Black - Trans - Divine

This week I interviewed one of my favorite people, Maij Mai (they/he). Maij is a community worker, organizer, homie, and transgender minister who has been working on a documentary project entitled Revelations since 2021. They are continuing work on this project for the next few years, but opened up to speak with me about its’ stakes and radical potential for transgender spirituality and hoes everywhere.

. . .

Aries: So, Maij, tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Maij: Hello, my name is Maij. I use they/them or he/him pronouns. I also use gender neutral affectionate pronouns, or like affectionate masculine pronouns: king, bruh, whatever. I am a community member, worker, organizer-esque, healer, minister, Black, Southeast Asian – specifically Vietnamese, Cambodian, Philappinx … bi-polar, neurodivergent, trans, queer, non-binary? … maybe leaning towards agender? person. 

I was born and raised in North Carolina, I’ve lived across different parts of North Carolina; starting in Charlotte, moved to Winston for school and now I live in Durham, NC, where I am really excited to start this next transition – chapter of my life. I do a variety of different things, I have a lot of interests. I bounce around a lot, sometimes I lack focus, sometimes I have a lot of focus. 

Overall, I think a big goal of my life is to experience liberation and freedom as much as I can in this lifetime and this moment, given our current world. 

. . .

I grew up Roman-Catholic. I went to Catholic schools, went to Catholic church, and that was a really fucked up and traumatizing experience for me. I experienced both intentional and unintentional conversion therapy. I honestly think that most, if not all, queer and trans people experience conversion therapy – if not from an institutional level, then from a general, everyday level living in this world. That part of my survival story has been really important to who I am as a person. 

I grew up in that space, I would identify myself as an ex-Catholic or a recovering Catholic at this point. For a really long time after I stepped away from Catholicism, I was agnostic, atheist. I was like “Fuck God! God ain’t do nothing for me…I don’t want anything to do with God. Fuck the church, the church ain’t do nothing for me, I don’t want anything to do with church…” 

When I was graduating from undergrad and figuring out next steps of my life I decided to go to Divinity School. At that point I realized I had done a lot of deep diving, processing, exploring a lot of other aspects of my identity: race, gender, class, ability… all these different facets. One of the things that I was avoiding was religion and faith because of my trauma. But, I had deep questions. I felt like religion and faith was such a formative part of who I am because I grew up deeply embedded in Roman-Catholic practices and institutions.

. . . 

So I went to Divinity school because I was like “well maybe I can start from scratch, maybe I can read the bible from scratch… maybe I can rebuild my own foundation or at least learn more about these things. I can have a better context and build an intentional relationship with religion, spirituality, and faith from a space of agency versus a space of “I'm just avoiding this because of trauma”. – Which I feel is a valid reason for folks not to fuck with it. 

I don’t think everyone has to heal from it. If people’s processes and journeys are to throw it all away, I feel like that’s fine. Everybody has their own journey, but for me… I was curious, I wanted to read about the shit.

. . .

While I was in Divinity School I learned about how marginalized folks from a lot of different identities reconstruct what faith and spirituality means for them from the context of their marginalization […] Latin-American liberation theology, Black liberation theology, Queer and Trans liberation theology, Decolonial theologies – theology is just how people talk about and think about God. 

One of the biggest things Divinity school taught me was that spiritually, faith, and religion is meaning-making. How do we actively make meaning out of our lives and our experiences? Understand and comprehend it from a variety of different perspectives and frameworks?

At the same time as I was in Divinity school, I was also shifting through my gender identity; at some point identifying as a woman just because I had a vagina was not enough for me. Not enough because it was just based upon my vagina, but also because of how people assaulted and harmed me a lot.

[we took a pause for tears and breathing]

So for me it was important to create a body space where I felt safe again, like I had agency again, like I had power again. My gender identity was really crucial to that survival and also flourishing. In a lot of ways my identity as a trans-queer, non-binary and agender, gender-transcendant person became a spiritual practice for me. And not just embodiment — physical way of altering one’s body — but also reimagining my gender landscape: internally, spiritually, and how I showed up in the world. 

I went through different iterations of my name. I went from Jenny to J, even different spellings of “Jenny”, and then I had this really wild, visceral dream, I think it was from my ancestors. They were like: your new name will be “Maij” because you make magic.

Mages are different from wizards — they don't always need a physical item or tool, like a staff, to do their magic. Their bodies become the source of where their power. So for me, my body and my gender are synonymous with each other; not just like physical body, but like metaphysical body — spiritual body — emotional body. Those things became how I cultivated what Liam Hooper calls “a sacred grove.”

From Trans-Forming Proclamation: A Transgender Theology of Daring Existence (2020)

“For as long as we can ascertain human existence, groves have been places of proclamation. From the earliest humans circled around a crackling fire, […] the grove has been a place of worship, prayer, and proclamation. The Grove is an enduring allegory.”

