The Privilege of Being Different

I really love the idea, from Lucas Cassidy Crawford (2008), that we are “too much to be perceived” (p. 140).  The author co-opts the tangible invisibility of trans, queer, and non-binary people and transforms our journey through life into something mysterious, magical, and complex enough to unsettle a cis-White-normative understanding of any queer identity. For me, the way he puts it is like being a witch, a fairy, Exu, a Pombagira[1], or any enchanted creature that comes into the world to mess with people and confuse them.

I make people confused all the time. Most of them don’t have any certainty about me: my gender, my affections, sexual orientation and preferences, race, financial situation, social class… to be honest, I don’t have any certainty either. That is likely why I am unable to send clear signals about who I am and where I stand. I really don’t know, and it is not essential to me to make it clear to others.  People who love me love me because I am complex, ever-changing, and sometimes “too much”. But in terms of (feminist, queer and anticolonial) research, it is necessary to establish my positionality. It is helpful for people who will read me in the future and for me as I write. Even after writing this chapter, the conclusion was not “clarity” at all! However, this exercise in reflexivity is one of the most valuable insights I have gained from my research in the feminist field.

This chapter is necessary because, at least for this research, I must position myself to become aware of my own biases, limitations, and potentialities. Putting on writing my positionality revealed to me how much my messy, inconsistent and confused existence is, actually, a privileged point of view to research, reflection and production about gender from an anticolonial perspective. The professional invisibility I faced throughout my whole academic career (not dismissing all the hardship it has caused me), became this very unique spot from where I can see feminist and gender scholarship and think about it as something I am not that committed to, something I can change, complicate and re-think, based on new understanding I could grab from these 5 years of research. Not having a solid, public, established research legacy gives me the space to mess with things a bit and make them more interesting from the beginning. Perhaps because I don’t have that much to lose, or maybe because I didn’t yet entirely understand my academic self (as I don’t understand any part of me entirely).

This feeling, which combines not belonging with freedom, has remained constant throughout my life since I abandoned the path assigned to me. It provides me with space to change, to flourish in different environments, to adapt, and to enjoy the process. Also, made me very loose, incapable of commitment or long-term attachments. Some people say that it is only my personality, some people say that it is still trauma from the divorce; I, myself, don’t risk an opinion. But as a researcher, I feel it is time to commit to this rich, complex, multitasking scholarship I am building during this doctorate. See, it is possible to establish a commitment with fluidity, creativity and joy. It is a different type of commitment, and probably it will take time to find people who can stand by my side. Finding these people means not being invisible anymore; at least being seen by someone who matters, someone who could love me back, even if I am learning to love myself at each moment. People who can love the same unstable knowledge I am looking for, and who love the circular, endless movement of this eternal journey. I hope you, who are reading me right now, can be that person, and I hope we can love each other in knowledge and in life.

[1]These are gods, or more precisely, Orixás from the African Brazilian pantheon. I will return to them in this chapter.