each other where we're at. I just I just love that and I feel like our friendship is also based on that principle. I just love that too because it really changes the way that we communicate with each other, in and the ways that we care for each other too.
LILAC: Bringing back the emphasis on its you know for us by us. Our needs come first, Our bodies are honored our stories are sacred and so it's just been a place for me to be able to find wholeness within my lived experience as a disabled person and it's been really given me a lot of framework for understanding where I fit in this world, you know, which is a little bit bananas right now and it's been really just a liberatory like perspective that's given me a whole lot of more room more room to focus my energy on on creating positive change for myself my community.
So that's the disability Justice to me. It's been it's just it's just been a way to uplift me and meet my mom actually needs and all right for me to stand with the people who you know share similar experiences to me.
BRI: I know you fit into a lot of different communities and one thing that we talked about in your survey was this just idea of being a femme. How would you say your identity as a disabled person of color fits into your identity as a femme?
LILAC: Well, yeah, I identify as like a Two-Spirit trans woman and that's my my gender identity and I've always kind of had a femme gender expression my entire life. For me that has always been something tied to femininity. There's been something sacred in healing and something this always called to me about it because of the amazing women that I had in my life that shaped me and I think that as a disabled person and it adds a layer of complexity, even you know, on top of being trans because being trans and two spirit is, it has one layer of complexity where you are not accepted for the body that you're seen in because you're automatically clocked as being you know, one of these things is not like the other, you know, you don't fit into that main Narrative of what it means to be a woman or you know femme, but femme doesn't really exist in the popular lexicon, but I think that that you're automatically like seeing as and other. but when you are Disabled on top of that you have I think, internalized ableism, which I for me shows up and informing ways that I think that I cannot that I am not woman enough or I am not trans enough or I'm not feminine enough. I can't wear high heels. I can't cinch my waist like other femmes do. I can't wear certain garments. I have a lot of scars, I have a lot of, you know, like things that I think mark me as other and for a long time disallowed me from being able to see myself within the you know, the spectrum of femininity because I thought that these things marked me as masculine or marked my body as as this non-gendered being because I'm often times as a disabled person seen as not a whole person. They don't see my gender because that's not I think the on the forefront of their mind. They may see my disability first and because I'm visibly disabled, I walk with a cane and I think that that shows up with me feeling like I'm never... I'm never good enough to feel like a woman and so then if I allow that very limited view of womanhood and femmehood to define me, I'll never find myself within it.
So I have to have been redefine what womanhood, and what transness and Two-Spirit identity and all these things and and find ways to interpret them through my own possibilities and find ways to celebrate them in my body that meet me where I'm at and don't pressure me to conform to things that will actually be harmful for me. That's been a big reservoir of strength for me because I always had to be creative in how I approach my femininity and I've always had to like craft my femininity in a very intentional way because I can't just go to the mall and pick out any dress and heels and just go out and feel in my body and feel like feel affirmed by that. I have to find other ways for me that has been grounding my femininity outside of my body. I had to find a way to find a home in femme that fit me. I couldn't wait to be invited by others. I had to find a way to conceive of myself with it.
And that for me was really healing instead of limiting because then I saw that nobody could constrict my definition of what it meant to be femme-- that lives inside of me and it and it radiates outside. And however it looked that day I was still femme, even if I was wrapped up in bandages I'd still be femme. And that's something that that has been such a source of strength for me because when you have a sense of self authorship, you know, a sense of determination, it really creates a resistance and resilience inside of yourself that can be really lasting I think.
BRI: Do you, do you find that it's the same way for you or different for you? And when you're kinda trying to like come to your own self authorship as a disabled Chicanx person?
LILAC: I think finding like comfort in the in the legacy of people who have come before me and how they've expressed their femininity and and I think that, for me being such a rebellious Spirit, like I had to find parallels that I saw strength in, you know, and some of the like the ideals of womanhood that I kind of really resonated with where the idea of like the soldaderas from the Mexican Revolution who would go around with bandoliers of bullets on their chest fighting alongside the men and often times keeping the camps. Or it could be the pachucas here who were a vibrant part of the community here in in Los Angeles during the time of the Zoot Suit Riots who were oftentimes profiled by law enforcement and mistreated but really held down their communities in amazing ways and continued to do so, you know, well into the Chicano moratorium of 1969-1970. My patron saint a woman who like gives me so much of my vision for myself and my communities and like in the future has always been Sylvia Rivera. Ever since I read the book Stonewall by Martin Duberman. It has been a book that really introduced me to Sylvia, you know, like her entire life from childhood. Not many people know that she was disabled. You know, she had several, you know conditions that like limited her physically and physical and mental health and she was a disabled Latina trans woman who really helped alongside Marsha P Johnson and a lot of these other amazing activists from The Stonewall era and the Young Lords era and shaped the movements that we are in today and really give us precedence for why we're fighting today.