“Something deep in the belly of our collective unconsciousness, low in our limbic systems, feels the call of the Grove. […] As we consent to the inner summons of selfhood, we circle round the Sacred Grove, dancing the interweaving inward-outward dance of becoming. We proclaim. There, in that equally real and other-worldly place, we meet all our relations in a marvelous, mysterious connectedness. We meet each other as kin. We meet earth, as we plant ourselves firmly. Claiming our true selves, we greet ourselves. Perhaps, more than merely this (though this is more than enough), we also meet the known-yet-unknowable Spirit who calls each of us into being.”

“We are movers between worlds. We are always crossing over. As diverse, gender-transcendent people, we intuit this. Even when we cannot find words to articulate it, even if we name it other things, this arcane knowing resides in us. The Grove is in us. We are in the Grove. Born of the Grove, travelers of the world, we live, always, at the thresholds. We are people of the boundaries between continual, expansive becoming and the static world of contrived absolutes around us.”

- Liam Michael Hooper

Maij: That's how I see a lot of my gender identity and also how it intimately intersects with my racial identity as a Black and Southeast Asian person. My sexuality, who I wanna fuck, who I'm attracted to, all those things exist in relationship. With people, my relationship dynamics – the solo-Poly relationship anarchist person – all these different things.

Aries: That’s a dope answer, I love it. So, we’re interviewing today because of a transgender documentary project you’re working on. How would you describe the project, the intent, the impact? What do you imagine it being and becoming?

Maij: Yeah. The project that I am working on… is a documentary that aims to document – in a variety of different mediums – trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary, agender, genderqueer, gender-transcendant spiritual embodiment– experiences, divinities. The project is really just a deep-dive into how trans and gender non-conforming folks are shaping their spirituality, particularly shaping their spirituality outside of institutional religious churches, spaces, and places – frameworks, models, and mindsets.

. . .

I feel like if people weren't oppressing trans people in this moment, we already would have been learned how to shoot laser beams out of our eyes, how to grow wings out of our backs, how to fucking levitate and shit. Trans people, like, particularly black trans folks, warp time-space in ways that white people don't have the range for because most people — most this straight people — haven't thought beyond:

“What is this entity container that I'm in? How would I describe it if no one else gave me fucking labels?”

When I went through Divinity school there were a lot of moments where I thought I wasn't gonna survive, and it took a lot of community members to keep me alive through that process. If it wasn't for some of the alumni, some of the mentors that I met, some of the people outside of that space who cultivated me, I wouldn’t have survived. But, having survived that space because of beloved community and also because of ancestors, and also spirit, and myself… I survived and I was like:

“Wow, another institution that I survived, what are other trans people doing? What are other genderqueer, gender-transcendent people doing? How are they molding space and time, engaging in spiritual practice, and divining — like literally divining and doing magic-ass shit — on the ground outside of this traditional spaces?”

'Cause for most transgender/gender non-conforming queer folks, traditional spaces aren't safe for us […] The informal conversion therapy — the narratives that we get, the ideologies that we get, the different things that people keep speaking into our bodies and that space is often super harmful. So I was just curious about what the other transgender/gender non-conforming people were doing. What are they doing, and how are they surviving; how are they cultivating their own magic and power outside of the institution? I know they are, because I know I'm doing it, right?

That's where this project is birthed from, just wanting to experiment and explore and and also provide. I graduated and now I'm, I guess, a formal minister. Having that degree, a Theological Masters in Divinity, I have a lot of tools and skill sets and frameworks to cultivate safe containers for folks to explore their spirituality in a variety of different ways. As someone who gravitates between spiritual and agnostic-atheist identity, I identify with both and I don't believe in a binary between the two. I'm fluid and in flux between the two, and I can provide spaces where some people, particularly transgender folks, might feel safer to explore their magic.

I documented through different ways: interviews, creative art projects, body mapping — I did that through helping folks talk and shape their own stuff and holding that tenderly, then translating that to pictures and photography. There are a lot of things that we did that I can't even describe as like “interview” — like there's no container. It’s like our bodies were making magic in that moment. When we interacted as queer, transgender, gender non-conforming people, that was what was being documented.

Our relationship building with each other, the communities that we built together. I had really intimate experiences with a lot of the folks that I collaborated with on the project. I will call them like interviewers and participants but they shaped the project, really, as it went along. The project is part of that magic-making. It's another form of the spiritual magic that transcendent, gender non-conforming people create on the ground.

I talked a lot and I also cried but that's the project. You can come up with an endless array of words to describe it — that's why I call it Revelations. It's like waking moments of revelation: every moment, every second, every breath you breathe, there's a revelation of that sense of self — of that sense of magic.

I just want to explore and document some more because if we don't document it who's going to document it? Katie Geneva Cannon, who's this famous ancestor-homie, is scholar-practitioner who — I can't remember the exact quote, but it’s something like “if you don't write down your story and tell your story, who will?” You have to do it anyway, even if you feel like no one was listening.

“Even when they call your truth a lie, tell it anyway! Tell it anyway!”

- Katie Cannon

Aries:  You really encapsulated the uncapturable, indescribable feeling of this project in this long, long answer that I’m going to have to type out. [laughter]

Maij: I need to, like, document more and this is really helpful. […] Sometimes if I do it on my own, it's really hard. But, you just ask one question, and it just spills out of me, which is how I know the work is liberating, because it comes so easy to me.

