News
Activist CeCe McDonald speaks at DMC
By Kirsty Warren ’18
April 17, 2015
“When society says ‘oh you’re pushing your agenda on us,’ it’s just like oh shut the f**k up, you’ve been pushing your white cis heteronormative agenda on us for a lot longer,” activist CeCe McDonald said during her lecture on Monday night. The crowd in the Days-Massolo Center burst into laughter.
McDonald discussed trans liberation, mass incarceration and racism at the event, which was presented by The Feminists of Color Collective in collaboration with The Rainbow Alliance, Womyn’s Center, Women’s Studies Department and the Africana Studies Department. After being assaulted by a racist and transphobic mob in 2012, McDonald was convicted of manslaughter for stabbing the man who attacked her with scissors. When she accepted a plea bargain of 41 months to avoid a possible 20-year sentence, her case received national attention from LGBTQ rights groups. McDonald served 19 months in two men’s prisons before being released in January of last year. Since her release, McDonald has been an outspoken advocate for racial justice and trans rights.
“It’s been hard to have people see me outside of being a trans woman of color,” McDonald said. “I want to get resources to help people prepare for getting back into society, which has been my main objective since being in prison and getting out.”
“Trans women are not looked at as lawyers, teachers, mothers or sisters but as druggies, prostitutes and deviants,” she said. “There are so many ideas and stereotypes but people need to break out of that. I can be ratchet and use big words, it’s not like they cancel each other out.”
Maureen McDermott ’18 admired the fact that McDonald did not try to conform to mainstream, conventionally “proper” media standards. “She kind of breaks the mold of marginalized activists feeling the need to present themselves as ‘normal’ and ‘perfect’ as a way to gain societal recognition,” McDermott said. “She just spoke in such an open and uncensored way that was really refreshing and enlightening.”
Calling herself “unapologetically black and unapologetically trans,” McDonald discussed asserting one’s owns needs and rights saying, “you know what, that’s enough.”
During her lecture, McDonald took issue with being “tokenized” as a trans woman of color. She said that reactions to her assault focused on her gender and ignored her race. “A man with a swastika on his chest called me the n-word and said to ‘go back to Africa,’” she said, adding bluntly, “I think it had something to do with race.”
“People think that I as a woman should only think about trans issues. The intersections of oppression are deep,” McDonald said, using her experiences to illustrate the ties between trans issues to issues of racism. She criticized both the fact that “policies and laws were never created for black people” and the existence of legal defenses like “trans panic,” allowing people to argue that they acted in a state of temporary insanity to explain attacking a transgender person.
The injustice of mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex were central points of McDonald’s lecture, and she called imprisonment an epidemic in this country. “Prisons are built to fill, if they have a capacity to fill for these prisons, they’re going to fill them up,” McDonald said. She was also greatly frustrated during her sentencing that other people argued over whether she’d be safer in a men or women’s prison, without listening to McDonald herself. “Prison is prison. For me, personally, I wasn’t going to feel safe anywhere.”
“My life is all about trying to end mass incarceration, and achieve the liberation of trans people, the liberation of all people,” McDonald said. On the topic of activism, she contrasted organization leaders and those who come to protests or events to take selfies. “The movement isn’t about pats on the back or likes on Facebook, it’s about real change.”
“It’s beyond opening doors, you have to kick them open,” she said. She advised students to be bold. “My motto for 2015 is ‘f**k your feelings.’ Don’t live being worried about hurting people’s feelings. Sometimes I do get drained trying to confront people but even if I didn’t have a tongue I’d find a way to confront people and hope that they change for the better.”
Following McDonald’s lecture, there was a question-and-answer session with attendees. “If you’re paying so much money to attend this school and you don’t feel like you have a say or a place, take up as much space as you need and don’t feel like you’ve got to bite your tongue,” she said. “And be there for each other. Love is an act of radicalness.”