Chiron Stamp
Reading “A Love Poem to My Transness” - Series 1, Episode 4
In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Chiron Stamp, trans artist, writer, facilitator and femmboy alien.
We chat about non-binary thinking beyond gender, intersectional collective care in practice, navigating the brutal legal system, neurodiversity as being like biodiversity, how capitalism tells us to move really fast, the difference between boundaries and limits and whether all queers are from another planet. Plus, an incredible and rare performance of Chiron’s work, “A Love Poem to my Transness”.
If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.
Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.
Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza
Resources
Chiron Stamp's website
Chiron's Instagram: @stampchiron
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy is available here
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Adrienne Maree Brown, is available here
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Adrienne Maree Brown is available here
Photo of Chiron by Paul Samuel White
Full Transcription
Gem: Hey Chiron. So we've been chatting a bit before, but we decided to switch the recording on because we're getting really into it and it would be great to share this rather than have to repeat it again. So first of all, thank you so much for joining me. I'm really excited.
Chiron: Thanks for having me. I'm excited and nervous, but in an excited way. They're quite similar feelings. Maybe they're the same.
Gem: As we talked about before, we've kind of agreed some of the things we wanted to talk about, but I wondered if we should jump straight in with what we were talking about just before we started to record.
Chiron: Yeah. Oh, I was talking about how I'd seen this thing on Instagram, which was andI can't cite it. I'm really bad at that anyway, remembering the names of people, but on Instagram, someone had done some medical research into the link between people who identify as non-binary or trans in some way and being on the autistic spectrum and I haven't read it all, but it did that thing in my tummy where I felt strange about it. And I guess I'm really excited that somebody did some research, but then my automatic questions are like, who did the research? Is it a cis person asking a lot of non-binary people questions? Was it a trans person themselves? Or who is the research for and who makes money out of it? The usual questions about most things. And also it's a thing about the medical model isn't it? And if that is in relationship to the medical model, which is kind of like my artistic area of research, or like my biggest frustration with the world, I guess that we're in relationship to this idea that some people's ways of being are wrong or disordered or need to be fixed in some way. Sometimes ways of being can be really difficult but the world is not... I just think that people can actually do quite a lot if they're supported in the right way, but that means that we have to be much more flexible. I get that like fear of, "Oh, if people understand that research or engage with that research without being critical of the medical model because maybe they're a person where that medical model actually works for them quite fine, what does that mean about how people view trans people in society?" But those are all of my instinctual fears. I also try to challenge that quite a lot as well. I don't want to be cynical or fearful, but I do want to be critical. And also hopeful. Yeah, those were my thoughts. That was a bit of a rambling and I was asking you if you had seen it and what you feel about it and if it's... I'm talking about something I haven't engaged with properly, but there we go.
Gem: Well, I think it's an important thing to think about as well. And yeah, we can try and find the sources, but as with anything it's important to question stuff. I think the thing that comes to my mind when I hear you say that our family worked with an autistic advocate in Australia and she is amazing. She does really great work. I don't know if you know her, Kristy Forbes. In some of her work, she talks about people doing research at the moment in order to identify the genes that "cause", and for anyone who can't see me, which is everyone apart from Chiron, I'm doing air quotes... That "cause" neurodiversity or autism, whatever neurodiversity we're thinking about in order to remove that gene so that we are less likely to have people in society who are neurodiverse and 1. What the fuck? And 2. It reminds me of what you're saying about it depends who's looking at it, who is the audience for the research? Because I'm thinking, well, what the fuck? You're going to just curb all our chances of changing anything if you are aiming to have less neurodiverse people in the world because as I said before, generally people making changes and living outside of binary society are neurodiverse in some way. And I feel like around me, I have the community to show that like pretty much all my friends are neurodiverse who are activists and who are making actual change. So I don't know how you feel hearing me say that?
Chiron: I feel many things. Oh, what do I feel? I feel conflicted. I guess. I mean it makes me rage to think that someone thinks that they should remove... So my way of thinking about neurodiversity as an artist who's always made work about feeling uncomfortable about labels and queer was the only one that ever really felt comfy because it's the one that's really spacious and means everything and it doesn't mean anything. And then non-binary for me, I guess I had been using they/them pronouns that I don't consider to be gender neutral, but maybe we talk about that in a minute.
