LEE MOKOBE A powerful poem about what it feels like to be transgender https://www.ted.com/talks/lee_mokobe_a_powerful_poem_about_what_it_feels_like_to_be_transgender/transcript#t-204548
“My mother,” Lee Mokobe begins, ” told me of the miracle I was, said I could grow up to be anything I want. I decided to be a boy. ……. and when I turned 12, the boy phase wasn't deemed cute anymore.”
…..And from here, Mokobe begins his emotional piece. Mokobe discusses realities of transgender people within a society that at best objectifies and manipulates them, and at worst shames them into silence; who knew that the proverbial ‘closet’ was actually a coffin in disguise. “They'll put me back into the closet, hang me with all the other skeletons. I will be the best attraction,” Mokobe says with a zeal that is tinged in bitterness. He is referring to the realities of modern society, the corrupt and false guises of acceptance. The only time transgender people are accepted in popular culture and media is when their image is being perverted, exploited; something strange and shiny to gawk at, laughing with a smile full of falisey as they stripp them of their humanity to own them, as they break them apart like spoiled children do to their plastic toys, broken pieces thrown away as an afterthought. What happens after your harassment, your ‘harmless’ exploitation; your dismissal, your perversion and degradation? Mokobe takes away the glamour, the popular image and opinion of transgender people to show us, to force us to look underneath, look at what the prejudice, the shame, the hate and manipulation do to them; it’s a slow death, a downward spiral no one will save you from, that no one wants to save you from. In fact, they are the ones that pushed you to begin with. The perspective is unique from any other discussed within class, as lbgtq material wasn’t explored, but it's clear that the world it paints is not fair, is not equal, is not the paradise alluded to by the american dream. This piece resonates with me in very personal ways, and is one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever watched. The most unnerving thing was that I could see myself in the speaker, I could feel the echo of his pain, because it is also my pain; it was hard to make it to the end, and was deeply meaningful and emotional for me to watch. Mokobe paints a reality where the american dream is unthinkable; any dream is. He says that his people are ghosts, more dead than alive, lucky if they don’t drown in that ocean of shame and hatred that surrounds them, lucky if people don't hold their heads beneath, lucky if they don’t lose the will to climb the crest of the next wave. The most haunting thing is this; through his piece, all Mokobe is truly asking for his humanity in the eyes of society that strips him of it, claiming him unworthy; he begs for his right to exist, to have life. He has to beg for his right to dream.