A few weeks ago in Berlin I called Les Migras which is an institutional space offering free counseling and forms of group support and networking for lesbian, queer, trans* and intersex* migrants (https://lesmigras.de/english.html). I said I'm a trans person and needed some up-to-date informations related to migration and trans healthcare in Germany, specifically regarding a law that was supposed to be discussed last October which was meant to legally recognize Non-Binary people and give them access without compromise to trans healthcare.

The person on the other side of the phone offered an appointment with a white german trans woman. Then asked me if I felt comfortable with the idea of speaking with a white person, otherwise they could offer a different appointment with a non-white counselor.

This reminded me once again how crucial it was for the adult person I became to lose part of my white privilege as soon as I moved to Berlin on February, Monday 8th 2010. To suddenly become a "Southern European", a not-so-white person. To learn about the P.I.G.S. acronym that stands for Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, Spanish. To experience xenophobia and european colorism. To be denied access to housing because of the german bias against my ethnic group. To pass as a peruvian person, as a mexican person, as a turkish person, as an arabic person and feel comfortable when living in a neighborhood vastly populated by brown people, or very uncomfortable and alienated when living in mostly white german neighborhoods.

Truth is: if you were socialized as a white person you can't truly understand racism, you can't see your white privilege properly and start learning how to hold yourself accountable for it from a perspective that's decentered from whiteness, until the day you start being socialized as an immigrant of color.

In this sense, migrating - and specifically migrating to a whiter country - was and still is one among the most educational and precious experiences of my lives up until now.

This photo was taken in Rome this year on April 25th [italian 1945's Liberation Day, anniversary of the Resistance] at the end of a horror night of fight and resistance against biologistic and transmisogynistic homosexualities, blatant cis-splaining and Queerness preserving its confort in  deeply gendered power relations.

Pinocchio (with me in the photo) was a present my grandparents gave me for my first birthday. Shortly after my birthday my grandpa died. When I started to regularly show myself in public with a mustache I realized that besides looking like a peruvian person, a mexican person, a turkish person, an arabic person I also look like that dark brown skin white grandpa I have no memory and no material traces of, except for this southern european Pinocchio doll who lives with me.