Chiron: I liked non-binary cause it basically said no, not that, none of the above. And I quite like that it has no in it. Now I've lost my train of thought, which also happens when you're nervous, right? That neurodiversity for me, I understand it a bit like biodiversity. A lot of my artwork is about non-binary-ness and mountains which don't go together, but for me they do but that you need diversity in biology and especially as things grow, if we think about plants in order for there to be land and you can't necessarily plant the same thing in the same place over and over because the land needs to be regenerated. And these are like ideas from first nations and indigenous people that we forget and have been erased. So, to me it makes no sense... The medical model seems to me to be striving for monoculture or the idea that everyone's the same and those ideas... So my like specialist area of research as an artist has always been trying to understand the medical model, how medicine or other big systems were built. And that also includes the legal system and the justice system and those things that govern our lives. And the medical model came about with the rise of colonialism and the idea that everyone becomes white or the ideas of whiteness; that you behave in the proper way and this is the way to be healthy and all of those ideas are a form of oppression and conforming. So the idea that I think that people don't realise about history. I'm a bit obsessive. I need to know lots of information. I think that if people had more information about how things were built, they might question why they still engage with them without being critical of them.
Chiron: So yeah, I guess it just makes me a bit scared. I've been a person who's not very quietly really talking about fascism for a long time and people get really scared when you throw this word around cause they're like, "That's a very extreme way of viewing the world." But I don't really think it is and people don't know about eugenics or how that worked in the UK especially. And how those were ideas that people upheld, that the idea that some people's biology and their brains and the colour of their skin means that they are better than and these ideas allowed for people to destroy other people's lives very actively. I'm kind of going off on one based on the fear of what you just said, but I guess I wonder, and then I do this thing where I wonder who is listening to this and if people are like, "Yeah, I know those things already or those things affect my life because I'm a queer person and that means I have intersections with neurodiversity and health problems and trying to be recognised by the state as an actual person trying to access trans health care, etc." And I often wonder, how people who are not directly affected by those things understand them or get the information. And I don't know the answer to that.
Gem: Yeah. Hopefully places like this where different things overlap. So maybe someone hasn't experienced or doesn't know much about neurodiversity because they don't think they've come across it. Because also in society we're told that such a tiny fraction of people are neurodiverse, and I do not think that's the case either.
Chiron: Should we maybe explain that term though? So for me, it's not from the medical model of pathology, like a diversity of difference, but for me a neurodiversity includes anything that the medical model would consider to be a mental health issue, a learning difference or difficulty, cognitive processing. Basically what I understand is it's anything that we can't see which is loads of things, right? So I found this place or this word comfortable for me. I've talked about mental health for a long time as someone who manages their own and cared for other family members and has had direct and indirect relationships with the systems that govern that. And I have said before, if you have a body and you have a mind, which is most people and that's not saying how that body looks or how it functions or any of those things, then you have mental health, right?
Chiron: The historical separation between the body and the mind happened between some white dudes whose rise in their own medicine made them think they were the most important. And as men have this ongoing problem of not being able to decide who is the best at something, they couldn't come together and realise that they're different forms of understandings were necessary for each other to function. So they remained separate. And this problem has affected millions of people's lives because instead of looking at people with their bodies and minds being in relationship to each other, or the fact that your mind is inside your body, they can't resolve. And so we look at them separately, which means that often people who have mental health problems, their physical needs are ignored or people's physical health is not seen in relationship to that.
Gem: I think it's definitely true that we see them as separate. As you heard on the Charlotte Cooper episode, when you're talking about how separated we are from our bodies by diet culture, that's another thing, another layer that came in later to further separate people from what actually goes on below. In my work, I talk about feeling as though you're (and I can't remember where I read this. I wish I could find it, but it's not my idea) a pair of eyes on sticks that walk around in the world and you have no connection to what's below. You just experience the world out of your eyes. It sounds as though our work's really similar in that kind of like thinking of them as one whole thing rather than two separate things that have no relation. Like if you're anxious, well for me, if I'm anxious, for example, I instantly get stomach ache. There is no better proof in your body that when you have a thought or a feeling, where does it show up in your body? It does trust me. We're just trained not to listen to it.
