March 2017 — SistaazHood’s Leigh Davids Makes Famous “Trans Violent Exclusion” Speech, South Africa
In March 2017, trans sex worker activist, Leigh Davids from SistaazHood, made the now famous “Trans Violent Exclusion” speech at the 3rd Trans Health, Advocacy and Research Conference, hosted by Gender DynamiX (GDX) et Iranti.
Under the Conference theme, “Decolonising and Depathologising Transgender Identities”, Leigh delivered a powerful critique, which was published afterwards.
The speech highlighted the different income and social classes and levels of access within trans organisations and among trans women and activists. She spoke about living on the street, and she challenged the audience to think about what it means being a trans woman sex worker and how this Conference (or any other) is at all meaningful for trans women sex workers. In the speech Leigh mentioned that trans women sex workers do not live to be older than 40 years.
Leigh passed away two weeks before her 40th birthday, on 27 February 2019. Read the tributes to Leigh after her passing.
Transcript of snippets from a speech Leigh made in 2018 at the Kewpie Heritage Day
“Thank you for coming to the place where we live. We do not often invite people here. Like anybody else we enjoy our privacy and as you might imagine we don’t have a lot of that here.
This is what NOT PRIVACY looks like.
This is what NOT HOME looks like.
This is what parents threaten their children with if they don’t do their homework.
This is what Capitalism imprints in your mind to make you work harder, to spend your money,
to make you work for the man.
This is……. THE STREETS.
The human mind and will is amazing. Even when it is hungry. Even when it is in pain all the time. Even when it’s spirit has been attacked all it’s life. It will find and make community, under the worst stress. The SistaazHood and our allies have been living on this spot for decades. Over there is our lounge and our kitchen. Over here is where we sleep together.
This is home for us.
Well it was until the part of apartheid that never died came and evicted us last week, evicted us yet again from District 6.
The first time was because of philosophy called apartheid. Ooh and we hate that word hey? All of us! Black white poor rich.
Say it with all the hate in yourself, all the disgust, feel appalled!
Wasnt it terrible? It was so terrible that once upon a time a government, a city could throw poor black people out of their homes, demolish them, send the people to the outskirts of the city. What terrible prejudice, human rights violation. That one could lose your home because of the colour of your skin, your culture, how you were born. Shocking hey?
But let me tell you that Big Brother Apartheid might be dead but his father is still with us. We never killed his father. His father’s name is the CLASS SYSTEM and his father’s job is GENTRIFICATION. In the name of gentrification the father of apartheid is still chasing poor black people from District Six.
And so? How many of you are working class? How many of you are middle class? Do you occupy the street to walk to work or do you occupy the street when you go for a jog or do you drive in it? If you answer yes to any of those you are more or less safe from the father of apartheid and his job – gentrification. But me and my sisters. He is coming for us. He came for us last week on his first round through Woodstock. He chased us around the corner. Next week he will take us to a concentration camp in a place called Wolwehoek. What is this? It sounds like a TV drama. But it is not. It is my life. It is our life. And maybe you wonder why I can sleep in the street, how can sleep on a piece of property I don’t own, how I can complain when I am evicted from a space I don’t own. Are you wondering that? Are you wondering if I am a nuisance to
people here? Do I make a noise? Do I use drugs, sell sex, urinate on the street? And isn;t it time for me to get my act together, find a job?
First of all – I HAVE A JOB. Sex work is work. You made it illegal.
Second of all. I don’t live here by accident. I am not poor by accident. I am not without a home by accident.
There are places in the world where democracy does it’s job, nobody sleeps on tar and cardboard there. There are places in the world where Capitalism works, does it’s job – people don’t sleep under plastic on cement there. There are places in
the world where dynamic communities with all the classes are designed by city planners. People from every class is together in one neighbourhood, diversity makes them thrive! Believe it! Those neighbourhoods work! And the most vulnerable? There are shelters for them…..right there in the same neighbourhood where one guy jogs on the street, the other one walks on it to work and the one with mental health challenges sits on a bench under a beautiful tree, protected, maybe even healing. There are places like that in the world.
And do you know how they happened? They did not happen because poor people got their act together. They did not happen because poor people got themselves jobs. They did not happen because poor people got organised. They happened because people with power started doing their job. They built a society for everybody with their power. The middle class agreed to it. Insisted on it. That’s how it happened.
So please leave us now and go do you job. Use your power. Get us off the street without evicting us. Gentrify with us in our heart and mind, not like we are trash that needs to be taken out…..of town.”