Portrait of Femme Queen & BYP100 Communications Manager L'lerrét Jazelle Ailith by organizer and artist Aaryn M. Lang. Aaryn is an Ohio native currently living in Brooklyn, NY. She has dedicated her life to the dignity, vulnerability, resilience and strength of Black Trans Women.
L'lerrét Jazelle Ailith shares this beauty:
“At the age of 20, I had been feeling uncomfortable parading around as this human being that I had no connection to. I no longer wanted to conform. I no longer wished to be unseen. I decided to walk to the beat of my own drum and immerse myself in the tumultuous journey of transitioning. But the decisions I made during my transition continued to oppress and demean the ethereal being that I know that I am.
I had a head full of beautiful locs that I had grown for four years at the time. I grabbed some scissors and cut away at my crown and replaced it with a full lace wig of straight Indian Remy hair. As I began to embrace my nonconformity and do-what-the-fuck-I-wantness, I realized that there still seemed to be a void in my life. I still didn’t feel whole. And that was puzzling to me because I had broken the chains of gender rigidity, right? I was practicing bodily autonomy and loving on myself. What else was missing?
It wouldn’t be for another year that I would be led to that answer. I had been searching for myself in a system that would never allow me to be found. I had been searching for bodily freedom in a system whose infancy relied on my marginalization and utilizing my very body as capital. It was my very body, and those of my indigenous comrades, that created the fabrics of the American society controlled through a system of gender that would forever haunt our people. I realized that it was not simply cisnormativity that was my enemy – it was the very idea of gender itself that continued to disenfranchise me. Gender, an inherently anti-Black construct that outlines idealistic ways for white men and women to perform that would best serve a White Supremacist, Capitalist, Cis-Hetero Patriarchal society (Shoutout to bell hooks). My Blackness was an inconvenience. My Blackness had always been “trans” for gender was never defined with my character in mind. My Blackness had always been queer. My Blackness had always been audacious.
When our Black bodies look good, they hypersexualize them. When our Blackness is denied employment and we take survival into our own hands, they criminalize it. When our Blackness speaks out, they cage it. When our Blackness dares to move at it’s own will, they murder it. What is trans when my Black has always been here?
My journey navigating trans identity began as a journey of eschewing my Blackness as much as I could to blend into a society so much so that I was invisible – unclockable; counterintuitive to my initial desire of being seen as my full, authentic self. Cutting of my beautiful locs, relaxing my natural hair texture, continually seeing my feastures as “ugly” and “unfeminine” – all of these things occurred, in my truth, as a result of whiteness continually controlling my narrative. I rebuke it.
I implore my siblings to envision their bodies outside of the constructs of gender. I implore you to embrace your Blackness unapologetically and re examine the ways in which you interact with the Blackest aspects of your identity.
My transness shed some light, but my Blackness? My Blackness got it right.”
———————————-
Reach out to L'lerrét on social media if you so please: @llerretallure. www.llerret.com
Support BYP 100! Visit www.byp100.org to get more information about how you can contribute to mobilizing our people and being a contributing force to lead us towards the liberation of all Black people.
dailybridgerton
gummygunk
origamiaround
2087