Chiron: Yeah. In the last year... this thing of different levels of knowing. Right? So I'm an artist that makes things that people see sometimes like performance things and poetry things and music things. But I guess mainly what I'm trying to do now is bring together lots of thinking, which usually has happened through conversations or I write letters to some of my collaborators and we have years worth of these engagements and letters. And I guess the big thing for me is about non-binary thinking. So I am non-binary. For me that is not gender neutral. I am not neutral anything. But this idea of non-binary thinking, about trying to hold complex things at the same time and not putting them into binary opposition and not thinking that one thing cancels out with the other thing, but they are both simultaneous and at the same time neither, which is a very complex thing.
Chiron: It doesn't really make any sense. Because our whole world is not built like that. But it's not a competition between my body and my mind where one has to win. It's not an understanding of I'm a man or a woman, but also none of those terms have ever made sense to me. But yeah, how do you exist in the world practically? Not just theoretically. I'm interested in like trying to build tools or use tools or use them in real time to create groups or to solve problems or build communities as well as our work, which is I guess the bits of "artwork", I call them in inverted comments, that people don't see cause they're not the 'here is me doing a thing'. Like how I just went through this huge legal process for five years and there is no joy there.
Chiron: The more you know about that system, the darker it gets and it's built to make you stop, right? So it's really isolating and it's infuriating. It doesn't work. It talks about systemic failures, but it won't look at problems in a system. It just looks in very narrow parameters. So at the same time it was like, how do I also have joy in the situation and how do I look after myself and how do I let other people look after me all at the same time? Whilst not pretending that this thing isn't extremely heavy and difficult and painful. And a lot of that also came from people always telling me I was really strong and I was like, "Well, I'm not really." What does it mean to be strong and hard and soft and weak all at the same time?
Chiron: Like I don't have to choose. And I think for me, when people talk to me about their transness and I'm very fortunate that a lot of people do come and talk to me. I'm often saying, you don't have to choose to prove to anyone anything. My transness is for me. And the words that I use are for me to understand. And if other people don't understand what they mean, maybe you have a more complex conversation, but I don't think we should be able to understand everything about something just by this one singular name that it's given. I'm just going off into my little thoughts and I'm very conscious. So this is another thing about having a neurodiversity right, is that I often am like, do I make sense? Am I understood? Because obviously when you're the person... either I've misunderstood or people have misunderstood me. What I'm trying to do at the moment with my art practice is try to capture those complex things into words even though I don't like words. And I find them really hard to process, like reading is a really difficult thing for me. So I guess I'll probably end up making them also into dialogue at the same time. Like an audio thing you can listen to. Cause I don't imagine that I would understand what I was talking about if I was just reading it. And then I wonder if anyone who's listening to this is like, "Oh, that makes sense or Chiron is just whiffling."
Gem: Okay, I'm right here and I can tell you that definitely makes sense.
Chiron: Okay. So let's check. Another thing in the last year I've been trying to do... try to also live your practice right? So let's talk about it. So I've communicated something and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you what you have understood from what I have communicated. Cause I think a lot of queer community is like, "Communicate correctly", but actually we also have a responsibility to understand if you have understood what I said.
Gem: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool. So I guess I'm obviously paraphrasing, but my understanding is around moving away from this idea of binary thinking and that you've said terms like male and female have never made sense to you. And it fits in with what you said before about the idea of diversity, like a bio diverse place or in nature needing different components, different plants, different things in order to make up a whole as well. And I know you didn't just say that, but that kind of reminds me of what you said before. And then the idea of when people come to you and share what they're feeling about their transness and not feeling the pressure for them to either choose one thing or the other because it isn't like that. And I loved what you said about the idea of non-binary not being gender neutral. It's not a neutral word, you're not a neutral person. That's also really powerful way to think about it. I think it also ties in, and we can come to that later if that feels better, but it ties into the thing you were saying in your Love Letter To Your Transness, the poem that you wrote. You think about this idea of transness often being described as a lack or something missing. So yeah, I guess it's a more complex way of thinking, just a whole thing. We're taught so much as, as humans to think about it's this or it's this, it's good or it's bad, it's right or it's wrong and there's no in between or balance. And even at school, I don't know if this was your experience, but I think it's a pretty generic experience that people learn from a young age that... I'm just thinking of in arts for example, that something is either this or it's this, but then when you get older they're like, well actually it's slightly more nuanced than that. It's a bit more balanced. And so then you're kind of relearning having to have a bit of balance because before you've been taught that everything is so polarised. I still don't think we have enough nuance. I think people are very often quick to jump to "Oh it's this, or it's this."
