Our Liberation is Connected: MASK UP
emmeline kaiser
On a white background is a digital redraw of San from Princess Mononoke. They are a young Asian person with cropped hair the colors of the lesbian flag (pinks, lilac, burnished red, and oranges, with white highlights), red triangular marks on their cheeks and forehead, and bloodstains on their mouth, nose, neck, and on a white fur shawl. They have on a simple headband, matching upper arm bands, large shiny oval earrings, and a see-through N95 respirator. They are looking intently at the viewer. Towards their left are the impressions of three lavender sprigs and above them in green handwritten text is the quote by Arundhati Roy: “Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her. But on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.”
When I dream now of our queer future it’s masked (willingly and joyfully), with a free Palestine. The masks – or to be more accurate, respirators – are essential in the face of a deadly and disabling virus, violent surveillance states, and increasingly hazardous air quality due to the potent combination of capitalism, colonialism, and climate change. To have a queer future we first need to survive.
This illustration is a shout-out to a pivotal (to me) scene from Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke where San (shown here with lesbian hair colors and a clear N95*) tends to her wolf mother’s gunshot wound: her palms are bloody, her mouth is bloody, and she is unflinching and steadfast, made strong by love.
I do not have the words for the sheer amount of grief, but I feel strengthened in solidarity with my queer siblings when we acknowledge COVID and mitigate the risks together; there is no such thing as individual risk when it comes to public health and aerosol-transmissible diseases. Every mask bloc gives me hope. Every gay and trans person protesting and loudly refusing pinkwashing gives me hope. We must build a world where every person has the resources and freedom to live a full life with safety and dignity, to grow old having been all the iterations and versions of themselves they can possibly imagine and more.
As for me, figuring out my fashion/style as a trans gaysian without top surgery has largely been vibes-based and by perpetually asking the question “does this make me feel more or less myself.” I think long hair wouldn’t give me dysphoria if I didn’t have boobs, but in the meantime I am grateful for the clippers of my barber, a Taiwanese auntie who sometimes laughs at me. I feel good looking hot, showing skin and tattoos, with a black KN95 strapped to my face in an effort to protect myself and others.
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* I haven’t seen these, a “patent-pending design” by Ford, for sale or on the market, but with an antifog wipe these could be useful for people who lip read; to be…clear, this wouldn’t be effective against surveillance.
