Five Questions With… Loren Krywanczyk

Loren KrywanczykLoren Krywanczyk is an undergraduate at Yale where he first organized Trans Issues Week in 2004, as a sophomore. The 2nd Annual Trans Issues Week took place in 2005, and Krywanczyk is currently planning the 3rd in the series.
< Loren (left) with his partner Vera
1) What encouraged you to start Trans Issues week at Yale?
I founded Trans Issues Week through my capacity as Special Events Coordinator of the Yale Women’s Center my sophomore year, a job that entailed putting together a speaker series during the spring semester. I was at the time purely woman-identified, and yet for some reason which I am still not entirely sure of I decided that it would be a good idea to devote the week to an exploration of intersections and tensions between feminism and trans/gender issues. I met with Jonathan D. Katz of the Larry Kramer Initiative for some direction in potential speakers, since I had very little knowledge of trans/gender issues or theory, let alone key visible figures in the field. Through contacting speakers and getting closer with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Yale, I received a one-month crash course in gender while throwing together what became the first annual Trans Issues Week at Yale. The week itself inspired me personally as well as academically, and shortly after the series my sophomore year I began incorporating genderqueerness and fludity into my own everyday life and intellectual pursuits. I guess you could say that a personal interest and activist/education-buildling initiative sparked my organization of the series, but even so I don’t know exactly where that personal interest stemmed from at the time.
2) I’m sure you hear a lot of people say “oh, genderqueer is fine when you’re young and in college, but what about when you need to get a job?” How do you respond to that kind of “advice”?

I would be the first person to recognize a difference between a college environment and a non-college environment. I also fully recognize that genderqueerness will increase the complications of life outside of college. It would be naive of me not to. But to shy away from genderqueerness, to force myself to fit a gendered mold, because it poses a challenge to me or because it makes my life more difficult is a copout as an individual and as someone who highly values and cherishes the political power of the everyday. To cave to the comfort of fitting in does nothing to question the status quo. To even superficially “normalize” myself would erase and relinquish the subversive potential of the everyday, my subversive potential as an individual. I am an activist, particularly with regards to gender and the pervasiveness of oppressive gender stereotypes which affect all of us – not just trans or genderqueer individuals.
My response to those people who would make such comments would be to ask them, in response, why they waste their energy tsk-tsking and calling people like myself “impractical”. By sitting on the fence THEY perpetuate the attitudes which make it impractical for genderqueerness to extend beyond insular atmospheres. Their attitude is akin to those “sophisticated and practical” folks who claim that they “not homophobic, but why do gay people have to be so open about it and rub it in my face?” Erasing difference, painting over one’s quirks and unconventional characteristics/identities, forcing those elements of oneself into silence and invisibility – these are in many ways just as violently oppressive towards LGBTQ individuals as tangible acts of hate. That’s why coming out of the closet is such a powerful concept.
Instead of calling people like myself impractical for refusing to drop our political ideologies for the sake of personal luxuries (which I am acutely aware I am fortunate to have the opportunity to have to begin with), if those individuals are truly supportive of genderqueerness and genderbending, they would not waste their time issuing warnings to me but would join the ranks as allies at the very least.
3) Is there one moment/event in your life that made you think about your own gender? What was it?
I’ve been realizing recently that my current ideologies have been brewing from a very young age, from my very first memories of being treated differently because I was “a girl”. From playing soccer on boys’ teams from the ages of 8 to 12, to playing pickup basketball with biological men throughout my life, to bio men treating me as a threat because of my academic and athletic success in high school, a fundamental (and as I now understand is feminist) nderstanding of gender and the true function of gender “difference” has been sinking in over the past 20 years. It blurs together and has only just recently begun to cohere. No singular instance stands out in my mind among the hundreds, the thousands, immersed in the most seemingly-trivial of contexts (the high school hallway, the playground at recess, walking down the streets of New Haven hand-in-hand with my lover).
4) Do you find most other people you know – the ones your age – are hip to gender? Accepting of gender fluidity, or wedded to the binary?
This is a tricky question, because I know a large number of people my age who are very open-minded, and very accepting of gender fluidity – in other people. They are accepting of gender fluidity as long as it remains something that does not threaten or challenge their own dependence upon and perpetuation of binaries in their own life. They admire and appreciate those who challenge the binarisms of standards of “normality” at arm’s length, from a distance. I have found that many of the most accepting and admiring individuals still feel as resentful of and threatened by fluidity when it hits too close to home. Many of the most supportive people still get defensive and stubbornly cling to the binary when it is suggested that they, too, could incorporate notions of fluidity into their own lives, into their own politics, into their own ideologies. Do I love and appreciate it when people are supportive and accepting? Yes, immensely. But do I think their support is sufficient without a critical applications of the notions of fluidity which they respect and admire in others (like myself) to their own lives? No. But it’s difficult to demand or even request that everybody to let go of gender/sex dichotomies, as it is from our birth a fundamental structure of life. That initiative and personal responsibility and accountability must be taken by each individual him/herself.
5) In my opinion, you’re a sure bet to be one of the best upcoming leaders of the trans community, but that assumes you want to be. What do you want to do after college? Is a commitment to gender education a part of your future?
At this point I have to say that a commitment to gender education and activism will not only be a part of but will direct my future. I can see myself doing nothing that does not directly and whole-heartedly incorporate a dedication to dispelling pervasive and ingrained assumptions about “natural” gender, sex, sexuality, racial, and economic differences, stereotypes and binaries. I hope that I can, as you flatteringly suggest, become a leader in the trans/gender activist community. In believing passionately in the potential of the individual and of the everyday, I hope for nothing less than to have a lasting impact on society as a broader whole – even if that influence spreads person by person, through organizing work or writing after college. This might qualify me as an idealist, but it is often instrumental for me in getting out of bed in the morning.