Senior project draft

DETRITUS

girl, queer, rich, white, & other labels

ANNA ODELL

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

DEEPLY ACCOMMODATING I cried when you told me I wasn’t deep. Ashamed that you would think I was shallow, wanting so much for you to my see into my insides, that I struggle with things.

I felt like a kid, telling someone that they’ed hurt my feelings.

But I was also scared that maybe you were right.

Maybe I’m not deep.

Maybe I’m a sweet, simple one like a sugar cookie or a lollipop.

But I also know that I have it easy, that this shit is hard for you, and maybe a lollipop isn’t so bad and maybe I’m the sun you’ve needed and maybe you’re still finding my unexpected depths.

Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Just so you know, I know more than you think I do.

I am more considerate than you can imagine.

And I know that you like lollipops.

Accommodating.

Accommodating Anna.

Alliterating Accommodating Anna.

It’s always easier to say I’m sorry.

To apologize for the tension between us.

I apologize to my reaction to your question, I apologize for not being able to fix your displeasure, I apologize for your feelings.

I apologize for my tears.

It’s not that hard to be nice.

You simply smile and give them what they need.

Because if I care for you It’s not that hard to be nice, It’s a lot harder to know who you are when the talons are out and when the tears come to play.

When you aren’t exactly sure what’s going to happen next.

When your words will either hug or fist fight, When it’s easier to go along with the plan.

And we all hurt so much of the time anyway, is it really so wrong to want to make them happy?

I feel stress in cycles, spinning around like in the laundromat across the street from my apartment. Everyone’s just trying to wash off a couple weeks worth of dirt so we can dress ourselves up [like we’re] clean again.

You told me I wasn’t deep once, but you have no idea how much I feel, how much I protect, how much the stress builds in my bones and grates them down.

Maybe you don’t think I’m deep, but if I told you everything contained in this mind I can’t help but think it would be like opening the washing machine door with the soap and water still spinning.

Like flooding the laundromat, clothes falling out, mixing with the detritus that coats the floor, drowning everyone in our own honest filth.

Feelings are messy, and I like it clean.

I know in my mind that “conflict” is good. That it’s how you work out your issues.

That it’s how you figure it out.

My mind knows, but my bones, they quake.

Please understand why its hard for me to drown us, even though I know we both know how to swim, and that maybe we would rise, filthy, honest, wet, and cleansed.

I’ve read articles telling women to stop apologizing in the work place.

I’ve read the lists of words that women “say too much.”

They say, If we want to be taken seriously we have to stop apologizing and own up.

That we have to grow a pair.

Thanks random article from random feminist blog.

Thanks for letting me know that after 21 years of socialization, internalized, self-directed misogyny is fucked up.

You’re helping me out a lot.

The feminism in my own mind tells me to stop apologizing.

That I’ve just been socialized this way, But knowing that it’s The Patriarchy’s fault that I cannot show my cracks doesn’t really help, when I’m sitting on my bed trying to learn the words: “I’m fucking mad at you” for the first time. knowing that it’s someone else’s fault — that it’s [society’s] fault — doesn’t mean shit.

When ultimately, I’m going to end up cleaning this mess.

—-

GUTS spill your guts and string them out for examination but im also scared, because once i let them out you’ll never be able to get them all back in. by necessity ill have to cut some parts out. and with miles of lining, there are secrets i dont even know in there. i learned about the decomposing crevices of our intestines when my dad had his cut out. they had been putrefying, for who knows how long. they cut out the bad bits, but they had to cut out so much more. after they’d strung them out, they put a bag on his front, where even his excrement could be on display. we dealt with a lot of shit that year. but when he came back from the hospital, we sat in the bed the 3 of us. and watched detective shows, knowing it had been a long time since we’d all been there together, and not knowing when we’d next be there again.

i. labels You say my name is ambivalence? Think of me as Shiva, a many-armed and - legged body with one foot on brown soil, one on white, one in straight society, one in the gay world, the man’s world, the women’s, one limb in the literary world, another in the working class, the scholiast, and the occult worlds. A sort of spider women hanging by one thin strand of web.

Who, me, confused? Ambivalent? Not so. Only your labels split me.”

(Gloria Anzaldùa. La Prieta, 46.)

