Seethe

An acquaintance of mine is putting together a photography show, originally planned to be a display of queer female-bodied people in relationships. She started out with the expressed goal of showing couples of all kinds, combinations and identities.

I had thought LT and I would be a fun addition to the show. Not only would we be supporting a young photographer in her first show, but we are probably a fairly rare (at least rare in Pittsburgh) example of a couple comprised of two female-bodied people both with alternate gender identities. Unfortunately, by the time we learned about the show LT was gone from Pittsburgh, so half of the couple was missing.

After a little while, though, the photographer had some difficulty getting quite enough couples, and began including some individuals. So, I volunteered to be photographed, because I figured I could provide a unique subject that is a bit scarce in these parts, thereby allowing her to represent a wider range of identities in the show. She was grateful--she told me that the vast majority of people agreeing to be in the show were femmy, obviously female-identified people. She did have one other person who often performed in drag, but that was about it in terms of alternate expressions of identity.

Today, she called and said that she had decided not to include either me or the drag performer. Her reasoning was that all the other pictures were going to be of happy, smiling, romantic women, and these just wouldn't fit.

Really, just typing those words makes me fucking MAD!

I tried explaining to her that presenting with a trans identity wasn't all drum glum seriousness, that actually discovering this and being free to be who you are is a happy thing. I had actually very much been looking forward to being able to have representation of happy trans people--I would've been downright ecstatic if LT had been here and we could have had pictures of two alternately-gendered people happily being together.

It wouldn't sink in. She used the cop out that with just a few pictures of trans identities in the show, she wouldn't be doing them justice, it would be an insufficient representation of "the subject".

OK, so not representing trans people at all IS sufficient? It IS doing us justice? F that S. Seriously, if you want to do a photo shoot that is just women-identified people, that's fine--you're the artist, you have the right to put in your show whatever you want, and leave out whatever you want. But don't tout that it's an inclusive show to represent all varieties of identity, then leave out the ones that you're not comfortable with and don't understand. And then make it sound like you're doing us a fucking favor by leaving us out.

NOT.

COOL.