# Mirha-Soleil Ross

Mirha-Soleil Ross is a transgender videographer, performance artist, sex worker and activist. Her work since the early 1990s in Montreal and Toronto has focused on transsexual rights, access to resources, advocacy for sex workers and animal rights.

## Early life

Ross grew up in a poor neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec. As a teenager during the 1980s, she became aware of animal abuse, becoming a vegetarian and getting involved with animal rights activism. She struggled to "pass" as a boy and was often attacked for looking too feminine. Ross moved from Montreal to Toronto during the early 1990s, where did sex work and began producing zines and videos.

## gendertrash from hell

From 1993 to 1995, Ross and her partner Xanthra Phillippa MacKay published gendertrash from hell, a quarterly zine which "[gave] a voice to gender queers, who've been discouraged from speaking out & communicating with each other." They managed the zine's publisher, genderpress, which also distributed other trans pamphlets and literature, corresponded with local organizations and sold buttons.
In standard zine format, gendertrash was a combination of art, poetry, resource lists, serialized fiction, calls to action, classified ads, illustrations, collages and movie reviews. By and for transsexual, transgender and transvestite people, it addressed gender experiences at the individual and societal level and prioritized sex workers, low-income queer people, trans people of colour and prisoners. Articles frequently addressed the erasure of transsexuals from queer communities and the co-opting of trans identities and issues. Four issues of gendertrash were published, and its run ended in 1995.

## Videography

Ross' videos, primarily short films, centre on gender, sexuality, animal rights and the transsexual body. Her videos are distributed by Vtape in Toronto.

### Videos

| Title | Date | Credits | Length | Summary |
| Chroniques | 1992 | Mirha-Soleil Ross | 12:00 | Clips from Ross' video diary in which she recounts situations where she had unsafe sex with clients. |
| An Adventure in Tucking with Jeanne B | 1993 | Mirha-Soleil Ross | 5:00 | A humorous video that shows Ross attempting to tuck with Scotch tape before meeting a client. |
| Gendertroublemakers | 1993 | Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra MacKay | 20:00 | Ross and MacKay speak frankly with each other about their sexuality and negative experiences with gay men. |
| I never would have known: A conversation with Peter Dunnigan | 1997 | Mirha-Soleil Ross | 24:00 | An interview with Toronto activist and trans man Peter Dunnigan about his transition, sexuality, addiction and recovery. |
| Dysfunctional | 1997 | Mirha-Soleil Ross | 9:00 | A response to society's fascination with and repulsion from transsexual bodies. |
| Journée Internationale de la Transsexualité | 1998 | Mirha-Soleil Ross | 38:00 | A documentary about the trans women's event hosted by l'Association des Transsexuels-les du Québec. |
| G-SPrOuT! | 2000 | Mirha-Soleil Ross and Mark Karbusicky | 12:00 | "A cyberspace encounter turns into a trans/polysexual vegan-docu-porno featuring urban veggie lovers speaking out on dating, intimacy and sex in a meat-centered culture." |
| Tales from the Derrière | 2000 | Mirha-Soleil Ross | 24:51 | A video of Ross' 1999 performance of the same name which featured stories from her work and stories about her anus. |
| Tremblement de Chair | 2001 | Mirha-Soleil Ross and Mark Karbusicky | 3:40 | A meditation on sexuality in a trans woman's body. |
| Madame Lauraine's Transsexual Touch | 2001 | Mirha-Soleil Ross, Viviane Namaste and Monica Forrester | 34:00 | A film on safer sex between transsexual sex workers and their clients. |
| Lullaby | 2001 | Mirha-Soleil Ross | 4:00 | A video produced as part of Ross' performance art piece where she simulated pregnancy for 9 months. |
| Yapping Out Loud: Contagious Thoughts from an Unrepentant Whore | 2002 | Mirha-Soleil Ross and Mark Karbusicky | 74:00 | A film of Ross' one-woman show by the same name. |
| Proud Lives | 2002 | Mirha-Soleil Ross and Mark Karbusicky | 5:00 | Film footage of Ross as the grand marshal of the Toronto Pride Parade in 2001. |
| Allo Performance! | 2002 | Mirha-Soleil Ross and Mark Karbusicky | 13:00 | A video of Ross at the Golden Gate Bridge as part of her performance art piece The Pregnancy Project. |
| Materstina (Langue Maternelle) | 2003 | Mirha-Soleil Ross and Mark Karbusicky | 11:40 | "A Czech woman speaks about her exile in Canada and about her sense of loss as it relates to language and her relationship with her children." |
| Live eXXXpressions: Sex Workers Stand Up | 2006 | Mirha-Soleil Ross and Mark Karbusicky | 15:00 | Footage of Forum XXX, a four-day sex workers' activist event held in Montreal in May 2005. |
| Brandee aka Lana Lamarre | 2007 | Mirha-Soleil Ross and Mark Karbusicky | 3:00 | A memorial video for the performer Brandee, who passed away in 2007. |
| Les Vérités Vo(i)lées | 2007 | Mirha-Soleil Ross | 31:45 | A look at sex workers' response to the scapegoating of sex workers for the spread of HIV/AIDS and other STIs. |

