In those times between waking and sleep,when the mind wanders to fanciful thoughts, I have sometimes wondered what would happen if there was a city founded and run (or simply purchased and run) by transgender people.
I do not think separation from the rest of society is a good thing, in general, but there is a stage in the transition process where ghettoization for a bit makes sense, giving a people time to grow into themselves.
A new school has opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Mocha Celis Popular Baccalaureate is a tuition-free school supported by non-profit organization and staffed by transpeople and catering to transpeople over the age of 16.
Note: The word "transvestite" is used a lot in South America when referring to transgenders. It has not gained the same reference as it has in the north, of someone who crossdresses for sexual pleasure. The word "travesti" is also used, though it tends to set many North American transgenders on edge.
The school is named after an illiterate transvestite who worked as a prostitute and was an activist with the Association of Argentine Transvestites. A week after Celis went missing, her body was found, showing signs that she had been beaten and shot to death.
Activists suspect that Celis was killed by a federal police officer who had previously threatened her.
The head of the new school, Francisco Quiñones has explained that the idea was to "create an inclusive school, free of discrimination, that takes into account and values the different trans identities, where they can manage to finish secondary school".
Public schools, which are governed by rules that cater to heterosexuals, drive these people away.
--Quiñones
I wasn’t made to work standing on a street corner; if I was any good at that I would have earned a fortune by now,
--Laura Barrionuevo, 29, who attends the school because she was forced to end her education when she was 15
If the school gets certified by the Education Ministry, which is currently taking longer than it should, students will be able to graduate after 3 years with a diploma in community development. The coursework prepares the students to be community leaders or set up cooperatives. The diploma allow students to continue their studies at the university level.
The school is operating in a building that is on loan from the Asociación Mutual Sentimiento, a community development NGO, and was registered by the Fundación Diversidad Divino Tesoro, a non-profit organisation that defends the interests of sexual minorities.
The faculty of 25 had to help refurbish the building as well as teach. The student body is not restricted to transgender students. Of the current 35 students, ten do not identify as transpeople, but are rather poverty-stricken street-people who feel excluded from the regular educational system.
Although we made it clear to them that they would have to take classes like ‘trans history’, they told us that for them it wasn’t easy to find a warm place free of discrimination where they could finish secondary school, which is why they have come here.
--Quiñones
Why are they doing this?
The idea for the school emerged from an assessment of the conditions faced by transvestites in Argentina, which was published in a 2005 book, "La Gesta del Nombre Propio" (roughly, "the epic struggle for a name of one's own"). The book described the intolerance, humiliation, marginalisation and attacks suffered by transvestites.
One of the chilling statistics provided by the book was that 64 percent of the 302 transvestites interviewed had not completed primary school. And of those who had managed to finish, only 20 percent graduated from high school.
That lack of education effectively bars members of the trans community from gaining access to quality jobs, and pushes the majority (79 percent of the study sample) into prostitution as their main source of income.
The study also found that while only 11 percent of the respondents were studying at the time, 70 percent said that they would have liked to, but that they were not willing to hide or deny their true sexual identity.
The report showed that as a result of the discrimination they face on so many fronts, many members of the trans community die young. Of 420 who had died in recent years, mainly of AIDS or murder, 69 percent were between the ages of 22 and 41.
Of course, something similar in this country would come with all sorts of accusations of the teachers sexually abusing the students. Personally, I've mentored several trans youth and never had a sexual relationship or activity with any of them.