Although I may have have started my transition seven years ago, I have always been and will always be a woman.
My name is Jocelyn Olivia Nixon. I’m a singer/songwriter I have a band called The Creepy Jingles and my pronouns are she/her. I am a proud transwoman and all those years ago I made a choice to no longer let my fear control me. I embraced all of myself and since my transition, I’ve developed stronger relationships and have been more successful in my career. My life shifted; I like who I am and I’ll be damned if I allow anyone to tell me who I am and try and put me back in a box that I’m too big to fit in.
They call us names.
But we are known by many names.
We show people the best of themselves. We show them the worst of themselves. Being transgender is living through many days consumed by the cognitive dissonance of what we saw in the mirror conflicting with our inner world—then liberating ourselves by being true to our hearts, minds, and souls. By taking ownership and autonomy for our bodies we have transcended boundaries and have now become those mirrors reflecting back on others and how they feel about themselves.
We are resilient.
We are strong
We are beautiful.
We are warriors.
We know what it feels like to keep getting knocked down but we also have that fire to dig deep and get up every single time better and stronger than before. All this pressure has us forged us into diamonds and it’s quite easy to allow our hearts to become as hardened in the face of those who hate us. Despite all of that we remain firm in our position to be authentic against all the opposition, oppression, misunderstanding, struggle and adversity.
I know things are scary and stressful right now but I want to remind everyone that anything that is worth having is worth fighting for.
We are not just fighting for ourselves. We have a job to fight for everyone that will come after us. It’s our generation’s responsibility to cut down the tall grass and make a safe and visible path for those kids to see. Thir generation can be spared of what we're enduring—and we endure so we can be free. Free to be who they are, free to love who they want openly and freely without persecution, free to not always fear for their freedom every election.
Trans kids should be able to play sports. They should get to have a childhood, free of the discrimination that forces them to grow up so fast. These children should not have to endure so much stress and negativity. All of us deserve a world where we don’t have to prove the validity of our identities. Our personal experiences should not be used against us as a weapon.
I love all of you for being brave enough to love yourself. However, we have more work to do. No one can be complacent anymore—we don’t have the luxury.
Get involved in the community. Volunteer, phone bank, and continue to have those conversations with the people you think will never understand. Because you might be the difference in changing just one perspective. And even one perspective is one more person fighting alongside us for change. We must be better than our oppressors. We must lead by example to show what true humanity looks like.
We have always been here.
And we exist whether they like it or not.
Despite the hardships we're facing, do not let your heart grow heavy.
Live in joy to spite them. Be yourself to spite them. Succeed in spite of them.
Our most powerful resource is our voice. Use it.
Sing. Dance. Make some art.
Let’s alchemize and transmute all this noise around us into gold.
Date
Friday, July 14, 2023 - 10:00am
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In 1863, as blood poured and body counts climbed, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring more than three million enslaved people living in Confederate states finally free.
But two years passed before African Americans in Texas got word. They were free, but didn’t know it.
Today, we are free but often fail to fully know our hard-won freedoms, such as by not exercising and protecting our right to vote. It’s understandable, given the seemingly inexhaustible energy expended trying to roll back other people’s freedoms.
In the past year, we’ve seen spirited attacks on voting rights in the attempts at eliminating convenient drop boxes and in trying to disqualify mail-in ballots date-stamped on Election Day but not arriving within three days. In 2021, the legislature passed new voting district maps brazenly announced and designed to favor one party over the other, on top of cracking minority districts in the most diverse county in the Free State.
Extremists in our state have abandoned the notion that all Kansans deserve political representation, with some explicitly stating their desire to make Kansas as unwelcoming and unsafe to vulnerable populations as possible.
So yes, it’s understandable if some people don’t exactly feel free since so many people in power seem hell-bent on denying freedoms, advantages and opportunities.
Those incredible people in Texas back in June of 1865 didn’t know they were free, but we do—and we must act accordingly by voting, by volunteering, and working with groups like the ACLU of Kansas fighting daily to protect those freedoms.
So, as Juneteenth approaches, let’s think about freedom not as a destination, but as journey, one requiring our constant attention, consciousness, and vigilance.
Date
Monday, June 19, 2023 - 5:45am
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The term “butterfly effect” wasn’t coined until 1960 by MIT Meteorology Prof. Edward Lorenz, but by then, Fern Van Gieson had already established herself as a model for the now widely-accepted theory that small, seemingly uneventful actions can result in powerful and wide-ranging consequences.
At the time, Fern, who was white, had lived in Washington D.C. and in Santa Barbara, graduated from Oklahoma A & T (Oklahoma State University), worked as a copywriter at Boeing, and co-founded the Wichita Branch of the Urban League with a Black man.
And in her embodiment of the butterfly effect, this petite person who died last month at 95, exerted outsized influence on the pre- and post-civil rights social climate in Wichita and in Kansas. We owe her a debt of gratitude.
If you knew her at all, you knew she was a woman before her time. Her brand of cross-racial, cross-gender, and cross-continent activism feels common now, but Fern engaged in this work during the era of segregated swimming pools, restaurants, and schools.
A friend said, for example, that her job at the YWCA cafeteria offered one of the few places integrated settings where Black diners could eat.
In essence, Fern was attuned to the plights of her community, while most others remained blissfully unconscious about such issues.
She actively advocated for civil rights, for women’s rights, and for international peace. She was one of the organizers of a local chapter of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and Kansas Women's Political Caucus, where she pushed for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
She’d later fight for LGBTQ equality and environmentalism.
Fern lived in accordance with her ideals. She was an active member of the First Unitarian Universalist Church. She was the Woman of the Year at the 1985 Wichita Women's Fair, and she received the 2014 Civil Rights Trailblazer Award from The Kansas African American Museum.
I selected her for that Trailblazer Award because she helped change this world for the better. And we can all aspire to follow her example and create our own butterfly effects for a better world.
Fern, rest in power, and in protest.
A memorial for Fern has been established with the First Unitarian Universalist Church, 7202 E. 21st, Wichita, KS 67206. Services in care of Downing & Lahey East Chapel. Share tributes online at: www.dlwichita.com
Date
Monday, May 22, 2023 - 10:30am
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