It's because you know, she loved fiercely and even though she was hurt and scarred by a lot of her experiences as a stable trans woman, especially a sex worker, a justice fighter. She really had to home craft her femininity and and find a home for herself within her body where the world would not make one for her or allow her to have that place. And that sense of honoring yourself at the deepest level where you are able and willing to put up with so much of the gas lighting that we put up with as disabled people, as trans people as people of color where you're told that you're wrong about who you are, but having access to somebody who's a role model who was very headstrong and very sure of who she was-- that gives me courage, that gives me motivation to keep pursuing the same.
BRI: Yo, this is so real already! Our Black and brown disabled ancestors have a way of burying knowledge inside of us and it is only waiting to be watered by self-awareness. I know for many of us however, that self-awareness comes through loss or something life-changing. When Lilac received the news that she didn't get a job that she was banking on after needing us surprise ER visit., it was just one of the things that led her to jump start putting her ideals into action. This story is part of the context that led to her creating the Los Angeles Spoonie Collective.
LILAC: I applied for a position that was really important to me at a nonprofit that was run and started by some friends of mine. They had lined me up for an interview and the first interview was great. I think that we myself or any one could say that I did really well, knocked out of the ballpark. It was for a job to be a career advocacy counselor working with trans people of color and helping them get access to career opportunities, which is like right up my field, it was exactly what I wanted to be doing at the time and what I had experienced in doing for a very long time. I was on my way to the second interview when I had an emergency nosebleed that I ended up having to stop my Access ride and go into a hotel and I came out of that hotel bathroom in a stretcher going to the emergency room because I was having like a massive nosebleed. All my interview clothes was was like like soaked in Blood and I had to tell the person that I was going to be late to the interview as I was in the ambulance in a text. I'm getting a doctor's note, I am I want to be able to make up this interview, it's really important to me and I got ghosted.
The next week on Facebook live, I was recuperating and I was trying to like I had sent in my doctor's note and everything-- nothing. And I had seen the person go on Facebook live introducing their new career services program at there, you know, and it was another trans woman who had been very competitive with me at the first group interview. I was not even given the opportunity even though I was I was an excellent candidate. I felt disposed of, and in fact was disposed of because I was never followed up with. I think it's really, I think harmful because I thought that I would be protected in a situation because the person who ran the nonprofit was a friend of mine. It was really hurtful to feel like even the people who I
trusted and who I thought would honor that part of my truth and understand that my humanity isn't perfect and that I need space and time to be able to take care of myself when things happen that are not expected. That person didn't show up for me and make space for me to have that imperfection that they would rather have somebody who would be able to show up on time to the interview then to have somebody who actually was good for the job.
I think that's part of the culture of, when you when you expect people to perform in this way, it's especially nasty to us because we get left on the sidelines. We don't get opportunities often oftentimes, we don't even get considered for them because they think, they already discount us as you know, not being capable beforehand and that this shows up all over community. Having to perform wellness to be able to be to be even be seen as valid in any way-- whether it's for dating, whether it's for community hangouts and whether it's grassroots organizing or or anything. You're seen as somehow deficient human being, you're not able to perform at the same levels, even if you're able to contribute amazing things and even if you're able to fulfill your deliverables with you know with with accommodations, there is a lack of human empathy behind that that is kind of informed by capitalism and and informed by this idea that everyone should be a cog in a machine that once you start to break down, well we could just replace you.
Having access to these concepts of disability justice has given me, has allowed me to live, you know a more whole life where I am able to understand that I have to take care of my my body and you know, like meet my mind and my body were they're at. And that can be sometimes an arduous process, but it's also allowed me to kind of, to find my own voice, you know into a fight and to be able to make my own way and that's been really liberating to because I've been able to then create with my friends this collective where performing wellness is discouraged and we you know, we always find ways to pick up the slack when one of us needs help and I think that for me if that's what Liberation feels like in a lot of ways. Because I feel safe that if I, my body isn't performing the way that I want to, that somebody else is going to be able to have my back.
BRI: Something I've learned from them is that us disabled folks of color? We can build and shift the narrative around disability when we create collectives. It is because we know that we can lean on each other and that our strength comes from the power of community not just from one individual who championed everything on their own. So there's something I didn't mention. As if all of her bio I read before wasn't enough, Lilac is also a poet! Let's take a break with a performance, why don't we? Here she is with one of her favorites Brick by Brick:
(music fades in)
Brick by Brick
LILAC:
Bricks,
With narrow hips that house an epic tempest and swish,
With broad shoulders held high with dignified feminine poise like the goddess Athena,
Softness is your Birthright.
