Look Up, Look Up

トランスジェンダーと言えば、クラウドアトラスの監督の一人Lana Wachowski が話題になりまいた。カミングアウトをしたことで、HRC Visibility Awardを受賞したそうで、昨年のスピーチを見ることができました。とても誠実に自身を語っているとても感動的なものです。


transcipt

3分30秒あたりから
The nature of our mortal lives is in the consequence of our words and deeds. The fundaments upon all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable. We’re always interested, as storytellers all three of us, in the nature of that inexplicability.
死すべき存在としての我々の本質は、言葉と行いの結果としてあります。我々の知識と学問の土台となっているのは説明できないものです。私たちがいつも興味を引かれているのは、語り手として、我々３人は、この説明できないものの本質なのです。

To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us unique.
（自分の衝動を否定することは、自分をかけがえのないものにしてくる、まさにそのものを否定することになるの）

I think anyone who goes through something so difficult you know you become detached from that somewhat and you’re just like you’re so insulated by your experience and it’s so intense you’re just you’re trying to make everything perfect and you can’t look up and then suddenly he was like “look up, look up.”
（あまりにも大変なことを経験している人は、自分を切り離して、自分の経験とは切り離して、あまりにも集中して、すべてを完璧にやろうとしてしまっているので、顔を上げることができなくなってしまいます。そして「見上げて、見上げてごらん」と突然なってしまうのです）

映画『クラウドアトラス』をまだ見ていないのですが “If I had remained invisible, the truth would stay hidden and I couldn’t allow that.”（私が目立たないようにしていれば、真実は隠れたままになってしまう。そうするわけにはいかなかったの）Somni451であろう言葉を引いて語っている部分から自らの体験を語っていきます。

（15分あたりから）
And we’re alternating perspectives quite conscious of the fact that we have just made a film about this subject, about the responsibilities human beings have to one another, that our lives are not entirely our own. And there is dialogue from the film merging easily with our discussion and I find myself repeating a line from a character, who I was very attached to who speaks about her own decision to kind of come out. She says, “If I had remained invisible, the truth would stay hidden and I couldn’t allow that.” And she says this aware that even at the moment that she’s saying it that even the sacrifice she has made will cost her her life. Suddenly I begin this very intense rush of images, thoughts and memories going through my mind, a kind of life flashing before my eyes that happens. People describe near death 3experiences. As it begins I start to understand just how complex the relationship between visibility and invisibility has been throughout my life.

Invisibilityを選んでいた彼女が勇気を出してカミングアウトしたのは同じような悩みを抱えている人の励みになるのでは、If I can be that person for someone else then the sacrifice of my private civic life may have value.と思ったからそうです。ためらいがちに照れながらも語ることこそ真実味があふれているように思います。

（2７分30秒あたりから）
I remember thinking about my dad’s words, his acceptance of me, when my wife and I first read about [murdered transgender teen] Gwen Araujo. It seemed impossible that something like that could happen so close to this city, yet here was this person like me murdered by ignorance, by prejudice, murdered by intolerance, it seemed in direct inverse proportion to the acceptance of my family. Murdered by a kind of fear that seeks to obliterate any evidence that the world is different from the way they want to see it, from the way they want to believe it to be.

Invisibility is indivisible from visibility; for the transgender this is not simply a philosophical conundrum -- it can be the difference between life and death.

A few short weeks ago after my coming out, the three of us, Tom, Andy and I were being interviewed, one of the reporters ventured away from the subject of the film towards my gender. Imagine that, a reporter. My brother quickly stepped in, “Look, just so we’re clear,” he says, “if somebody asks something or says something about my sister that I don’t like, understand that I will break a bottle over their head.” [applause] Few words express love clearer than these.

I am here because Mr. Henderson taught me that there are some things we do for ourselves, but there are some things we do for others. I am here because when I was young, I wanted very badly to be a writer, I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I couldn’t find anyone like me in the world and it felt like my dreams were foreclosed simply because my gender was less typical than others.

If I can be that person for someone else [pause, applause] then the sacrifice of my private civic life may have value. I know I am also here because of the strength and courage and love that I am blessed to receive from my wife, my family and my friends. And in this way I hope to offer their love in the form of my materiality to a project like this one started by the HRC, so that this world that we imagine in this room might be used to gain access to other rooms, to other worlds previously unimaginable.

Thanks very much.

この話を聴くまで「トランスジェンダーってどっちからどっちになったの？」とワイドショー的に考えていただけでした。確かに性的な自己という点では普通の人と違ったのかもしれませんが、当たり前のことですが、同じように悩みながら生きている点では何ら変わりはないんですよね。違いを受け入れると言うのは、口で言うほど簡単ではありませんが、受け入れられるような、自分をまず変えていけるようになっていきたいと思わせてくれるものでした。