Transgendered DJ Liam Skinner (left) cranks out the tunes at the monthly queer party Yes Yes Y'all
Living in the skin of a transgendered man or woman comes with its complications. For Liam Skinner, the transgendered DJ of the monthly queer hip-hop party, Yes Yes Y’all, transitioning into a man was a complicated process, especially when faced with the plight of having to choose between gendered washrooms.
“People would turn around and constantly tell me that I was in the wrong washroom,” says 24-year-old Skinner who deejayed under the female moniker Holly Rock before transitioning. “I’ve had security called on me numerous times and it just gets really awkward and it’s really unnecessary, you know? People just need to pee and it should be safe for people to pee.”
Faced with derogatory comments while using public washrooms, it was a no brainer for Skinner to implement gender-neutral washrooms for Yes Yes Y’all in the Annex Wreckroom, an otherwise gendered space catering to a predominantly rambunctious crowd of heterosexual party-goers.
“I just really wanted to make it a safer space whether you identify as a male or whether you identify as a female or somewhere on the spectrum,” says Skinner. “I just wanted to make the washroom a safe place for trans-identified or gender-queer-identified people to walk into it and not have like ‘oh, you’re in the wrong washroom’. No policing in that sense was really important.”
The push for gender neutral washroom at the Annex Wreckroom’s Yes Yes Y’all is all part of Skinner’s personal advocacy for transgendered people within the queer community. “Of course there should be more gender-neutral washrooms. People should just have a choice and that choice should be made available to them,” says Skinner.
Although the choice between male and female washrooms becomes a difficult decision for transgendered and queer people out in the “straight world”, heterosexual people aren’t the only people marginalizing the trans and gender-queer community. Queer people are as much of a tough crowd to please as those who identify as heterosexual.
“To be honest with you, the trans community can be quite marginalized within the queer community a lot of the time and so it’s nice to be able to be a part of something where I can see people showing up because there’s a comfort or there’s a familiarity,” says Skinner of Yes Yes Y’all. “There’s just more of a population, there’s more of a visibility with the trans community here that I really, really enjoy.”
Recently marking its third anniversary in March, Yes Yes Y’all has become a staple in Toronto’s queer party scene, drawing party-goers out of their homes for a pulsating dance floor full of sweat and boisterous hip-hop turns, and even drawing people out of the closet.
“YYY (Yes Yes Y’all) has just kind of been a place for me to really be myself and I know it feels ridiculous to say, but strangely it’s really helped me come into my own,” says Randa Dabbour, a frequent party-goer at Yes Yes Y’all who used the monthly party as a tool of self-discovery during her difficult process of coming out to friends. “I just love coming out and having that feeling that I can be myself with no judgement”.
While the fight for gender-neutral washrooms in public space has a long battle to go, Skinner is dedicated to fighting preconceptions of gender.
“Our whole society is based on cisnormativity which is basically people’s gender identity matching with their biological sex so it’s really hard being somebody who’s on the trans spectrum to go against that. People aren’t educated and that’s systemically an issue. It’s left up to us to educate.”