Bricks,
With large hands that gesticulate eloquently,
Manicured talons intact,
And with elegantly long feet perched confidently in perilously high pumps,
Femininity is your native tongue.
Bricks,
With deep voice unashamed to laugh indulgently,
With mahogany fullness as they read you for filth,
With stubborn stubble that won't submit,
Or who display their beauty and bounty boldly.
If gender is a performance, then Bravo.
Bricks,
With receded hairlines and bald spots blessed with lace front freshness,
With square jaws anointed lovingly with powder,
Bitch, you beat that mug like it's stole something.
Bricks like me,
Bricks like me aren't supposed to exist.
Brick's like me are taught to deny our Truth,
Live as men perhaps,
Never knowing the simple exhilaration of the summer breeze catching the hem of our skirt.
Bricks,
Bricks Like Me are accustomed to having your speech, their mannerisms policed since childhood,
Stop twirling your hands like a faggot,
No camines con marica!
Speak like you got a pair.
Bricks,
Bricks like me are hunted like prey,
If we don't take our lives first.
Bricks Like Me,
Are familiar with icy, revulsed stares,
Cruel whispers and hushed giggles in public,
Deafening silence, and soul wrenching isolation in private.
Bricks,
Bricks like me... sometimes our minds betray us,
Berate us, confuse us.
Bricks Like Me,
Your binary couldn't hold us,
Passing culture couldn't detain us and your hatred could not break us.
Bricks like me?
We paved the road for Liberation.
Bricks like me,
We create Bridges towards access.
Bricks Like Me,
Reform the pillars of Institutions.
Bricks like me?
We are the movements Foundation.
Bricks like me,
We will assemble the future,
Brick by Brick.
(music fades out)
BRI: Wow, my community is dripping with Brilliance and I can't believe I get to Showcase it! There's something that's been on my mind lately, and I've been talking about it with my therapist. We talked about being enough. Being enough as a Black person, being enough as a disabled person, being enough as a non-binary alien.
And while it's easy enough to fall into the trap of internalized racism, cisexism and ableism, what's more fulfilling is developing ways to show up authentically in the world. What's even more fulfilling... are the ways that you create that self of your dreams.
Some of the most brilliant parts of this interview came from us talking about self authorship and the ways that disabled folks of color recreate themselves into a new understanding. So what is the meaning of self-authorship for a Latinx disabled, trans person? Listen in as we talk about it:
LILAC: When you are left out of, I think, so many of the mainstream ideas of what it means to be normal or successful person you automatically at first, If you're anything like me, you try to like cram yourself into this, you know? There's this idea that I kind of got from, I do a lot of disability justice and eating disorder advocacy. And one of the things I learned was: you cannot deny who you are. You cannot deny the truths of the vessel you embody, and the spirit that you have inside of you. You cannot deny those truths.
I still have my life in front of me and I still want to live a good life. I still want to be able to work through some of the dreams that I have. If I don't fit into this this framework of what it means to be a productive and healthy and valuable person, then I get to define it for myself and I then get to play by a different set of rules because I can conceive of new realities.
I've had to kind of like creatively craft everything about my life, you know, from my gender to my career as a historian. Whenever I would find little bits of information about people who are also disabled, It would, I think, that it would maybe like, make me feel like there was a possibility for me to still create a life that has worth and meaning and where I can you know find happiness and wholeness and still contribute to society and in a way that I wanted to.
BRI: Something that I really loved about what you said, I think you might have been on the "Chronicles" podcast, but you said something to the effect of, I wrote it down because I just had to, I just had to have it written down somewhere. You basically said "I reattribute the energy of being at war with myself towards Joy instead." and I just was like PHEW! That just brings me to all sorts of places! I am so interested to know what is, what is bringing you Joy these days? Like what are you reattributing this energy, this possibly negative or destructive energy that you may have, towards joy?
LILAC: I am a mental health educator at Fireweed Collective. It's an amazing job-- the most accommodating job I've ever had and recently my colleagues were like, well you've been going through a lot. You've been having a lot things going on and we can tell you're starting to fray at the edges a little bit. We need to encourage you to like, take some time for yourself. And so they actually gave me a week paid off of work to take care of myself. It was really amazing because it made me feel like I was given the opportunity to recommit some of the anxiety around work, to care for myself because I know that I have only so many spoons in a day and almost as much capacity and a lot of that gets eaten up by this inner turmoil of performing Wellness.
