Trans Empowerment Week and the Transgender Day of Remembrance

Queer acrobatics from the Collective-of-Geniuses

Events, gatherings and celebrations are already underway for Trans Empowerment Week leading up to this Saturday’s Trangender Day of Remembrance. Today at 6pm on KBOO’s Outloud (90.7FM) Tobi Hill-Meyer and Smitty Buckler will be talking with Sasha about TDR, a day dedicated to day primarily memorializes those lost to hate crimes, it also serves as a forum for transgender communities and allies to raise awareness around the threat of violence faced by gender variant people and the persistence of prejudice felt by the transgender community, trans justice and intersecting oppressions and the connections between violence and the mainstream adult film industry.

Though the TDR may have somber overtones, there are also plenty fun and affirming activities and performances.

Today at 4 you can tour the Trans Friendly Rec Center (1800 SW 6th Ave) learn to use equipment and find the gender neutral showers and changing rooms.Tomorrow you can find out about available scholarships at the Queer Resource Center (1825 SW Broadway, Suite 401 in the Smith Memorial Student Union). And on Friday you can flex your wordsmith muscles (is that an oxymoron?) at the Transgender Open Mic, Reading of Six Billion Utopias and writing workshop.

Saturday will begin with a reading of names and an introduction to community organizations before starting the evening’s performances. Tobi Hill-Meyer, a multiracial trans dyke, will speak about interlocking oppressions. At the end of the night ze will present hir newly created film Doing it Ourselves: The Trans Women Porn Project as an attempt to represent trans women engaged in sexuality the way they wanted to be represented as opposed to what typically lines the shelves of “tranny porn” and also to encourage trans women’s inclusion in more alternative, feminist, and queer porn.

Geppetta, is a queer fabulist, street performer, multimedia artist, and educator currently based in Philadelphia will then showcase her nomadic handmade puppet theater. Elaborate and surreal recreations of myths and fables dovetail nicely into equally avant garde queer acrobatic theater by the Collective-of-Geniuses. With new members and new trans-influenced ways of moving their bodies in stimulative and beautifully performative ways COG intertwines circus culture with movement and language while having fun. I’ve heard they’ve been toying with the name Quacro (queer acrobatics) and it seems a whimsical enough representation of the skillfully playful acts they present.