Chiron: Yeah. I feel like we don't give humans enough credit for their ability to hold complexity. So I use autobiography as a way of starting usually. And I try to zoom out from that. And I've taught a lot about autobiographical performance making and ethics and also about interaction. Cause I do quite a lot of like interactive performance stuff on ethics and consent. But even within consent practices, we're taught that it's a yes or a no. It's not always a yes or a no. It might be a yes and now it's no or a yes like this, but no, not this little bit. And I did a lot of work with writing education programs and I worked with kids for a long time and I worked in Play, which was like a Labour government movement where kids have free choice to decide what they wanted to do to learn social skills. Radical! It doesn't exist anymore. On this idea, we give small people choice, but actually we're only giving them a choice between two things. And my thoughts about that are that a choice between two is not a choice at all. A choice is to be able to change and adapt and design the answer, which means that there is an infinite possibility of things. But obviously our society is built on the correct behaviour or capitalism teaches us to simplify and we don't talk about how over-simplification in my opinion is another form of control because things aren't simple and they shouldn't be able to fit into a Tweet and things shouldn't be a tagline. And making things should have time and designing things should take a long time, making artwork should take a long time and relationships should take a long time and we are told to move really fast and be able to make decisions and if you have to move that fast, it's much easier to just choose in a binary.
Gem: Yeah and we were talking before we started recording about someone that we know in common who is an amazing person who runs a consent-based setting for children or small people. So my children attend one of those settings and it is all around consent. And I think quite often as you say with the time, like everything is a rush. We need to get on with it. And people say consent-based practice doesn't work because it takes too long. So if you have like say a holocracy for example, where everyone in the company is entitled to having a stake in the decision and people will sit around in circle and they'll talk about what it is that they want to achieve and what the vision is. And the criticism by capitalism is it takes too long. No one ever makes a decision, nothing gets done. And actually with that framework that you're talking about in mind, if we're thinking about playing the long game and making decisions that actually work and are lasting rather than coming up with something you wrote while you're on the loo at five o'clock in the morning, those are ways to change things. And also it's very ableist as well to say decisions have to be quick. If I'm in a situation with my children and I say, "Right we've got to go." (If we genuinely have to rush out for something) "Please put your shoes on". The more pressure I put on... If I was to just go "Put your shoes on, put your shoes on, put your shoes on," it would just result in a shutdown. It wouldn't be possible to do anything. And it's like the more pressure we put on to someone or something or a system and the less choices we give, the more we can force people into the direction that we want them to go. And you can see how that totally links in with white supremacy and capitalism and all of those things.
Chiron: Yeah. It's the illusion of choice, right? It's not a choice. It takes too long. So the other things that I'm trying to write in this, whatever this thing is, is if a non-binary thinking feminism, a way of living would be not the tools of colonialism or white supremacy and patriarchy. For me, those things are very close. And to say there's not enough time or it takes too long or nothing gets done is a gaslighting because it does. And you can see it. Like I live in a housing cooperative, which isn't the first one that I've lived in. And we come to decision through consensus and we have processes for that and we make space that needs to be made for people to be heard. And yes, it's slightly longer and you have to give more time. But actually there's quite a lot of time. And I think when I had to stop working in the same way that I was working and I had to slow down... I have to be slow to know what I'm feeling. I've also realised recently that I didn't know that there was a difference between thinking and feeling, but I had a tendency to think my feelings. And instead of being able to feel them, and feeling your feelings shouldn't really have any thoughts or words or story or anything attached to it. And actually that's a process that's slow. It doesn't happen overnight. You can't decide when it's done. I think that's like a grieving process, right? You can't decide, "Okay, I'm going to grieve for today and then I'm going to be done". Those feelings are going to come up and they need the space they need. And if you push them away or tell them a binary choice, like I'm choosing not to do that, they come out in a different way if a choice is rushed. And it's also really difficult isn't it? Because we are living in a world where people have to make money. People feel under pressure. If you don't move fast, you might not get the job. I just read a thing this morning about the actual statistic of unemployment in the UK and how it's much higher because of the type of employment that people are having instead of the full-time employment. That thing of that has to be able to exist at the same time as well. We actually have to deal with what's in front of us. But you have to imagine the world that you want to live in and try to enact it in order for it to be seen. Because I think a lot of people think that these things can't happen because they can't see them. But you actually can see them if you try to do them. Ask me another question.