The labels and signifiers I use are in constant flux, developing as I do. Can an “identity” ever attempt to be something finished? Complete? There are pieces of myself that scrape against my path, bits that break up, crumbs that stick to my raw, exposed flesh. I am in constant motion, even when I am still. This is especially true for of us who’s very existence is political, for the identities that the systems are not meant to serve.

Girl, woman, queer, sister, daughter, friend, acquaintance, white, lover, richer, partner, student.

I cannot be defined by one, or even a couple, of these terms. They are coexisting, contradicting, conversing pieces that I pick up when I need them, and occasionally I leave them.

Lesbian queer woman boy man mother are all labels that can and do coexist within the same body, sometimes with surprising clarity.

These terms scrape against one another, creating “friction” — the space in which the conversing parts of ourselves interact, interconnect, and are continually co-produced.

This space is the “awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference.” None of these aspects of ourselves are operating in isolation. The internal friction produces who we evolve into. The pieces of ourselves strike, grind, and push against each other, eventually the edges between them blending inextricably into one another.

ii. Lesbian “It’s my two favorite lesbians!”

“Well, you’re a lesbian if you have three or more girlfriends, so you’re almost there. Right?”

For me the term lesbian es un problema. As a working-class Chicana mestiza — a composite being, amalgama de culturas y de lenguas — a woman who loves women, “lesbian” is a cerebral word, white and middle-class, representing an English-only dominant culture, derived from the Greek word lesbos. I think of lesbians as predominantly white and middle-class women and a segment of women of color who acquire the term through osmosis much as the same as Chicana and Latinas assimilated the word “Hispanic.” When a “lesbian” names me the same as her, she subsumes me under her category. I am of her group but not as an equal, not as a whole person — my color erased, my class ignored.”

(To(o) Queer the Writer — Loca, escritoire y chicana, p 163. Gloria Anzaldùa) For me, the term lesbian never held any appeal. It seemed as though a group of white, straight male doctors gathered in a room together decades ago and held a small conference on the emerging condition of “lesbianism” — that is, two members of the female sex engaging in sexual relations with one another. So horribly clinical, like a diagnosis. Like middle aged soccer moms in baggy pastel shorts. It felt so white, so middle class, so suburban, like now happy white families could have two moms. It felt rigid and heteronormative, like “females” were now permitted to replicate the same nuclear family structure that straight couples have always been privileged enough to have. It felt sterile. When my brother told me I was a lesbian, I didn’t know how to describe to him with enough force that I wasn’t that. That my sexually identity could never be confined to a female who was sexually and romantically intimate to other females. That it wasn’t out of fear or internalized homophobia that I rejected lesbianism, but from the core of my being. That sexuality could never be contained in such a prescribed word.

Lesbian. It feels so white. So old. So safe.

iii. Queer “You can’t reclaim the word queer, in the same way African Americans cannot reclaim the n-word. That doesn’t exist. Queer was a fucked up word and it’s always going to be. There is no such thing as verbal reclamation.”

The labels I choose to call myself are surprisingly random. Lesbian feels sterile and rigid, gay really doesn’t fit either. Bi just made annoyed. I even prefer dyke. Sexually fluid is what I used for awhile, but it remained a safe, vague, almost meaningless term that was defined by my actions instead of my presentation.

I soon became clear that “sexually fluid” was not enough. That the default of “straight” was eating away at me. That I would always be a straight girl who was exploring, the bi girl who would end up going back to the safety of men, the sexually tokened experimental girl. I do not identify with the narrative of “coming out.” With a mother who asked me if I was involved with a wide variety of my friends of different genders, I never had to have a talk with my parents. Rather, I came home and told them that I had a girlfriend. I told them what I wasn’t; “I’m not gay, I’m not a lesbian, I’m not bi, I just have a girlfriend.” I used words of negation to define myself. Defined parts of my identity by what I knew I wasn’t.

No, I’m not a lesbian because I am not just interested in females. No, I don’t identify as gay. No, I don’t identify as bi because it feels too prescriptive to the gender binary and I am attracted to people who fall outside of the binary.

And so I came to settle on queer. Every other term made me feel constricted, as though there was a mold that I was going to have to fit. Queer gave me a way to claim something, even though I wasn’t really even sure what it meant. Queer made me excited, because it was the first word that allowed me to describe who I was, rather than me describing myself based on what I wasn’t.

