Storytelling as a Call to Action
Geena Rocero's Horse Barbie invites readers to use their voice
[Dear readers: This issue contains discussion of transphobia.]
“Hopefully, we now know that visibility is part of claiming justice in society, but it’s not the only part,” Geena Rocero notes in an interview with Vogue. “That notion that you just have to be visible and come out and things will be fine doesn’t always apply to trans people.” Rocero, a model, producer, speaker, and activist, knows intimately the importance of visibility, as she details in her new memoir Horse Barbie (The Dial Press, 2023), but knows the other side just as well: tokenization and its erasure of identity. Horse Barbie is Rocero’s story: one of trans joy, exhaustion, love, empowerment, and more. And at its core, Horse Barbie demonstrates the need for story—and language—beyond the purpose of visibility; rather, as a call to action.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Rocero stumbled into the country’s pageant world at age fifteen, immediately winning title after title in the revered industry. “In the Philippines, transgender pageants are a national sport,” Rocero writes (Rocero, 22). “Before colonization, we honored gender-fluid identities. Then the Spanish instituted dozens of festivals for Catholic saints. Beauty pageant culture was imported via American colonization in the early 1900s. Put all those influences together, and you’ve got our vibrant trans beauty pageants” (22). Years after her mother moves to California, Rocero follows her. In San Francisco, and later New York, her modeling career also takes off, but neither in the U.S. nor Philippines does Rocero feel visible. Though she had been “out and proud” in the Philippines, the country does not have gender identification policies (xii). And though the U.S.does, she sees that “in 2005 a transgender Filipina immigrant was the last person the industry would want to put front and center” (xv).
But language and storytelling begin to set Rocero free. Learning more about Tagalog’s gender-neutral pronoun, she realizes “that growing up with gender-neutral siya was my ancestors’ way of telling me that there was life beyond the binary” (241). “Didn’t I owe it to…all my ancestors to bring my full self into the future they had envisioned?” she asks (241). And so she does, sharing her truth in a TED Talk that has since received over five million views: “I was determined to think of it as ‘sharing’ because, until then, my moments of disclosure had come from some place of shame” (224). “I didn’t see the word trans as a qualifier or disclaimer anymore; I saw transness as power” (263). Her understanding of self and language evolve hand in hand.
In the last line of her memoir, Rocero writes: “I am chapters that are still unwritten, and so are you” (298). The line encapsulates the power of language, of storytelling; that despite Rocero having just concluded her almost 300-page memoir, her life is more than what we readers see on the page, in the media. That her story will go on, and so will ours. Our histories are constant. “No matter how scared you might feel, you have one of the most powerful things a person can wield: a story” (298).
In not only our personal lives, but the lives being impacted by cruel, baseless, and oppressive bans against gender affirming care, civil rights, and safety, storytelling holds a power. “I tell them that visibility is not the one and only answer, that we need equity and justice, too, and that the only way to survive while we push for change is to lean on one another” (297). By using our voices to champion visibility, call for voting, demand greater action, we can do as Rocero has and champion for a better present and future. “That’s the thing about trans joy: It can never be fully extinguished. People can try to narrow the possibilities for our lives, even end them, but our spirits will always expand to fill whatever space we were given. We will find the power in us” (293).
Protecting LGBTQIA2S+ rights
Published at a time when the rights of LGBTQIA2S+ folks are being continuously challenged and, in many cases, stripped away, Horse Barbie is a rallying cry for all readers and more to use their voice and power. How can we work to create an equitable world for all trans folks? Here are some organizations to support:
Trans Women of Color Collective: Cultivates economic opportunities and affirming spaces for trans people of color, builds community, and engages in healing and restorative justice.
The Trevor Project: Through crisis support, advocacy, and more, they aim to end suicide among LGBTQIA+ folks.
The Okra Project: A mutual aid collective that provides support to Black Trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people.
Call BlackLine: Provides BIPOC folks with an anonymous and confidential avenue to report negative, physical, and inappropriate contact with police and vigilantes, or support those in need of immediate crisis counseling.
Sovereign Bodies Institute: Builds on Indigenous gathering and knowledge transfer to create, disseminate, and put into action research on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people.
For more ways to defend LGBTQIA2S+ rights, we encourage you to check out our recent deep dive into trans representation in publishing in this issue and our recent post on Instagram.
“I am chapters that are still unwritten, and so are you.”
—Horse Barbie: A Memoir, p298
Other’s thoughts on Horse Barbie:
@openbookopen: “The U.S. is not the promised land and the Philippines are not ‘backwards’. She finds deep love and acceptance in both places. She faces systemic oppression in both places. She is also made of both places—she writes so beautifully about her family (both in the U.S. and the Philippines), her connection to the trans culture and ancestral, pre-colonial gender identities of her homeland, her love of dancing, the queer Filipino slang she speaks with her friends. She comes into herself and her power in so many small ways throughout her life. It’s a joy to witness.”
If you liked Horse Barbie, read…
The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
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