Godfrey’s Race to Dinner

Portland, Oregon

If you want to know whether you’re a racist, look in the mirror. If you are white, you’re a racist. It really is that simple. No matter how progressive you think you are, having black and brown friends cannot repair the innate racism of your birth. Your vanilla voice is not welcome. Your low-pigment opinions are invalid. The back of the bus is where you need to go when it comes to having a say about race. And don’t give me your white fragility.

Thankfully two Women of Color have taken it upon themselves to educate white women on their privilege. The ‘Race to Dinner’ service offers liberal white women and other daughters of the Confederacy the chance to have dinner with proudly black Women of Color. For a mere $2,500, these racial redeemers will help them recognize and dismantle their white supremacy. I almost wish I were white, rather than transrace, so that I too could be mercilessly berated by two black women over a butternut squash tartlet.

I admit that I am somewhat puzzled as to why they currently offer this service to white women only. I suspect they could bring in a lot more revenue if they open it up to their co-enablers, Caucasian cisgendered male-identifiers. They might appreciate being educated on the history of slavery by two feisty black ladies. Particularly if historically authentic whips are involved.

Race to Dinner is a fantastic idea, but I’m disappointed by their exclusion of transracial community leaders like myself, Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King. As Rachel, Shaun and I are white-passing, we experience a kind of racism that black peoples can never understand. You wouldn’t believe the abuse I get from other People of Color when I tell them I am black. Yes, white people are racist, all of them. But I’m shocked to discover People of Color can be racist to transrace people. Imagine the emotional torment I endure, rejected by my own people while also having to deal with prejudice from white peoples (or, as us black peoples call them, ‘wypipo’).

Of course, being transgender, transracial abuse is just the tip of a very large anti-progressive iceberg that looms over me as I navigate between the Scylla of my white-passing blackness and the Charybdis of my female penis. Racists are one thing. TERFS are a whole other kettle of bigotry. Those of you whose silence is violence to my community will not know the term TERF. It means ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’. That means ‘anyone who still thinks a woman can’t have a beard and a penis in 2020’.

I have chosen not to transition medically and so I self-identify as a woman. There’s a lot of ignorance surrounding the idea of self-ID, so I shall explain. Being a woman is far more than genitals and reproductive systems. It’s not about tampons and childbirth. It’s a much more meaningful experience than popping hormone pills or getting breast implants and hair extensions. As I explained last week at the gym to some conservative cisgendered women who objected to me using the hand drier in the women’s locker room to dry my balls, you cannot quantify what it is to be ‘female’. To be a woman, I simply have to say that I am one and really mean it. If you cannot deal with that, then you might just be a TERF yourself. Actually, you are one.

[special_offer]

As a transwoman who is attracted to other women, I am a proud lesbian. This really shouldn’t be a problem by now. You’d think my non-trans fellow lesbians would be able to empathize, seeing as they have been historically marginalized and fetishized by homophobes. Sadly, you would be completely wrong because lesbians, or as I like to call them, ‘vile bigots’, don’t seem to find me attractive. When I call them out on it, they deny it is down to transphobia. But I recently proved them wrong. After being rejected in a bar for looking ‘like a dude’, I returned the next night wearing a dress. ‘Oh look, it’s Mrs Doubtfire’, the transphobes cried. Typical women: they don’t know what they want.

Inspired by Race to Dinner, I have decided to open Portland’s very first ‘Tapas with TERFS’ service. It’ll be a table with an assortment of ethnically sensitive dips, some organic tequila, a fistful of Latinx lesbians and me, explaining to them why refusing to sleep with me is a hate crime.

I’ve reached out to Caitlyn Jenner to assist me, because double-teaming these TERFS would be a more effective strategy.