As with labels, the term queer comes with it’s own set of issues. Based on its lack of specificity, the term queer can be both liberating and homogenizing. It can give the power to self-identify and explore within a larger community, while at the same time

erasing the other differences between us.

Queer is used as a false unifying umbrellas which all ‘queers’ of all races, ethnicities and classes are shoved under. At times we need this umbrella to solidify our ranks against outsiders. But even when we seek shelter under it we must not forget that it homogenizes, erases out differences… I must constantly asset my differences…This is one way I avoid getting sucked into the vortex of homogenization, of getting pulled into the shelter of the queer umbrella” (To(o) Queer the Writer — Loca, escritoire y chicana, p 164. Gloria Anzaldùa) Queer gave me the opportunity for verbal affiliation to the concept of a broader community, a framework, a hope that there would be some people somewhere out there who I might be able to model parts of myself on. Having never known that a queer “community” was something I needed or wanted, I jumped at the opportunity to find one. However, is it possible to have an entire “community” based on supposed sexual identification?

Can a queer community be all encompassing? Queer cannot be all that we have in common, and it isn’t. It is as integral to us as our race, our class, our families, our homes in whatever form they take. Claiming queerness is a process inextricable from our other parts. My own queerness and whiteness cannot be separated. They are in constant interaction with each other, each undeniable to me. To privilege my queerness over my whiteness is to ignore what I don’t want to deal with — the fact that I benefit from white supremacy and that having a “minority”identity gives me power and just a little self riotousness to speak about certain things.

By attempting to find some queer community we cannot forget to acknowledge all of the other difference. The definition of queer is fundamentally of differentness, of strangeness, of misunderstandings. It isn’t, and cannot be, a catch all, we cannot let ourselves homogenize and erase, pretending that we understand one another.

THE EXPECTATIONS for years I had just wanted to kiss a boy. for a moment of connection, for validation, to prove myself. for adulthood. what i had imagined was an indescribable moment. to have someone to like, who liked me back. what a gift. what an impossibility.

The first time my lips met someone else’s, it was awkward.

15, in a car, with lips larger than mine.

Our mouths fumbled around, kissing above and around each others lips as much as on them.

The surface area was sopping.

He wiped his face. months later, he told me I was getting better. the task of frantically relieved validation. swallowing because I wasn’t quite sure where to put it, and my stomach seemed like an ok place.

He said I was a natural.

3.1.2014 there’s a cold in the bone and a humming in the ears, crumbs in the bed, shouts in the dark, yelled by strangers and loved ones and strangers who were once loved ones, loved ones who may become strangers themselves.

Not knowing when art is “art” when to trust what you’ve made, when you refine. but in the haze of no longer drunk that comes in the morning, i give it all not to simply role over and sleep until the sun sets.

3.2.2014 12:34am it’s been some time since i wrote poems for you, and a little while since I’ve cried thinking of you. less time though since i last thought of you. maybe its a way of the bones, that they feel differently sometimes when you’re around. it cracks the skeleton with the things we never said, the lies we told and didn’t tell. the things, words, eyelashes, parts, fingers, voices, hairs, bacteria, dark spaces we shared and didn’t share. i dont know if it makes me miss you. but the bones and skeleton aches. i feel it in the tendons, stretching and popping my skin contracts and expands, ruptures around my fingernails and already fading tattoos. and i dont think it’s missing. when i walked away this night and you walked home with her, it wasn’t that i would’ve given everything to trade places with her (though maybe something small, like a good kale salad) it was more that those moments of recognizing what we had, will be lost, replaced by happier memories you’ll make with her and ours will be buried under your future heartbreak and angst, and your bacteria and dark spaces. maybe its not knowing if we had something special in the bones or not that makes them ache and the skin rupture maybe its that my bones and tendons know much better than my mind and heart ever could, and they ache because of the secrets they hold, not having the words to let them out, knowing if they did that they shouldn’t. and so my bones aches and my skin ruptures, as i lay myself down for the sleep that will come tonight.