Gem: Well, where would you like to go? I feel like there are so many avenues. We talked about a few different things before. So I guess one thing I'm interested to ask about is there you mentioned a housing cooperative and also having lived in one previously, and you briefly touched on it whilst we've been recording, but when you were in a space where people were popping in and supporting you and supporting each other, I just wondered if you'd be happy to talk a bit more about that because I think it's great to actually hear about things in practice rather than just talk about how it might work if we...
Chiron: Yeah, exactly. It's really important. So I just went through this inquest process. And I guess people's understanding of an inquest process is when people have heard of maybe the Grenfell inquest process or the Hillsborough inquest process. And what that is, is it's not judicial, so it doesn't mean that someone's going to prison at the end of it. But what it means is it's like an investigation by the coroner and the coroner is the person who looks at the way in which someone died. And they try to work out what happened and who is responsible for that. And my sister passed away whilst in care of the state, so she was under section. And so obviously very logically and rationally, we suspect that the people that were supposed to be looking after her are responsible for her death or what happened in order for her to die from a health condition that is completely... a death that's avoidable. And they were trying to say it was like a natural cause death, which is actually a thing in society that people don't know much about, whereby a lot of deaths in those kinds of care settings and also old people's homes and also people who are living in supported care environments, a lot of their deaths when they happen are written off as natural causes. And that means that the statistic of deaths changes. So they're not actually recorded as anything other than that was just what happened. And obviously that's pretty scary and dangerous. And when we talk about statistics, coroners at those kinds of inquests are very important to forming those statistics. And in my opinion they're not particularly accurate. So our knowledge, you know, there was lots of things when we just had the general election about how many people died due to austerity. And my argument is that number is way, way, way, way higher. It's just that it's not recorded properly. And so that whole process is very long and it's going to be five years since she died in March. And it's still kind of not really over. The inquest bit is over and I think for me, I had to learn how to have really clear boundaries about when I could engage with that process and when I couldn't and how I could ask people for help because that process and also having engagement with the mental health system for a long time and lots of shame around mental health problems and trauma and being a survivor and all of these things are really difficult. I had to work out how to let people close to that without feeling like I was burdening them with my things, my very heavy weight and I guess this is where this non-binary thinking started. Like how can something be really, really, really heavy and also be light at the same time and how do I let someone hold something with me whilst I'm still holding it and if at times I need to give them more of the weight, also somehow I can take it back. Because obviously once you give weight away it's very hard to then carry it again, which is where relationships can become difficult because people are trying to support each other but they don't know how basically. And obviously I'm in a relationship with the care system who as we can see from what happened to Kate who is my sister, they don't really know how to care for her either. Like no one knows how to care. So while the inquest was going on, I had to stay in another house cause it wasn't where I lived. So I invited some of my friends who are also artists and makers and of many different types of people to come and be in that setting with me. And they were invited, they didn't have to come to court unless they wanted to. But there was no expectation and they could come and go for as long as they liked. And the principles of that space was that I wasn't just asking them, but I was asking many people, and this was being held by many people at once. And in that environment, people live together and cook together and they negotiated the time. And amazingly, they didn't have to have really long meetings about what they were going to do. And people brought joy. So one of my friends who is a pole dancer brought a pole and we set up a pole and people brought things so they also used the space or the invitation in a way that was useful for them.
Chiron: I had to go and do this thing and it's a week long. It was a really, really intense process, but I had to have this space and if other people wanted to come and just do their work or do their tax return or whatever thing they have to do that they're not doing or want to do, they could and to negotiate a care practice and what that looks like in real time because I don't have a family system that are gonna show up in that way. So I think when you are a person like that, it's very easy to be very independent. This thing of people saying I'm really strong, right? But I used to get really angry and be like, "Oh, it's kind of out of necessity. Like the other option is what?" Actually me learning to be like, "Oh, I can be strong and also be like, I can't do this on my own. I need help reading these legal forms and I need help signing this thing. I need help." And people came into the room and sat at the back, it was kind of incredible. A bunch of very, very queer queers inside the back of this very, very proper environment. Yeah, it was kind of amazing and I don't know how I would have done that if it wasn't for those people. And obviously there's privileges involved, but people made time, you know, they were like, "This is what I have to do in my work schedule, but I can give this many hours." And even if they just came for dinner or an hour and some people didn't even do that. People sent me voice notes and messages and there was no expectation for me to reply. And I think that's a care practice that we don't talk about, where we do things without expecting a return. And just because someone is there that doesn't mean halfway-through or during it they can't be like, "Do you know what, I need to go to bed or I need to leave or something has changed" and I don't take that personally of being like, "Well you said you would give me support and now you're leaving." It's all just fine.
