2021 Trans Awareness Week Spotlight: Scarlett DiGiacomo
by Scarlett DiGiacomo, she/her
I have seen a lot change since I began my transition about half my life ago now. In my earliest memories, my gender was mine alone. A secret only I knew. It was a place I could come to for peace. It was not the perception of me which I was named for, it was the truth of me when I was uninhibited by those expectations, a truth that I was told without being told must be kept within. It was my yolk, around which I grew a shell of secrecy, though soft the shell was, and deep and strong my yolk grew.
Transition is in the nature of creation. The binary is the foundation for the between. The boundary is the genesis of boundlessness.
If, in the beginning, the land was separated from the water, this was the origin of the estuaries between.
Even water does not limit itself to one form at one time.
It would be wrong to call a bog the forest and lake that bound themselves together through time to make it, but it is right to know the water was once a glacier and the silt was once the skin of mountaintops.
I would have never known to come out without knowing and being Seen by other trans people. Being trans, our whole selves come out through an innate knowing, sometimes beyond even our own conscious perception.
I was an alevin in the gravel, my yolk in my belly, my new, fragile form all I knew of myself. But my ancestral mothers, those trans elders who came before me, marked their paths in the stars above and the clay below. In the pebbles I clung to, the water I breathed, their stories remained, their voices splashing and echoing against the rocks.
Sylvia Rivera fought her way on stage, quieted a booing crowd of white gays to demand they fight for Black, brown, trans, poor, and incarcerated people in our community. Marsha P. Johnson told me you can do all you want, but it’s nothing without soul. Miss Major told the stories of her and The Girls kicking the cops’ asses at Stonewall, fighting for herself and the girls then and all us girls that came after, who look at her now in reverence. Octavia St. Laurent told me of the power and unique beauty that we who have crossed through the boundaries of gender possess. Crystal LaBeija told me that I have a right to show my color, and take my flowers when I deserve them. Their wisdom fed me and helped me grow. Their guidance helped me let go and showed me the way to the sea.
I don’t always feel strong enough to face the world in this existence. It does feel like I am fighting my way upstream and like the salmon. I sometimes feel there will never be anything else but fighting the same current, lifetime after lifetime. In so many ways, things are still the same. We’re still fighting for basic things like safety in our streets, housing security, and adequate medical care. We’re still out here doing the work ourselves, because we’re the only ones who’ll do it for us. We’re still fighting with an unjust police system and a culture that doesn’t seem to want us alive and often only celebrates us when we’re dead.
Despite that, there is profound care that we take with each other. I survived my first few years after coming out because of the care of people who had made a way before me. I continued to make art because of the trans people who See me. I am so grateful for the people and groups out here who continue to uplift the life and work of the people who are Still Here. I found friendships and extended family in the trans community. I’m grateful for the work of organizations like Black Trans Task Force and Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network, I’m grateful for having been able to witness beautiful works of art by trans creators and share performances of my own work at Gay City, I’m grateful for the help I received from trans run orgs and for the friends and chosen family in my life.
So for Trans Awareness Week, we come together to See each other. Not for the spectacle or education of a cis audience, but for the reassurance to one another that we still here, and we See you. We continue this work because we know we won’t be the last of us to make our way back up stream. We must leave our mark in the clay below and the stars above, we must echo our voices against the rocks. We never know what drop in the ocean may guide our descendants back upstream.
Scarlett DiGiacomo is a musician and writer. She has performed throughout the Puget Sound region as a spoken word poet and a solo musician, as well as performing in a band called House of Bog. Her work primarily focuses on connecting with individual spirituality through communion with nature/creation, cultural and gender expression. Her music can be found at soundcloud.com/ScarlettDiGiacomo and ScarlettDiGiacomo.Bandcamp.com, as well as iTunes/Apple Music and other streaming platforms. Her writing can be found in The Black Trans Prayer Book and has been featured online in Oddball Magazine. She has also self-published several chapbooks of poetry and illustrations. She lives in the forest near Olympia, WA with a cat and a python, singing to trees and dancing with deer.