PHOTOS: TransMasc Orlando launches auto workshop series ‘without judgment’

Ali Lovell tops off brake fluid for a student at the Dolls Teach the Kens auto workshop Feb. 21. (Photo by Asa Carvajal)

ORLANDO | TransMasc Orlando hosted Dolls Teach the Kens Feb. 21, its first auto workshop where transfemmes educate transmascs about what goes on “under the hood.”

Nino Franklin, creator of TransMasc Orlando, which hosts events to uplift and bring together transmasculine individuals, said that the idea came from having trouble with their coolant, and being helped by their transfemme friends.

“I had a problem with my car and I couldn’t understand it, and I didn’t have a male figure in my life to ask,” Franklin says. “But it was so nice, because the dolls helped me.”

One of those dolls was Zafia Irene Gómez, one of the facilitators at the event. Part one focused on everything under the hood, which Gómez says is the place where the car’s most important functions take place, and also where the most common car problems occur.

“I think one of the most essential things when it comes to maintenance and cars and all of that is … we don’t really know what’s happening under the hood sometimes,” Gómez says.

Ali Lovell, the other doll facilitating, started a teaching portion by asking what parts of the car were under the hood and what their purposes were. Ezra Jones, a transmasculine individual in attendance, said they learned a lot.

“When I look under my hood … usually I’m just super confused and overwhelmed, and so it’s nice to be able now to be able to pick out what’s going on,” Jones says. “Also having a better sense of, if I’m going to a shop, what I legitimately need to be paying attention to, versus what’s maybe someone is upselling me.”

Keith Ally, another participant, said that most of the problems he’s had with his Jeep from the mid-90s are solved by his dad.

“Anytime something would go wrong with it, dad would usually be the one to fix it and at least attempt to explain what was happening to me. But overall, it just didn’t really click,” Ally shares. “All that information is rattling in my brain, but now it feels organized. It almost feels like a little bit of a review, in a way that makes some things click a bit better.”

Franklin says that upon sharing his lack of car knowledge and personal experiences with other transmasculine people, many agreed to not knowing as much as people expected them to because of their masculine presentation. He believes that part of their lack of understanding stems from a fear of asking questions fueled by the otherness that transmasculine people, and all people assigned female at birth feel in those spaces.

“From personal experience, I felt shame asking for help about cars. When I did present more feminine, if I asked someone, it would typically be someone AMAB [assigned male at birth] to … jump my car or check this, and they wouldn’t show me anything,” Franklin says. “They would just be very flattered that they could do it, and then when I started presenting masculine, but I still had a feminine voice, I felt even more shame, because AMAB folk looked me up and down like, ‘oh, do it yourself.’”

Gómez thinks it’s essential, in creating these spaces, to be vocal about it being okay to know less or even nothing at all.

“I think that we all can walk away learning something new at the end of the day. We are never too good to learn too many things, or to know everything,” Gómez says.

For more information about TransMasc Orlando, visit Instagram.com/TransMascOrlando.

Watemark Out News attended the Dolls Teach the Kens auto workshop and you can view our photos below.