Émile Sopkowe Oral History

Émile Sopkowe Oral History

A conversation with Émile Sopkowe about the places they've lived, their relationship to their craft as a trans person, how they carve out space for themselves in the sometimes gender exclusionary world of craft, the role that older trans people can play in trans rights activism, and what older trans people can learn from trans youth.

Solidari-tea Oral History Project, NL Queer Research Initiative

Interviewee: Émile Sopkowe
Interviewer: Kai Barron
Transcribed by: Kai Barron
Location: Memorial University of Newfoundland - Old Science Building
Date: February 29, 2024
Length of Interview: 26:32

Kai Barron: So, tell me your name.

Émile Sopkowe: Émile Sopkowe. Stanley is my middle name if you want that too.

KB [laughs] And what are your pronouns?

ÉS They/Them.

KB Okay. I feel like I should ask you where you were born, but we don’t have to get into that if you don’t want.

ÉS I’m cool with that!

KB Okay! So, where did you grow up?

ÉS I was actually born in London, Ontario, which is an incidentally – no shade to people that live there – boring place. I never actually lived there, ‘cause we moved to ... really rural Manitoba on this Ojibwe reserve, just on the edge of it. And there was only one school there, and it was band school. Then we moved back to really rural, conservative Ontario and I went to high school there. I left there really quick and went and lived in Montreal for a while, and then I came here in ... what was in 2001. Back when life was affordable [laughs].

KB Yeah ... I wish [laughs].

ÉS When you could buy a house.

KB Yeah. So I guess we’ll get into our questions. The first question – As a crafter who does a form of crafting that is traditionally gendered feminine (crocheting, knitting, rug-hooking) how has being trans impacted your relationship with crafting and that form of creativity, and the products of crafty stuff that you make? Are you able to bring a queer/trans identity into your projects?

ÉS Yeah, so this is something I’ve actually [like], been thinking about a fair bit lately. Because I’ve been off work for the last year after going randomly half deaf and haven’t been able to teach. And so, I’ve been doing a lot more crafting stuff again, and [I had really...] it had gotten pretty sidelined for the last decade I’m going to say because I was too busy. And so, kind of being back in that again has given me this weird [like], time warp feeling of like “oh my gosh, I’m back in that time in the past when I used to do more crafty stuff,” and it was before I came out as trans. So every once in a while, I get this weird “what is going on?” feeling! That’s been a strange feeling, and sometimes I would think, “do I actually feel different about it or am I just making this up in my head?” [I do-] I definitely feel like I’m coming at it kind of differently than I used to. For the sake of the recording, I’ve always done a lot of knitting – I actually have knitting here right now and I’m staring at it because I made a hot mess of something and probably have to pick out a row, so we’ll see if I can figure it out, but it’s probably not going to happen. I dropped two stitches right during a colour change-

KB (gasps) yikes...!

ÉS I’m like NOO, this is terrible! [0:03:56-0:04:04 – trying to think of where we left off] Also, rug hooking is my main thing. I can do a tiny bit of crochet, but it is not my strength. For the last decade, or a bit longer, I have been selling hooked rugs, and when I started doing that of course was before I came out. So, kind of fit in with all the other people doing rug-hooking and that kind of thing. I guess it’s kind of a Newfoundland thing but also an everywhere thing that textiles are pretty girly. Yeah, it has definitely been a thing to be in that space as a crafter, [being somebody-] showing up in that space as somebody who’s not a woman, not feminine, and I’ve had interesting/awkward experiences with people at some of the sales I’ve been at. One of the more recent ones, oh my god I remember this guy... Probably one in five people asked me, “Did you make this?” And you can tell they’re trying to figure out, like, “why else would you be at this table if you didn’t make this, but then why is it you?” [laughs] and some people aren’t weird about it but... a number of people are kind of, like – I can tell they’re a little... you know that meme where there’s all the math symbols in front of the person’s face? That kind of seems to be what’s going on, they cannot figure what’s going on here!
This one guy, he was probably like sixty-ish or something like that. He was just asking me if I made this stuff, and then he seemed a little... dubious that I had actually made it and, was actually at a certain point, I started to get a little warning bell going off of like potentially problematic conversation on the horizon, which didn’t kind of manifest ‘cause he shuffled along ‘cause I think he got the vibe that it was not going to go well. He started making, I can’t remember exactly what he said, but all of a sudden, he made some sort of comment about me having really nice eyes? But it was in this weird way as in this kind of sketchy, like when people do stuff like, “oh you can’t be a [like] whatever because you’re too pretty!” I know I wasn’t imagining it but there was some kind of slightly creepy gender aspect to it, and I was just like, “Alright Bucko, you can move along.” And thankfully he did.