Chiron: I guess my frustrations with the art world often in a formalised setting is that I'm often saying to them, I can't make in the way that you need me to like I can't. I need to have really long timelines. I need to have my access worker with me. I need you to not ask me what the thing is before I've made it. I need you to trust me. I need to be able to say, "Do you know what? I can't do this" and put it down if I need to put it down and pick it up later. And none of those things work in the art world or in capitalism at all. If you said you're going to do something, you have to complete it to the end. Now that is the ideal, right, but it's not always possible.
Gem: And you say the ideal though because... So imagine someone says, "Right, you need to create a piece of work and it needs to be done within two weeks." Okay, so the ideal is that you get it done. But to what standard? Will it actually be the full potential of what it could have been? So it isn't ideal, is it?
Chiron: If someone asks me to make something with a two week deadline, I would be like, "You're going to get something that I've already made and I'm going to make it, I'm going to tweak it a bit so it makes a bit more sense within the context and I'm going to rehearse it so that it's good. And that's it." I often try to talk to people who are making things. So when I couldn't perform all the time I was helping make performance or theatre or live art in various capacities. So I also have technical skills and design skills and I do sound and things like that. So I could carry on being in my little strange weirdo world, but no one could see me. If it was another industry, like if you think of yourself as an engineer, they get to set the terms of how long a project takes and what they need to do that. And I mean that's a whole other thing about being valued for your work, whatever your work is. Knowing how much you're worth and doing the numbers of how much money you actually need to live. And I guess, we're also living in a world where people are encouraged a lot to work for free. There are some things about learning, working for free if you're learning a skill, you have no experience, even though I think that's wrong. Or people should be at least provided their travel and food money. You knowing what you need and not moving? I talk about that sometimes a lot as well, about boundaries and limits and the difference between those things. So boundaries to me are flexible, slightly flexible because they are in negotiation with someone else, but a limit doesn't move. And I think as makers and also as people who engage in activism or people who engage in relationships, knowing where your limits are, is really important because they shouldn't move and they're going to be different for different people at different times. And it's that thing of like, limits don't move, but actually at the same time they do move and there's a non-binary thinking because sometimes they have to move depending on what's going on at the time. And that's complex to hold, isn't it? To be able to say limits don't move but limits also move.
Gem: Yeah. But it makes sense because people have different limits at different points in their lives and obviously depending on, the day of the week or what it is that they've woken up like that morning. Yeah, I guess it's probably that willingness to... Or doing the work I guess to get to know what your own boundaries and limits are and when they are and aren't moveable so that when you move them, almost like you have a key to your limits and you're the only one that can unlock it so no one can come and just be like, "Hey, I'm going to put loads and loads of pressure on you until you let me through or until you let me do this thing that I know you don't want to do." And I think it comes with consent, right? We so often don't understand that we even have consent in situations, that we can have limits or boundaries because it's normally such a separate thing. You're just supposed to be coerced into doing things.
Chiron: Yeah and let's look at the legal process and I say this a lot but even on a social level, I don't think text messages are particularly consensual because I try to... It doesn't mean I always get it right. I am definitely not a perfect human by any means but I try to say to people, "Is it okay if I ask you a question about this now?" before I ask the question and the legal process isn't like that. Lawyers because of the way that it functions, they kind of demand all of the things right now and I have to make a decision right now and they don't really do things in advance cause they're really fucking busy. Oh I swore on your...
Gem: It's okay. There's always swearing, don't worry.
