I Hope You Get Ants by Mondo Vaden (Performing as Mondo Millions)

I wrote this spoken word in summer 2020 when I was getting increasingly frustrated at the way my fellow Black peers were dying at the hands of police and white supremacy. Black trans people die at even higher rates. The rates of Black Deaf people are also higher. As someone Deaf, Black, and Trans, living intersectionally in a white dominant, cisgender dominant, hearing dominant world, I wanted to both express my frustration and create a call to action. The drag style I do is inspired by the category of "Realness" from ballroom culture. I'd like to challenge what "Realness" means. A category originally relating to how well a ballroom performer could "pass" as cisgender appealed to me as someone who realized recently that they are transmasculine. But! The concept of "passing" is harmful to queer and trans people everywhere and is perpetuated by white supremacy and respectability politics. We shouldn't have to look like everyone else in order to be safe. "Realness" to me should be about your own authenticity of self, as opposed to trying to fit into a standard set by the majority, the pursuit of safety by living loudly in a world that asks us to hide. Being Real is more radical than the majority could ever imagine. Black Trans Lives Matter.

Mondo Vaden (Performing as Mondo Millions)

I Hope You Get Ants by Mondo Vaden (Performing as Mondo Millions)

2020

Preforming arts

The Background is a pansexual flag with 3 stripe colors, Pink, Blue, and Yellow hanging against a white wall. In front of this is Mondo Millions speaking orally to the camera, he signs periodically. He is a lightly melanated Black Drag King, with a beard, with short purple and brown twists, pulled into a half up style. He is wearing small silver hoop earrings, a silver chain necklace, a black jean jacket with multiple pins attached to the front 1."Free Angela" with a photo of Angela Davis, 2. the trans flag (which is tapped mid video by Mondo), 3. a Black Panther on a blue background, 4. a pronoun dial pin with "he", "she", "they", set to "He". This jacket is worn over a black shirt with some lettering in white visible ("Lightly Melanated Hella Black"). There is a pink tint to the whole video.