## Performance art

Ross produced a one-woman show, Yapping Out Loud: Contagious Thoughts from an Unrepentant Whore, based on her sex work and activism, at the 2002 Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts and in 2004 at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. The show intended to educate audiences about issues facing sex workers and refute stereotypes contributing to violence against them. Yapping Out Loud also incorporated Ross' animal-rights activism with comparisons between oppression faced by sex workers and coyotes, inspired by the American sex-worker organization COYOTE. In 2001 and 2002, she performed The Pregnancy Project, a 9-month piece where she appeared in public with a prosthetic belly to spark conversations about gender, motherhood and the possibility of womb transplants for transsexuals.

## Counting Past 2

In 1997, 1998, and 1999, Ross ran Counting Past 2 (CP2), a trans film, video, performance and spoken-word festival which provided a space for trans people to speak for themselves without catering to cisgender audiences. The festival's goal was to be more inclusive of trans artists than mainstream gay and lesbian film festivals by centering trans voices, accepting less-polished work and including cabaret and performance components instead of restricting submissions to films. Participants included Aiyyana Maracle and Max Wolf Valerio. In 2002, the festival returned after a two-year hiatus, under the stewardship of Boyd Kodak and Cat Grant. In a 2007 interview with Viviane Namaste, Ross said that her efforts with CP2 to create transsexual spaces outside a lesbian and gay framework had failed and that those spaces had disappeared or been absorbed by the LGBT community.

## Social service

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Ross was involved in social service work for trans and sex worker communities in Toronto. In 1999, she was the founding coordinator of Meal-Trans at the 519, a drop-in program offering meals and peer support to trans people. Ross was involved in the expansion of the 519's trans-related programs, providing services for trans people who are HIV-positive and sex workers as well as founding peer support groups for trans men and trans women with colleague Rupert Raj.
She worked with women's shelters, community centres and sex worker organizations to improve access and educate service providers. Ross was involved in pushing back against efforts by residents' associations in the Gay Village and Allan Gardens areas to expel sex workers.

## Awards

Ross has received several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. Her video Mateřština (co-directed with Mark Karbusicky) won the Marian McMahon Award at the 2004 Images Festival in Toronto. In 2001, Ross was the grand marshal of Toronto's Pride Parade. In 2011, she was inducted into Canada's Q Hall of Fame.

## Exhibitions

| Exhibition | Dates | Exhibitor | Location |
| No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image | June 19–August 28, 2022 | Haus der Kulturen der Welt | Berlin, Germany |
| Queering Family Photography | April 21–May 26, 2018 | Contact Festival, Stephen Bulger Gallery | Toronto, Canada |
| The Edgy Women Festival | March 2006 | Studio 303 | Montreal, Canada |