Aries: So … if you're doing this project as you know, this beautiful, multi-faceted, indescribable being, and you were speaking to and with these other beloved, indescribable, uncapturable beings in this intentionally crafted and beautiful space towards liberation … what do you hope this does?

What do you hope that this does for folks who might be cisgender, might be straight, but have never had the awareness to question any of this stuff? What do you think that this does for the queer people hiding in Bible studies, and what do you think that it does for the transgender and gender-transcendent folks in Bible study, lowkey going through a form of conversion therapy, and not being able to realize that?

Aries: What is your hope and dream for this project, as far as touching the audience?

Maij: I hope it lets people know what's possible — if you make it possible. I think oftentimes we stay trapped and not free because we don't know what's possible out there. We just — we just don't see it, or we do see it and we just ignore it, or we're just not ready for it.

I want people to know that this shift is possible and that it's already happening, it's weird to me when churches be like: “oh we’re trans and queer affirming now, come to our church space so you can be invited into God.” No bitch, come here — when you come closer to me, you come closer to God.

So, it's an invitation to explore more of what's possible, it's an invitation to blow your own minds about what is possible. It's a starting point, it's also the ending point — it's everything in between. It’s - it just gives more space, because there's an abundance of space for folks to be exploring. I hope it makes people go “what's possible for me?” and gives more tangible body, and framing, and models of what's possible. Every moment a trans person breathes is a moment that's possible, even though it feels like an impossible moment. In the same breath, the impossible is “I am possible” and I want people to really take that and be subversive: flip things on its head.

This comes from Naomi Washington-Leaphart, but I hear it from so many fucking people, I don't know who said it first… she said “we can't be free if we haven't dreamed of being free. If we can't imagine it, it can't happen.” And that's deeply connected to abolition and abolitionist practice, like, if we can't imagine a new world, if we can't imagine our possibilities, then we can't craft it, we can't act on it, we can't live it — we can't be free if we can't imagine freedom. I think — I hope this project opens the door for imagination. For folks to imagine more, dream more, really shape and mold the possibilities for themselves.

Aries: My hoe theory […] is about breaking down barriers to to access. Being a hoe is about liberation, because you can't be free to pop your pussy if people are being oppressed. If people are being brought down, then everybody doesn't have access to pop their pussy in the way that they want to … [laughter] and I mean pussy, like, metaphorically — pop whatever you're trying to pop or if you don’t wanna pop anything — we should all be free to pop or not pop whatever we want. [mutual laughter]

So in my mind, we — as folks committed to our own sexual freedom — should also be committed to the holistic freedom of all others.

Aries: How do you connect your hoe-ness to this project and everything that you do?

Maij: Hoe-ing is part of my gender identity, part of my gender magic. Like, hoe-ing is active practice of my gender. When I'm experiencing pleasure, when I'm feeling my body, when I'm experiencing sensations and I can do that lovingly… consensually hoeing with other hoes it's — it's like active radical time-bending.

You can't tell me that when you cum you don’t felt like time wasn't being warped in that moment. Like, you ride that orgasmic wave and it's like, “this has gotta be shaping time” — “this is molding my energy” — “that could warp bodies”. It's part of the active radical, spiritual, sacred work.

People really have the ability to mold reality, not just over our bodies — our minds and our spirits, and our hearts. Like, one day, I might experience such a good strap that I just might grow wings out of my back, I just might levitate — it’s just that transcendence that comes with hoe-ing.

And hoe-ing feels impossible, but it's really possible. People act like there's not enough, like you can’t enjoy things — it comes from this scarcity mindset, like there's not enough to go around for you to be a hoe, and be greedy, and audacious with your pleasure in these streets. It isn't like that: there's an unlimited, infinite amount of pleasure to be had and go around. We don't have to keep it under wraps, why would we do that? Why don't you just let it all out? One day I hope I’ll be able to hoe and be fully relaxed in my body. I think after getting my orgasm, that's one of the closest moments I've come to heaven, to a sense of internal peace.

Sometimes hoe-ing is a verb and I feel like this project is a verb. I think about hoe-ing as a part of the ways in which transgender and gender non-conforming folks engage gender — 'cause we hoes too, you know, original hoes — because we hoe with gender. That's great and so cool. We hoe — maybe a little masc today, maybe a little fem today, maybe a little in-between… like we hoe-ing with different things.

Being trans is a verb, it's like a trip, a constant transformation, you're never the same person twice. Hoe-ing is transformation too.

. . .

The Revelations documentary is an ongoing project that Maij continues to use as a medium for their own transfiguration and the transformation of magical others. We cannot wait to see it, and you will hear it here first when the final project is available. Thanks so much to Maij for this interview and this amazing conversation.

“We have been here, always, living, creating, sharing, contributing, proclaiming. In our passing, we leave behind the artifacts of our lives, which are our lived and living stories. We are an ancient, resilient, and persistent people. Any and every place where trans persons dare to exist becomes an ever-speaking, Sacred Grove. The body speaks. We speak. In many, marvelous ways, we proclaim.”

- Liam Michael Hooper