tee vee dinner

The time away from having a public facing identity and being on the internet in general has been so necessary. Sometimes I think I'm ready to pick it back up, log in and share. Other times I feel like it was never something I should of done in the first place, like being perceived is so not for me. Yet I kinda wanna experiment, maybe it would be different now?

On Tumblr circa 2012 - 2015 I felt like I was constantly fighting for my life to try and gently but fiercely educate people on queer and trans issues, especially in relation to gender non conforming and non binary stuff. Shit, that makes me sound like a social justice warrior, but honestly I was a poor, working class person who had never gone to college, so I reject any association with that term/whole vibe.

Since the early 2010s so much has changed in the world. I see so many trans people who don't fit within strict gender norms just living their lives, in community, being seen as valid by their friends, living how they want. All stuff that felt impossible for me once upon a time. The hope of change, of things being how they are now, was the driving force for me continuing to share my life online despite it being terrible for my mental health and well being. I imagine that if you are younger and reading this I might sound out of touch with reality, as systematically things have been getting worse for trans people -- but if you were not out, trans, and around 15 years ago, you don't know how bad it use to be.

Anyway! this isn't a trans issues blog haha, just what alot of people knew me for.

So life update... I'm now 37, been living in NYC for the past 6 years (and just recently got US citizenship!), changed my name to Cyber, am in the final semester of an undergraduate degree!, am currently in post production for a short film I've been working on, oh and was diagnosed with autism (so much makes sense now).

I dunno how much I'm going to be using tumblr moving forward, I do wanna try it out, sporadically. I do update instagram sometimes with info of public screenings of my films, so if you wanna be looped into that my username is the same as here. I will be posting on youtube more in the future so if you wanna subscribe (ha!) my user name is tee_vee_dinner .

City Hall Autonomous Zone aka Abolition Park, NYC 💫 the zone got ~occupied~ on June 23 & was raided by NYPD on July 22, these pix are from the first week, some taken with film camera & some taken with phone

Stayed in a motel on highway 192 for a few nights with my mum during my birthday and visited some of The Florida Project shooting locations 💕

Me & Kt Spit made a music video for her song Rush. I shot, directed and edited the video amongst other things 🙂 we filmed it last year in Sydney and it’s finally online!!!

tilde: Melbourne Trans & Gender Diverse Film Festival 2017 Sunday 29 October, 3.40pm BASEMENT THEATRE So Long Suburbia + Kweenz Of Kelston + Coming Home EXEMPT FROM CLASSIFICATION Recommended for ages 12+. People under the age of 15 must be accompanied by an adult.

So Long Suburbia USA, 2016, 64 mins Dir: Samuel Shanahoy

So Long Suburbia is a camp and queer coming of age teen film. After finding out her bestie since the 7th grade has unfollowed her on Instagram Sadie becomes a social recluse, reading zines alone in her bedroom and day dreaming while wandering the streets of suburbia. On her 17th birthday her mother gifts her a transit pass telling her to explore, discover new things and have adventures close to home. Out on her travels, Sadie meets Miami, a self identified teeny bopper who is the first out trans girl to attend North Shore Private Girls College. Miami introduces Sadie to her token straight, BFF Cynthia, her angsty emo boyfriend Zeke, and the rest of her clique. Sadie starts to think she really found a place where she belongs. But will old insecurities, crushes and drama get in the way?

Kweenz Of Kelston Aotearoa, 2014, 15 mins Dir: Todd Karehana In an all-boys school in West Auckland we get introduced to “The Kweenz” a group of fa’afafine, trans and takataapui students who are working towards a final-year talent show. As they prepare for their performance, they discuss the negative judgements they’ve received from their male classmates and how they support and derive strength from their sisterhood. This strength and beauty shines as the lights come up on their performance and the Kweenz of the Kelston Boys’ High School fiercely strut their stuff on the stage.