Chiron: They're really busy and so they demand we have to do this right now, which means I have to drop everything I'm doing and do this right now. Or like this new piece of evidence has come in or we managed to get this thing or we need another copy of all of your bank statements cause I've been doing legal aid, which is a whole other horrible thing for a long time. And so in order for me to be like "This is nonconsensual and it's also just really not good. It's hard to engage with because non-consensual practices are difficult to engage with. How do I put boundaries in? So stupid, really small things. Like I have forward on my inbox and these little folders so the emails just go into that folder. So as long as I don't look at my phone, cause they come in all in a line, I can engage with them as I need to. And obviously sometimes I have to do it on their terms, but how do I make it a little bit easier for me so I can still decide when I'm ready to engage with the pain of that because essentially every time I do it, I'm also engaging with the grief of the situation. And so I try to have consensual practices with my friends and you know, sometimes because of my mental health stuff I need support. I have worked very hard to try to be able to ground myself but there are times when that can't happen and I need support and I hope if my friends are listening to this, they know that if I ask them for help that I'm not just asking them. That message has gone out to quite a lot of people all at once because I don't want anyone to ever feel like... It's a need and it needs to be addressed right this second but there is consent involved. So if you can't, it's not just all on you. And I think that's what the legal process does or any kind of activism at that kind of legal level is that if you don't push, nothing will happen. And I'm not saying that I did all the work, there are all of these people unfortunately with the same hospital, people who lost people in the same place that came before me who pushed really, really, really hard and I wouldn't have got anywhere if they hadn't have done that. But it's that thing of it takes over your life. I could feel the process making me hard and I still wanted to remain soft and so trying to work out how to do that whilst doing it. But what that whole process has done is every time that someone tells you something is not possible, it's fucking bullshit. We haven't worked out exactly how, and it won't be perfect, but we can try something else. We can try to do that. And it might be like clunky and feel a bit awkward like boundaries and consent often do when you live in a society that is not consensual, like the whole government is nonconsensual, they make decisions without our consent all the time. Even when we say no. Yeah, but it can happen. Do you have any other questions for me?
Gem: Yeah. One thing that I was really intrigued by and I don't know if you want to even talk about this, but on your website, you first describe yourself as a queer femmboy alien, which is so cool. And I just wondered how that came about?
Chiron: Before on my website... I hate my website or... I guess maybe it's like trans things, right? Like it's hard to talk about me in a fixed way and the website is all about fixing down who you are and what you do and why. And I'm like, "Oh, that's changing all the time." I don't know, it makes me uncomfortable I guess. But before I just used to have a list of labels of all the things that other people have called me, ever. And then it just said "I prefer Chiron Stamp."
Gem: Yeah, I love that.
Chiron: And I have always... I guess there was this thing of femme-ness or the intersections between my gender identity and my sexuality. I think like for me on the inside, I probably am like very close to a very camp boy. And I often was like, "Oh, I'm a bit confused by my femme-ness. It's so complex these things because I don't think femme-ness is anything to do with femininity or being female. And I know you shouldn't interchange all of those words, but I just did so... Certain clothes are inherently femme or certain actions are inherently femme, but I guess there's a thing about non-binary-ness as it being a rejection or a neutrality or a masc-leaning and something that's assigned to people who are assigned female at birth and people who are white and all of those things.
Chiron: I'm a white person. But I am not the epitome of non-binary-ness. Most of my understanding of people who are non-binary came from queer black radical femmes historically. And that space of being like, "I can be all of these things and I guess I don't want to reject my femme-ness. Like I'm really femme and I'm still a boy. And I guess the alien thing is because my sister always used to say that I was an alien. I was so weird. I must be from another planet. Obviously there's other ways in which that word is used, but for me it's just kind of.... I miss her saying this to me, so I guess that's why I use it. But you know, are all queers from another planet. I mean we're existing on this planet in a way that doesn't necessarily recognise our existence. So are we existing another planet? And then there's things like I'm really into sci-fi or imagined realities. One of my favourite books, however heavy it is and probably too close to home, is Women on the Edge of Time, which is a wonderful, wonderful book about the imagining of utopia and existing within dystopia, which I guess is kind of a bit like being queer all the time. So that's probably why and because I just, it's just, it's a really confusing, and I guess I was listening to the first podcast and they said about the feminist principle of naming things and that was really interesting to me because as I was saying about like the history of medicine or the history of science is supposed to and it's very patriarchal and was mostly white men making those decisions. So I've always seen that the idea of naming something necessarily is not feminist, but actually putting theory into practice as very feminist. Like, practically, how does this exist in this doing. So I just thought that was really interesting and, what does it mean to be a femme boy alien in practice? Well, I don't know. It means that I don't think that those words are any indication of who I am, who I love, what I need and what I'm capable of, the skills that I have, they're just words I like. Or like how I like to have sex or like anything about my genitals or anything. It just doesn't tell you anything. And I think I find words very playful and I make quite silly things. Like the Soy Boy thing thing I made is like really silly and like actually being silly with words allows us to not be limited by them in the same way.
