Tag: Identity

From Summer to Isaiah

Where do I belong?

Where do I fit in?

I feel that I was born in the wrong skin

People make me feel as if I am living in sin

Should I wear clothes that society binds me in?

Maybe I should wear something Feminine

If I did, maybe it would stop my feelings from within

Feeling like I am trapped in a small room where the air is thin

I just want to be me… in my meant to be skin  

Shedding the skin to be me Isaiah

Artist’s Statement

Isaiah in front of the transgender flag. All rights reserved.

For my narrative, I have decided to write a poem over my interview with Isaiah Morey. Isaiah is transgender, female to male. I have known him since he was still going by Summer, so about three years.  I had seen some of the things that he had gone through while they were happening, but never really knew how bad it was. For example, people were calling him derogatory names, and I had heard this. Someone ripped up his artwork and threw it in the trash, he had spent four months on that piece. He had names written on his locker, and his car vandalized. Having this interview was a very good experience for me. It opened up my eyes to see what really goes on, and I was able to gain insight into his personal convictions and the events that were happening in his life. It really opened my eyes for what transgender people go through on a day to day basis. I have always been a close-minded person, but talking to someone about their experiences in life has changed that for the better. I now look at people through a different lens, and realize that everyone is struggling with something. As for Isaiah, we were mostly just acquaintances, but now we have become very close friends.

The poem is about the personal struggle that Isaiah felt growing up. He felt that he was more masculine than feminine. He started struggling to find who he was as a person early on, around middle school. He had always worn masculine clothes and had his hair cut short even when he was Summer. He never felt that he identified with being a girl or being a lesbian. Even though he felt that he was a man, he went by Summer, his birth name, and lived as a lesbian. He had a lot of trouble with the school that he went to. Isaiah attended a Lutheran high school in Kansas City. The teachers at that school always singled him out and used him as a prop to show kids how not to be. The school put him in at-risk religion classes since the staff said that he had “homosexual tendencies”. The staff wanted him to conform and be who he was born, Summer, a girl. He was kicked out of his own dance for wearing a suit and tie and bringing his girlfriend. When his car, locker, and art were vandalized nothing was done, and the staff even continued to bully him.

The next five lines represent his inner struggle with identity. In the interview, he talked about how he would wear a dress to school just to give it a chance. He was reaffirming that this was the way that it was supposed to be. “I would purposely go and go to school, like wearing a dress or wearing something like really feminine or whatever”[07:37].    The rest of the poem talks about people’s actions and reaction. The students at his school would say hurtful things about him. The students also would vandalize his locker with hateful messages and tear his artwork off the walls. His car was vandalized on multiple occasions, and the school would not do anything about it. There were many instances where the school could have stepped in, but nothing happened. Isaiah was being victimized and nothing was being done, due to the fact that what he believed went against the school’s religion.

Isaiah’s testosterone shots . All rights reserved.

I found this very sad because we are supposed to love all people and help them despite beliefs or personal convictions. All the experiences that Isaiah faced were very unfortunate. He still faces problems like that even though he had graduated and is out of that school. There are instances that happen at work and out in public. Personally, in order to keep this from happening, people need to learn tolerance. We may all have our beliefs but that is no reason to cause emotional or physical harm to another person. This interview has helped me to better understand some of the struggles that transgender people face in the community. If anything, this assignment has taught me to embrace all differences and to advocate for those whose voice is not being heard.

Relating the Narrative Back to Our Course

The Nazis would push their agenda over on the citizens of Germany and surrounding countries persecuting those who were Jewish or homosexual. Since they had power over the people, they would slowly bring in ways to persecute, and it was not all at once. Starting with wearing the star of David stitched into the Jewish peoples clothes, then gradually taking over Jewish owned businesses and rounding them up and even getting the Polish people on board to help turn in Jewish people. In this course we have read and watched content that has depicted this. In Lacombe, Lucien by Louis Malle, Lucien is French but joins the Gestapo to help round up members of the underground. This is an example of the power that Nazis had even over in other countries. Also in Maus by Art Spiegelman, we see Vladek desperately trying to hide his family and survive the Nazis occupying Poland. They receive help from the Polish, but the Polish also start turning Jews in to protect themselves from harm. This is an example of the Nazis influence of non-Jewish people.

Personal art in support of Isaiah. All rights reserved.

Years later we still see persecution in our society. Even though it is not mass genocide like we saw during World War II and the Holocaust, it still continues today. Whether it is a friend, or a story that we see in the media, it exists all around us. As humans we need to treat people with the dignity they deserve. We need to learn to be more open-minded and willing to understand someone’s personal struggle.

Floating

There they sit, on a grassy knoll

Peering up to what is beyond

Stars freckle the sky, forming the

Constellations: Virgo, Leo.