What I was able to do is take this week and actually, actually rest. I got to play my favorite game Animal Crossing and indulge in some of that, which is great because it's like it's just kind of like my mindless enjoyment or if you just like disconnect for a while and indulge in fantasy. I've also been especially spending a lot of time with, you know, oftentimes because we're all spoonies, like through the phone or FaceTime or you know Zoom or whatever we can with other other disabled trans femmes and being able to like find, like joy and just like being around each other and letting loose and not having to you know worry about you know, like how we are presenting in a certain way because we are just able to be ourselves and I find so much so much joy in that just sharing space with you know with a you know, like with with with other Femmes who know what it's like to like to carry this experience, you know?
I have like a lot of really great femme disabled friends of color who I, you know, Sometimes have you know, like we sometimes have difficulty like finding time because we are all marginalized people, you know? But like whenever we do, it's magic, you know? And it feeds, and it feeds my spirit. One of the blessings of being disabled is that oftentimes, I'm like laid up in bed, like, not feeling so great and what helps me get over my nausea, but, you know texting my besties and being able to see what's going on and offering support.
That is so important for me, for my joy, because a large part of my joy is knowing that I'm that I am taking from my community, joy from my community, but also replenishing that with, and reciprocating that Joy back.
BRI: I want to know Lilac: What is your disabled power? And how do you imagine using it to survive during these times?
LILAC: I'm really excited that you asked because I've actually been listening to your podcast since the beginning and I have always loved this question and I always thought very deeply about it. And at first I thought that I would be like an antihero and I would use empathy as my as my super-power. I would get people to feel like the horrible shit they do to other people and get that to like, I guess like, get them to freeze in their tracks and be like "I shouldn't do this, it feels terrible", you know? but then I thought about it more and I thought about, you know, like the fact that I don't want to be remembered for somebody who is vengeful.
I want to be remembered as somebody who embodied radical love. And I think that one of the most important facets of radical love is radical vulnerability. I think that for me, as somebody who has oftentimes felt very vulnerable in in public, I think that it's shown me that vulnerability is not a status of weakness. It is actually a, you know, a conduit for strength. Because I'm able to, through this experience of opening myself up to people, even though it subjects me to to some possible, you know like harm, it also is so such an such an amazing point of connection to other people who may have similar experiences or who have capacity for empathy and love. People are expected to perform not only Wellness, but perform, you know, like, stoicism, and perform callousness and you know, all these things which is fundamentally unhealthy for for us in most cases.
I think that for me, acting out that vulnerability has been like, it at first feels really scary because I don't know what I'm jumping into and I'm having to invest a lot of trust. It's like a muscle and the strength that you, that you start to build builds strength little by little. As you practice it, you learn to feel at home in your feelings and be able to access those feelings in a mindful way where you're able to be inquisitive about where they come from and then share your perspective of another person.
BRI: Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. I love that. You've got strong vulnerability muscles. I love that image.
LILAC: Yeah, my vulnerability is buff.
BRI: (laughs) Yeah, that's a, that's a perfect title. I'm going to use that okay? My vulnerability is buff! I don't have any other questions, but I am wondering if you would like to plug some of your work for the people? Tell me where, you know, people can find you or they can access your zines.
LILAC: Oh sure! You can find my presence on Instagram at boldly dot femme. That's B-O-L-D-L-Y dot F-E-M-M-E, and you can find LA Spoonie Collective on Instagram at LA dot spoonie collective.
BRI: Well, I feel like you blessed me today. So thank you for this.
(music fades in)
BRI: I have always appreciated that Lilac is so strong in their commitment to community. It’s part of why I reached out to her in the first place. I think her buff vulnerability power is yet another thing that disabled people of color cultivate to survive the constant barrage of marginalization. I know I do, on the daily… Before this current COVID quarantine time, my radical vulnerability would sometimes come out when I actually acted on my needs and told an able-bodied person how to respect me and how to respect other disabled folks in the future. I can’t believe how many times people have told me about my body in the six years that I have been disabled. It is only through my community that I have survived this long! I appreciate you all so much!
I loved what Lilac had to say about survival in the context of power. That it is her desire for other disabled people to be empowered in the same ways that she seeks to be empowered everyday. It takes guts to live in this world when you have to shape your very own being because of the pervasive power of ableism. Now that I’m done editing the episode, I am actually thinking of the ways that I shape myself to shield myself in this world. What are the ways in which you shape and create yourself as a disabled person of color? I’d love to hear from you! Hit me up at powernotpity@gmail.com.
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Thanks so much for listening!
(music fades out)