Chiron: Does that makes sense?
Gem: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
Chiron: You were talking about how you'd seen my Trans Pride - I was commissioned by Trans Pride in the Marlborough two years ago to make something and I made this poem and you said that you've seen it on the internet and I wondered if this was the appropriate moment to do it for you live.
Gem: Yeah, it would be great to hear. Thank you.
Chiron: This is a love poem and I feel like our transness is always subject to something that is missing or that I am broken or I am not quite fulfilling something for somebody else. So I wrote this love poem.
Chiron: Suppose I were to begin by telling you I had fallen in love with my transness. Suppose I were to speak this as though it were a confession. Suppose this love had given me the ability to meet you. Suppose my transness has given me the aptitude to see possibility, to move with movement, to value change, to give space for you to be you in your infinite number of impossible contradictions. Allowed me to meet you in this unknowing on each given day. Suppose my transness has alleviated my need to understand you and instead has gifted me the capacity to trust that you know your being best. And I am just fortunate enough to witness you. Suppose my transness lets me know that if you change, I have not lost you. What was before is not now a deceit, you have changed as you needed in a sick world that tells us nothing ever changes. Or perhaps you have not changed. You are just generous enough to really let me see you.
Gem: So beautiful. Thank you.
Chiron: Oh you're so welcome.
Gem: Yeah, it's an incredible poem. So the recording that people could watch on YouTube, is that the first time you performed it live?
Chiron: No. So I performed it the first time live to open Trans Pride Art Night, which is like the beginning of Brighton Trans Pride at the Marlborough, but not this year, the year before. And I stood on the table that's outside, that's painted in trans colours and did this poem and then at the end of that I reappropriated some culture. So I rewrote a Martha Wainwright song to be about the trans experience rather than about her whinging about men and what else? Yeah. So that would be the first time. And then that was at Queefy, which is an incredible night in London, run by Rhys’ Pieces. And I would highly recommend going to. It's one of my favourite places to perform ever. What a warm environment. But I don't think I have performed it too many times then. And it's the only thing I'm like really funny about recordings or things that happen live. This is probably why I feel so funny about being on a podcast, right? Because a lot of what I do, it disappears and people remember it and they have a relationship to it, but it's not fixed in time. And I find that quite difficult in some way. Like I don't really like people recording me while I'm performing. I'm always like, "But if you're really here, you don't need to record me. And I like that you want to keep me for later." And it's also probably like a relationship to body stuff. My body and me have a very complex relationship and I think that poem is about that. I can love myself as a trans person and that's not a thing that we... Transness is often framed like a hatred or discomfort with your body. And that doesn't mean I don't have a discomfort with my body. And there are parts of it that I would like to change, but I can also love my body at the same time. Those things can exist. They don't cancel each other out. It's not binary. So I guess maybe the recording thing might be the fact that I have to then see this version of my body that maybe other people see that I don't feel. And that's quite complex for me. I just had this feeling or this thought about insecurity. This is another thing that I kind of think about a lot. As trans people, like for me, and I don't speak for all trans people, I would just speak about me. I don't feel like there's a lot of space for me to be insecure or to not know. And the pressure within my community and especially within a higher visibility in the cis world is that I have to be 100% sure at all times that I know. I never really question if I'm trans, but when people are like, "Oh, you're trans masculine" or are you not all these other words that I think I usually use for cis people to understand me better. I don't know. I don't understand myself within those words because they're very fixed and I'm allowed to not be sure. I guess that goes back to the same "Why femme boy alien?" because I got to decide what the words are that work for me and they might change and that's fine. And I think there's loads of complex stuff about that, but it's okay for it to change and it's okay for you to question your gender and then come to a point where you're like, "No, I am cis" and that doesn't make you deceitful. It just meant that you did a really good thing of thinking about your body and your relationship to the world and what it means. And you did some self-work, congratulations. You did really well. It doesn't have to be fixed at the end. And we don't talk about that. It's either you are or you aren't. Yeah. Those are my last final thoughts of complexity for you on your podcast. Thank you for inviting me. Although I have that huge imposter syndrome thing where I'm like, "I don't understand why you want to talk to me" but I'm really glad you did. And it was also really nice to meet you in real life, this life, but not just on the internet life. Thanks.
Gem: Thank you.