Venus and Mars shine together,

There is little room between

There they sit, all alone, feeling

As if they do not belong there.


Discomfort, dysphoria, do

They even belong here? “Perhaps,

I would be better off floating

In space,” they think, feeling empty.


Softly, they close their eyes, trying

To imagine the space between

The planets, slowly feeling

At home. The emptiness disappears.


They don’t need to belong. They are.

Author’s Statement:

I chose to write a poem inspired by my OHP interview because poems mean a lot to both me and my interview partner. My two main inspirations for my poems are Sylvia Plath and Warsan Shire.

Sylvia Plath was a lesbian poet who wrote poems about the persecution of Jews in the Holocaust, as well as concentration camps (See “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy”). Her poems usually deal with her lack of romantic interest in men, her depression, suicidal tendencies, and also her familial issues between her, her mother, and her deceased father. She was integral to my journey to accept myself, and one of my favorite poets of all time.

Warsan Shire is a black poet who was born in Kenya, but now lives in Los Angeles. Her poems deal with gender, refugees, and toxic relationships. My interview partner introduced me to Shire and I’ve been entranced by her poems ever since. My interview partner has also found inspiration from Warsan Shire, painting a portrait inspired from Shire’s poems “For Women Who Are Difficult To Love” and “Intuition”.

Jennifer Fraley, Portrait of my Interviewee, Kansas City, February 2019, All rights reserved.

I interviewed my interviewee in reference to the Holocaust due to the fact that gender played a huge role to the treatment of prisoners in concentration camps and death camps. A specific example of this was mentioned in our class by Dr. Jill Klein. She informed us about how, when women arrived in the camps, their heads were completely shorn. This was a drastic and unwanted change to their appearance that made the women feel like their identity was stolen from them. It was extremely demoralizing. Another change that was disastrous for the women victim’s identity was the effect of starvation on their body. They lost all curves and femininity of their body. This was extremely dehumanizing, because these women no longer appeared as the women they identified as.

Having lost a integral part of yourself such as gender identity is detrimental to one’s identity, their self-worth, and, as a whole, their mental health. When comparing my interviewee’s struggle with their gender, I see a lot of similarities between what they said, and what the Jews in camps said about their own loss of identity. I am going out of my way to state that, I am not comparing my interviewee’s suffering to the Jews’ suffering in the concentration camps. I am exclusively referring to their appearance and the effects of that appearance on their identity.

Dr. Klein mentioned how the women in the concentration camps felt “formless”, or that they appeared like a man when in the camps. This is because of the previously mentioned starvation that they had to endure. The loss of most, if not all, of their bodily fat rendered their form far less feminine than when they entered. My interviewee mentioned how their “goal body type is to be completely formless” (06:11). For them, the fact that they have feminine bodily features is similarly distressing to how these women victims felt losing these same features.

Dr. Klein also mentioned that these women victims often would skip meals in order to preserve their feminine identity. In the early to mid 1940s, it was not commonly known that starvation caused amenorrhea. Instead, the female victims in the camps believed the Nazis were poisoning their food in order to make them infertile. At this time, having children was a massive part of the feminine identity, and the idea of becoming sterile was like losing an integral piece of themselves. These women would often reject what little food they received in order to preserve their identity as a woman.

These tendencies towards harming oneself, intentionally or unintentionally, in an attempt to achieve or maintain a gender identity is unfortunately common. My interview partner mentions their struggles, “I would wear three sports bras and I would fold them all down so that I would have no chest.” (03:16) At first glance, this doesn’t seem dangerous, but constricting the ribcage in this manner can have serious consequences. It can lead to difficulty breathing, and an increased risk of dislocating or even damaging the ribcage.

When I authored this poem, I wanted to focus on themes of space, a feeling of not belonging, and loneliness. These were the main things I felt that my interview partner experienced with their struggles and the recurrent idea of “floating in space” (00:45) between genders. I wanted to convey that to my reader, so I went for a more literal interpretation. I chose to specifically mention Leo and Virgo, as those are constellations that have implied genders. Virgo representing a motherly woman, and Leo as a male lion. Similarly, Mars is a Roman symbol of masculinity, stemming from the god of war, and Venus is a symbol of femininity, coming from the Roman goddess of fertility and beauty.

Each line is 8 syllables, keeping with the theme of astronomy, as there are eight planets in our solar system. There are four stanzas, as there are four planets on either side of the asteroid belt. Eight is also my personal favorite number. I separated the very last line in order to give it more emphasis, as that’s the main point of the poem. That one doesn’t need to necessarily belong where they think they need to. It isn’t easy to accept that one may not meet the standards that they impose, but sometimes it can’t be helped.