Photography by Andrew Thomas Huang

Hair / Makeup / Nail Art: Nena Soul Fly

Today I am watching Shinjuku Boys (1995) in my quest to read more and watch more narratives which take up non-US-centric trans experiences. This is the first video in a multi-part series, which you can view by clicking through the uploader’s profile on YouTube. This cinema verite styled documentary follows three transmasculine individuals in Tokyo, who use the term onabe to describe both themselves and the night work they do: more on the term below.

Here’s the description from Kanopy: “This film introduces three onnabes who work as hosts at the New Marilyn Club in Tokyo. Onnabes are women who live as men and have girlfriends, although they don’t usually identify as lesbians. As the film follows them at home and on the job, all three talk frankly to the camera about their gender-bending lives, revealing their views about women, sex, transvestitism and lesbianism.”

“The term onabe literally means a type of pot commonly used to cook stews in. Unsurprisingly, many consider it an offensive term. A sentiment that has grown significantly as transgender men have begun to become more visible and accepted within the country — after a hard-won struggle, the Supreme Court set a precedence when they ruled on December 10, 2013 that a transgender man can legally be the adoptive father of a child born to his wife through artificial insemination, and the rise in popularity of boy band Secret Guyz and comedian Yukichi. Though the term onabe was coined not that long ago as the female equivalent of the older and more established expression, okama — which is a blanket word for everything from gay man to transgender woman to female impersonator — most people now prefer the term FTM, or “female to male.”Yet the term onabe has survived in the enclave of night work, where transgender men use their formerly female status as a selling point to entertain in bars and clubs.” from this (already somewhat dated) article from 2016

The guards are spraying this disinfectant in retaliation for the report. To be clear - HDQ is an industrial-strength disinfectant, which according to the manufacturer is “harmful if inhaled” and “causes severe skin burns and serious eye damage.” The guards are spraying it on everything every 15-30 minutes, according to sources, and immigrants in the center have already experienced severe symptoms including blisters, rashes, bleeding, fainting, breathing difficulties, headaches, stomach pain, and nausea.

And let’s be real - ICE doesn’t give a shit, either about protecting these people or about preventing a COVID outbreak. ICE, according to their own reports, currently has 25,911 people in custody, of which only 2,670 have been tested. 1,392 of those were positive. In simple terms - less than 10% of detainees have been tested. Of those, more than half are positive. We cannot estimate how many sick people ICE is currently holding, or how many more will get sick without any kind of prevention or care.

ICE is killing people through neglect, and when they dared complain - they started gassing them.

I’m sure none of the students realized how absolutely dysfunctional their college was. They probably thought the delay was some sort of disorganized bureaucratic nightmare, which would have been a valid theory. But no, it was 1 worker who was sick for 2 days and it brought the whole functioning of the college down.

Kay Nielsen (1886 - 1957)