PIX L-R: me 2005, 2010, 2017 A kinda detailed (yet incomplete) timeline of my coming outs, cause even thou I'm under 30 I sometimes feel like a queer elder cause so much has changed for me personally, within the queer scene and in society in the past 16 years since I first came out as queer.

I first came out about being into girls when I was 13, it was 2001 and things such as "you're too young to know", "you haven't given boys a chance" and "it's a phase" were the norm so the possibility that someone my age in Western Sydney could be gay just wasn't a thing so I figured I was bi. The first time I made out with a girl was when I was 14, it was in the gutter outside a party, I wasn't really into her but we both were into girls... so ya know... who else were we meant to make out with? At 14 I also saw But I'm a Cheerleader for the first time.

When I was 15&16 I had a girlfriend for 9 months, she identified as straight and our relationship was a secret (as per her request, not mine). My mum thou found our love letters when I was 15 and so she started to take my gayness more seriously (but still didn't become ok with it til I was 18).

At 16 I discovered riot grrrl and queercore and started to meet other gay, queer and dyke punx.

When I was 17, in my final year of high school (2005) I publicly and openly started identifying as a lesbian/dyke. I'd been out about liking girls since the 8th grade but I'd never used the lesbian label for myself before (I'd received a lot of homophobic bullying  so it didn't feel like a safe option for a few years).

When I was 19 I stopped using the term lesbian and started identifying as a ~stone femme dyke~ and queer started to mean something more than just an umbrella term, it had a new importance to me in that it didn't assume my gender. At this age I also met trans people for the first time to my knowledge, prior to that my only exposure to out trans people was on Jerry Springer.

When I was 20 (in 2008) i wrote a piece for a zine, the piece was titled 'FTF : Female to Femme'. Now, this would be very out dated these days but what you need to understand if you were not part of queer scenes in 2008 is that terms such as transfemme, transmasc and no binary did not exist. "FTM" and "MTF" were considered in 2008, at least in Australia as being PC and progressive within radical queer scenes and the chosen identifying terminology by many trans people. Also all the transguys I had ever met or even heard of were all very masc then.

Anyway the FTF piece was about how I related to transguys in the sense that I didn't see myself or feel like I was female despite being assigned that at birth and I experienced dysphoria but I wasn't at all masculine, I dressed high femme and strongly identified with girl culture and girly things. So i was trying to say that my gender wasn't female but was instead femme, which was again at the time the only way I could explain it. Remember the gender spectrum, gender non conforming and non binary where not formed concepts then, but genderqueer was a thing, however my exposure to it had always been it associated with masculine or androgynous people and my understanding was that you either had "no gender" or were "both genders" which wasn't me.

In 2009 when I was 21 I started coming out to people as a transboy, after years of internal thinking I'd realised that despite not being masc at all I still was male and that there are cis guys who are very feminine and that doesn't de validate their gender. I came to this understanding months before I told anyone because I knew I had to be very certain and confident in who I am as a lot of people would either not believe me, expect me to change the way I dressed and acted or give me shit for it, all of which did happen once I started coming out. A big frustration for me at the time was also that I had lots of friends who were practicing artists but no one saw me as an artist, it annoyed me cause I felt like everyday I was dressing in drag and playing into a drag persona to some extent but no one could see it.

I texted my friends in January 2010 about my name change and pronoun change however I was very apologetic as I'm shy and don't like to bother people, so it took me years to be ok with correcting friends who misgendered me. In Feb of 2010 I came out to my mum as a transboy, which I wasn't planning but it happen  when telling her about this transguy I was dating at the time, anyway the rest is a very personal shit show, it took her years but she is now so amazing. Early January 2010 I started wearing a binder and wore it every single day til I had top surgery in 2016.

Despite being out as trans for almost a year when I first went to the USA inthe summer of 2010 I didn't tell a lot of people I met there that I was trans, was male or used he pronouns as I just wanted to have fun and couldn't deal with the anxiety of coming out to people I didn't know or trust yet. I even at first would introduce myself as my old ~teen zine name~ cause I couldn't deal. So the following year I had to do another before round of coming out emails lol but fml.