KB Good.

ÉS Mostly... There’s not a lot of dudely people. But no on, no one kind of comments on it, which is interesting. [discussing their knitting] I’m just going to go ahead and pick out another row because I thought I’d save this but no, I did not. [I] royally messed up on this row. Alright, I think I’m back to the point where I can fix it now. It’s just kind of like... unspoken weird thing sometimes, and maybe it’s just me being awkward about it? That in some ways would make sense because I feel kind of weird about it, but this is something that I really value in my life. It doesn’t hit the same way anymore, but I’m not going to give it up, but then it’s just like, “what am I doing here?” kind of weird feeling. I think there’s a certain amount of – even a couple of years ago I would NEVER had said this – onguard-ness all the time now because suddenly everyone is an expert on trans stuff and what’s right and what’s wrong. I guess I’m a bit more weary than I used to be... If I’m in the right setting I can kind of fly under the radar, whereas I wouldn’t always choose to do that, I’m kind of doing it a little bit more than I might’ve in the past. Being at a craft sale with a bunch of rug- hooking is definitely not the way to do that, pro tip!

KB [laughs] good to know!

ÉS Yeah, just in case! Yeah, that is definitely not it. It was, one of the last times I was there, my table was next to these vendors that are there all the time, and they were SUPER bay – I think they were related to each other, I think it was mom and daughter, but daughter was mid-40s. Again, it’s that kind of thing where it’s like, “this could be fine, or it could be not fine.” I heard them talking to someone else, and they were referring to me in the third person, and they had no idea that I could hear them I don’t think, and they demonstrated the most casual use of they/them pronouns. I was like... what just happened?

KB Woah.

ÉS And I didn’t have that conversation with them, so either they were like “I don’t know, we’re just going to go with this,” or they were just getting the vibe somehow. It was pretty awesome. I was like “okay, that definitely was not what I expected.” Back to the actual question, like “how has being trans impacted my relationship with crafting?” Very much so, and I think if I were a metalworker, or even like pottery or something else, it wouldn’t be such a thing. But because it [rug-hooking/knitting/crocheting] is a women’s craft, it is a thing. So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “how do I make that a positive thing,” like, how can I bring that into rug hooking. When you look at things like hooked rugs – I mean, in the past they were super utilitarian; you made it with squiggles of patterns and you toss it on the floor because the floor is cold. That was kind of the only purpose of it. But that’s not so much the case anymore, they tend to represent pictures more, people tend to put them on the wall, some people still do make floor ones but they’re more often being used as “art” [0:13:10 – 0:13:13 - indicates air quotes] than they used to be. So I’ve been thinking, “how do I actually bring queer and trans identity into textiles or hooked rugs?” ‘Cause definitely it’s not really a theme that I would imagine has been very present there, at all in the past. So I’ve actually been thinking about trying to apply for an ArtsNL Grant, which already is like, way more complicated than I thought it was. In order to make an account you have to give them an “artist bio with a timeline” and all this other stuff to prove that you’re actually a real artist and not a faker.

KB Interesting...

ÉS Or that you have some income, so things like that. But I’ve been thinking about applying for that, and [kind of like] how... I’m still in the very rough stages of clarifying a project because when you apply you have some kind of project in mind and what you would want to do with those pieces. Definitely something to do with how underrepresented any kind of queerness is in rug-hooking. You know, textiles in general, but definitely in hooked rugs. It’s just not a thing – even the pieces that you see here from almost exclusively female-identified “hookers”; I had to say it at least one time [laughs]. They tend to be pretty cutesy, like bordering a little bit on shmarmy and super idealized, and there’s puffins, sometimes there might be sheep.

KB [Holds up hand alerting Émile that there is five minutes left] [0:15:28-0:15:35]

ÉS Oh my god, really?

KB [nods and laughs]

ÉS Alright. Wow, we are going to kill all these questions, we are smashing them!

KB We are so good!

ÉS But yeah, how to actually bring in some of that queerness into hooked rugs. So that is my hope that that can actually happen

KB That would be cool!

ÉS One neat story; one time that my mom told me was about one of my grandfathers, and he had actually been taught how to knit during the war. It was a thing that suddenly it was okay for men to do that kind of stuff? He learned how to make socks, and even after the war was over he still would sometimes do it because he just really liked doing it. It’s such a weird thing that, like, “Alright, there’s war. Duty calls,” and suddenly you can un-man yourself enough to knit a little bit, like that makes it okay [laughs]. Its just like, oh my gosh, why is the world like this? Manliness is so sad, really. It’s just kind of sad, yeah.

