Briana Booker, president of BCC's Queer Student Association, introduces the panelists for a program discussing their experiences related to gender diversity.

Maayan Nuri Héd, left, Luna Celestia Mornelithe, Jackson Rodriguez and Jay Santangelo talked about their experiences and where they had found allyship and community.

PITTSFIELD, Mass.— Ahead of Monday's International Transgender Day of Visibility, community members shared their experiences with gender diversity during a panel discussion at Berkshire Community College.

"Really my goal, I think, ultimately in life is to make being trans such a casual thing that it isn't even a question anymore," Jackson Rodriguez, a teaching assistant, told a packed lecture hall on Wednesday.

"It's just a way of being. I wouldn't say I've ever come out. I would always say that I'm just — I've always been me."

Hosted by the Queer Student Association, conversation topics ranged from gender and coming out to movies, drag, and safe spaces in the community. There are over 1.6 million trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people in the United States, "and they are going to continue to exist, whether you have a say in it or not," said QSA President Briana Booker.

"Trans people are not asking you to give them special treatment. They are not asking you to put away your beliefs and your ideas to fit a world for them," Booker said. "They are asking to be treated as they are: human beings, people."

Panelists included Rodriguez; artist and director of nonprofit Seeing Rainbows Maayan Nuri Héd;  Wander Berkshires founder Jay Santangelo, and artist Lunarya 'Luna' Celestia Mornelithe. When asked how they define gender, Héd said, "I don't," Mornelithe joked, "I lost mine," Santangelo explained it is fluid for them, and Rodriguez said gender is a performative thing that can be changed however a person sees fit.

Attendees had several questions about allyship, as President Donald Trump recently signed several executive orders targeting gender-diverse identities, including a declaration that the U.S. only recognizes "male" and "female" as sexes.

"Something I find myself repeating ad nauseum to people because it's really, really simple but so important and people resist doing it, is to have a conversation," Héd said. "Specifically have a conversation with a trans person."

She explained that the most important part is being willing to make mistakes and "be willing to look dumb, be willing to be wrong, be willing to be corrected, be willing to grow and change from the experience."

Santangelo urged people to check in on each other, be vocal about their support if possible, and "stand up and contact your representatives, they are listening."

Pittsfield's City Council and School Committee and the North Adams City Council have endorsed sanctuary city resolutions for the trans and gender-diverse community.

Mornelithe said they have always been an ally first.

"I'm an ally for people of color, I'm an ally for other trans people because, for me, I don't see a different person," they explained. "I see somebody I want to be friends with at some point."

And if you don't know how to be an ally, ask questions, Mornelithe added.

"I grew up knowing there is no stupid questions or stupid answers. The only stupid questions are the ones never asked."

Rodriguez asked people to accept that humans are prone to change, and that is part of human nature.

"Change is inevitable. It doesn't matter whether you want it to happen or not. Change will happen," he said. 

"And I think as trans people specifically, because that's the topic for today, I think our willingness to change because we see what it is that isn't working for us and we see it so clearly and we pursue it, I think it makes people who have always been told that they can never change, they don't have the ability to change, they don't know how to change, I think it makes them scared."

He feels that accepting that humans can change at any point without anyone else's permission is the most powerful thing.

Panelists also spoke on how they found community in their trans and nonbinary identities.

"I didn't, so I created it," Santangelo said, alluding to their cafe and event space on Depot Street.

Wander Berkshires is recovery-focused cafe that has established itself as a gender-diverse community hub since opening in the fall. The previous week, a false bomb threat interrupted a drag story hour fundraiser at the venue, but planners said they stood strong against hate in the wake of the incident.

Santangelo came to the area about three years ago looking for solace after living in larger cities their entire life.  

"I wanted complete isolation and didn't talk to anybody for the first year I moved here. I was just trying to find myself and then I did," they explained.

"I found my transness in that silence and then when it was time to come out of just kind of what I call now, like a hibernation, I was like, 'Oh, what am I doing here?' And I just started looking for spaces that I could find people and I couldn't find them because the Berkshires is rural."

Héd explained that before Seeing Rainbows — a trans-led arts and support organization — was born, she spent decades in a very dark place experiencing abuse, subjugation, and oppression.

"To me, what justice is is finding community, reaching out to each other, building these bridges. We were talking, I think this morning, about how what Seeing Rainbows has done is literally power from powerlessness," she said.

"We took a bunch of people who are at the bottom, we're trans, we're poor, we have nothing, and we said, 'What do we have between us?' We have this organization that was nothing and from it, we've transmuted that into a place of power for any trans person in the region, connected to the region, who's remotely heard of it, because we can say to you, 'We've got you.'"

Mornelithe explained that they have battled with self-acceptance more than anything else and didn't know what community was until becoming involved with Seeing Rainbows.

Rodriguez pointed out these community spaces don't have to be physical, as he created a Discord server during the COVID-19 pandemic with like-minded individuals that has stood the test of time.  Discord is an instant messaging and VoIP social platform.

"The one thing that I learned over time is that there, there are people who are going to be just as nervous to reach out and ask for help as you are and so when the pandemic happened, I created my own Discord server," he reported.

"…To this day, I have made best friends with seven of those people, there is not a day that goes by where we don't at least check in once on that Discord server, send memes to each other, share music, whatever new thing we're doing."

The International Transgender Day of Visibility was created by transgender activist Rachel Crandall Crocker in 2009.

"She created a day where people could celebrate the lives of transgender people while still acknowledging that due to discrimination, not every trans person can or wants to be visible," Booker explained.

"If that is you, we want you to know that we see you. Your existence is real and is valid and we are all fighting for the day that you guys can come out into the world as you truly are, just like the rest of us are already able to do."

• Most Read

• Most Comments

• All News

• Blogroll

• Photos