NJCU Presents "Trans-Logues"
By: Jan Aguilos
Issue date: 4/15/10 Section: News
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The performance was inspired by Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues" but the twist was that the five performers were transgender women.
"Our ladies today push out definitions in terms of discrimination and empowerment," stated Renata Moreira, Assistant Director for Special Project and advisor to the LGBTF Alliance, as she introduced the five women. "It will be fun, it will be moving, and I promise, you will not leave this room as you entered."
Phoenix Nastasha Russell led the five women performers on stage, being the most experienced in writing poetry and has been published.
Russell set the tone for the event by describing how she felt "trapped" when she was young and starting to realize that her gender identity was different from her biological sex.
"Even though this confused the hell out of me / I still sat down when I peed / This just felt more natural to me," Russell spoke to the eagerly listening audience.
Like the women who followed, her poems were raunchy and laden with humor, which the audience loved. The audience enjoyed Russell's references to the appendages of her male partners and her silky-voiced description of her vagina as a "purring pussycat."
Tyra Gardner, the youngest of the women at 20, would follow and her confidence matched the first two performers. Her poem, "The Way to My Vajayjay," described her sexual exploits, with braggadocios details which would make the prim and proper blush.
Angela Hodge-Bordelle followed and her poem centered on more romantic relations with men. Hodge-Bordelle would be as bawdy as the other women but steer more to the subtler side than her peers with her declaration that she wants a man with a "key to her special spot."
The last to introduce herself was Joi-Elle White. White's poem was flirtatious and playful, such as when she feigned a giggle before uttering the line, "Don't ya'll know that my vagina's ticklish just like me?"
As the show went on, these five women would continue to tell tales of what femininity means to them with a few penis jokes for good measure.
The act ended with the five women jokingly singing about their vaginas to the tune of the "Oscar Meyer Weiner" song.
Renata Moreira came back to moderate a Q & A with the five women, when students and faculty members in attendance inquired about their personal experiences and impressions of how the world sees them.
Audience members asked about the discrimination they felt and the women responded by telling how acute it was in the realm of the workplace. Russell, White, and Hodge-Bordelle told of their concerns of being discriminated against during job interviews and expressed their desire for strong laws and enforcement, both on the federal and state level, of anti-discrimination laws which include transgender persons.
When Russell was asked if being transgender was a choice by one of the audience members, she responded saying, "I don't believe you being born trans or feeling you're in the wrong body is actually a choice."
White chimed in stating that she never felt "trapped in a man's body."
"I'm not trying to be a woman, I'm not trying to be a man, she added. "I enjoy just being myself."
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