KB Yeah. Next question?

ÉS Yes.

KB Cool. So, how do you feel you have been able to carve out a space of your own in craft that is not always inclusive of your gender?

ÉS Hmm. That, yeah... I think that’s been a tricky one, I think partly just looking at applying for that ArtsNL Grant and stuff I feel like a bit of a fake artist, fake crafts person. Which is a me problem, not a general thing, and just kind of taking up space at all in that world feels kind of awkward, and then I’m like “maybe that’s because I was socialized as like somebody that wasn’t supposed to take up space for multiple decades. If I could channel the white dude energy a bit more, I could just make literally some mediocre shit and just be like, “Yeah, this is it. This is what I got.” I see some people doing that and they just seem completely unabashed about it. They’re like “Here is my art!” ... Maybe I just need to make some toxic masculine stuff, like do some good in the world and channel that shit and be like “Alright.”

KB Make it a loophole.

ÉS Yes! ... But yeah, I think being able to shift from right now, I’ve had more time to actually do hooking again, which I haven’t done in years. It’s still at the more practical level of stuff I would sell at craft sales but being able to move into some pieces that aren’t designed for that would make a big difference. Because then it would be able to focus a bit more on real art as opposed to ... [laughs]

KB Yeah.

ÉS Oh my goodness, it’s also ridiculous really all that stuff ... I think if I keep going down this path I will be able to find some space for bringing some kind of more queer and trans themes into hooked rugs. That would be cool.

KB That would be really cool.

ÉS Yeah, I would enjoy that a lot.

KB Well, we’ve hit the 20-minute mark, but I think we can squeeze in five more minutes!

ÉS Okay! [0:20:09-0:20:20 – KB and ÉS have a laugh]

KB Okay, next question. What impact does this have on your emotional well-being or even your feelings of being valid in that craft?

ÉS Yeah, so I guess this has kind of come up a little bit in the other two questions, but I think there is sometimes, if - I think it’s more of the response of the other people that has kind of a negative impact, if that makes any sense? If it is just me doing my thing it’s best kind, but if other people are being weird, then it kind of can bring up some crappy, dysphoric kind of stuff. That’s often been the case for me anyhow. There will be times I’m out for a walk in the woods like, “man this is the best, I feel great!” And then interacting with people, there will be some little thing that’s just subtly transphobic or totally unintended and you’re just like “people suck...” And it’s kind of the same thing, in terms of the actual craft itself, it doesn’t bring up anything negative, its just like great and I enjoy it and for me it’s kind of mindless, repetitive stuff. Say like knitting is actually just really relaxing. Rug-hooking takes just a little bit more brain input, depending on what I’m working on. It’s kind of more what other people bring to the table... All in all, it’s been alright.

KB And then... do we want to talk about the last question?

ÉS That depends whether you want to.

KB I can go for it!

ÉS I mean, if you run out of time and you can’t transcribe it then they can just die, it’s alright (JOKE)

KB Yeah, it’s alright, I’ll fit it in. Okay, switching a little bit of a gear, what role can older queer and trans people play in activism for protecting the rights of trans kids?

ÉS Wow, we saved a doozy for the end [laughs].

KB Yeah... [laughs]

ÉS No big deal! [Laughs] Yeah. Oh man... there’s so few older trans people for so many reasons, and its such a weird thing because often there’s actual children that have been out as trans for a lot longer that me, like not even just teenagers but actual kids. Being an elder or a trailblazer is sometimes like “oh, ok”. I feel like actually in a lot of ways its more the other way around. In fact, I know my girlfriend and I are prepping for this recording thing and we’re talking about how often personal stories are really what they’re looking for in terms of that having the most impact for people. It actually made me think about the year I came out; it was really relationships with the kids in my GSA group that year that kind of was the push. We were talking about ... that group always had a thousand questions, they were a bunch of grade five students, mostly. We were talking about being authentic and being yourself. I had been having some question-y stuff, and at a certain point I just realized that there is no right time, this is the time. As much as like I am sure my experiences can benefit younger folk has often been the other way around. When I look at schools and stuff, a lot of the times, and I guess a lot of those teachers are heterosexual and cisgender, but adults are in the way... they should move over ‘cause a lot of queer kids have got so many things figured out and adults are the problem. Honestly though, being an adult is overrated.

KB Yeah, I miss kindergarten a little bit. Thank you so much, I think that wraps it up for our questions. This was great, I had a good time!