February 27 2017

I don’t belong here

Why did I come here

It’s a Wednesday evening in February

I fiddle with my iPhone

Crouch in a corner seat

And glance at the scrubbed white faces with white teeth

The other speakers file in, still early

Black women, Asian women, white women, a Korean trans woman, a white man

And me

Exposed brick walls meet tight gray carpet

Cucumber water suspended on a stand

A spread of Italian cheeses next to Indian-inspired hors d'oeuvres

I’m at Galvanize

A code school and coworking space in Pioneer Square

For people who can pay $21,000 for a 24-week web coding bootcamp

That’s not what I’m here for

A month ago

I applied to speak to their community on “gender and identity at work”

I’m here to give a five minute “lightning talk”

Ugh

The tech industry and its endless women in tech events

And hollow diversity initiatives

I did this work for three years

Speaking out for women and queers in my tech company

Poking HR with my requests

Engaging in lunchtime conversations with my male colleagues

Giving them all of my true selves

I walked out one day

Coiled but relieved

I stopped believing in doing this

In Feminism Without Borders, Mohanty highlights the gaping problems with US feminism:

“Neoliberal, consumerist (protocapitalist) feminism [is] concerned with ‘women’s advancement’ up the corporate and nation-state ladder” (6)

This is not the feminism I will pour another ounce of energy into

Leveling the playing field is not enough

Let’s blow it up!

The speaker before me finishes

Telling us about her line of sexist male bosses

Who all still have jobs

Performing misogyny

The audience of around sixty politely claps to her exit

I walk up to the front of the room

The white woman organizer smiles brightly at me

Encouraging me to begin

I grip the microphone in my left hand

And my iPhone with my evernotes in the right

Both of my damp hands shaking

I gird my arms firmly against my sides

And begin

I tell all the people in that room

I used to work with them in the field

I tell them I am trans non-binary

That I never felt welcomed

Of my free labor teaching management

about gender and racial equity

How I switched to design

And upon landing my first job as a designer

Was promptly fired by my manager

Because I told him I was trans

He had a hard time understanding

I was not going to be a good “cultural fit”

So I stopped thinking there was a place

For me in tech

Which is why I am leaving

Might never stop leaving

As I spoke

I see jaws open in surprise

Eyebrows arched in disbelief

Air sucked in and held

I quietly spat my ending sentence

Thanked everyone

And trotted off

Why did I come here?

To showcase my failure and uncertainty?

Performance is an act that brings something into being

I had no obligations to my ex-colleagues

But I wanted to bring my shadow story into being

Owning the stage for one night

“To operate within the matrix of power

is not the same

as to replicate uncritically relations of domination” - Judith Butler

I am an invited visitor-outsider

To this space I no longer feed

I was critical of their relations of dominations

And then they were too critical of me

Andrea Smith’s mentor, Judy Vaughn tells her

“You don’t think your way into a different way of acting;

you act your way into a different way of thinking” (Smith, Andrea)

I am trying to act my way

Into a different way of their thinking

Did they see me?

Diana Taylor speaks of performance as an epistemology

Sharing my small story

Is an act of transfer

A reflection of the culture they are swimming in

Halberstam suggests trying on

Failure as a way of life

My failure to be succeed in tech

Is a multi-faceted gem

It has stayed to become a teacher

Maybe I’m stupid for walking away from wealth and access

Halberstam, again:

“Stupidity could refer not to a lack of knowledge,

But to the limits of certain forms of knowing and

Certain ways of inhabiting structures of knowing” (12)

bell hooks taught us to see marginality as a site for resistance

Yet what does it mean for me to be on the margins

Of an elite bourgeois circle?

False marginality

Is not a strong argument

For pity

In my talk

I never mentioned my race

I am Chinese American

Asian Americans are well-represented

As Individual Contributors in tech

But are underrepresented

In management

I detest this pitting of people of color

Against other people of color

The world is not in black/white

As viral videos of police brutality

would have us believe

There is no room for “non-black people of color”

The term itself “non-black people of color”

Has been adopted by my Asian American

Communities in deference to

Black lives

Why do I accept my erasure?

In performance, there are always

Decisions of erasure

Why then, did I erase myself

In my own performance?

A Note

I wrote this experimental autoethnography in poem form after reading “Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis” by Tami Spry. I’ve been wanting to produce more creative and artistic assignments in this program, so I hope it’s acceptable that I’ve chosen to write a “non-academic” piece.

References

Butler, Judith. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. Print.

Foster, Susan. "Kinesthetic Empathies & the Politics of Compassion." Susan Foster! Susan Foster! The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Sept. & oct. 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2017.

Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. N.p.: Duke U Press, 2011. Print.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism Without Borders. N.p.: Duke U Press, 2003. Print.

Smith, Andrea. "The Problem with Privilege." Andrea smith's blog. N.p., 13 Aug. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2017.