PART IV

WHITE

WHITE AND SILENT ON FACEBOOK

As I sit in front of my computer on the day after my internship finished in December, drinking my coffee, I reflect on the fact that I haven’t written a Facebook status since July 7th, 2014. I’ve uploaded some photos, shared on a select few peoples walls, created and maintained an entire Facebook page for my internship, but somehow the last thing I actually wrote as a status was “beyonce pad thai,” in reference a TV show, “The Mindy Project,” (which was the first Network show in the United States to be produced, written, and starred in by an Asian American woman).

I completed my internship in San Fransisco, California, where the African American population makes up just 7% of the city (and 54% of the jails and prisons), and just a short BART ride away from Oakland, where protests occurred for weeks following the decision not to indict the Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darron Wilson for the killing of Mike Brown, an unarmed black 18 year old. On the night of the Ferguson decision, I watched live-stream coverage of the protests (or ‘riots’ as they were dubbed by some) on Twitter, by searching the hash tags ‘oakland,’ ‘ferguson,’ ‘handsupdontshoot,’ and ‘mikebrown.’ Protesters marched from Broadway to Telegraph, some even breaking the barrier to Interstate 580 and stopping traffic. As I watched from my bed in San Francisco (in a primarily working class immigrant Asian American neighborhood), the realization that this was happening a train ride away from me began to hit. It was close, very close.

I stayed up that night, reading the notes from the trial and the testimony from Darron Wilson, who described Mike Brown as a “giant,” with a face like a “devil,” who could kill Wilson with his bare hands. I grew incensed, getting more and more worked up, eventually getting up and pacing across my room ranting. I considered going to Oakland, but I didn’t. The train would’ve taken more than an hour, it was 11 pm, I had to work in the morning, I don’t know Oakland, and I didn’t know how to find the protesters, and…

In the past two weeks, I’ve seen my Facebook explode, with outcries over the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Gardner, Tamir Rice, and the countless other people of color killed,

abducted, raped, or abused. Eric Gardner was a black father of six who died by the hands of a New York City police officer in an illegal choke hold, and who’s last words were “I can’t breathe.” He was being arrested for selling loose-leaf tobacco. The event was captured on video and the officer was not indicted. Tamir Rice was a black twelve year old boy shot and killed in Cleveland, Ohio. The police were called by a man claiming that there was a man (who he admitted was probably a juvenile) brandishing a gun (which he admitted might have been fake). Tamir Rice was killed just seconds after the police arrived, shot from at least 10 feet away. The event was also captured on video.

The names of these three black folks have trended on twitter and had countless blog posts written about them. Googling any one of them brings up pages of search results.

The fact that every 28 hours a person of color is killed by the police or vigilantes means that there are simply too many people for each to trend on twitter. There are simply too many to know them all by name. But these are the names that now even my father knows — a white man living in ‘progressive’ Ithaca, New York (where a black man named Shawn Greenwood was shot and killed by the police a couple of years ago).

To reach the white middle class it takes mobilization. And there is mobilization. As a white person, I am reminded that I have the privilege to be angry, as opposed to being terrified. I have the space to choose when I’m sad, to choose to care.

So as I sit in front of my computer, looking at my empty Facebook status, and that tantalizing box asks “Anna Odell, what’s on your mind,” I just don’t know.

All I can concretely say, is that I’m uncomfortable. I’m uncomfortable with white folks who have been quiet on all matters ‘race’ until it suits them, until it’s popular. Many of the white folks I am friends with on Facebook (note: most of the people I am friends with are white), seem to have jumped on the “Ferguson band wagon,” doing very little analysis or thinking themselves, but sharing and coopting the hard work and thoughts of writers and bloggers of color. But even at this point, it gets complicated. Perhaps it can be said that by sharing the work of writers of color, they are letting them speak for themselves. Maybe these well intentioned white folks know that they cannot speak these truths in the ways that folks of color can. Maybe they know that it is the words and experiences of those writers that need to be shared, that they should not speak to the things that they don’t understand. But as the white, middle class climate activists I know post outraged statuses on the Ferguson decision, I can’t help but wonder how many of these well intentioned white folks are using this easy, public forum to prove that they are indeed well intentioned. How many of them are using this platform to claim that “they are not one of those white people.”

However, I more uncomfortable with my silence than with the visibility of white folks on Facebook. I am uncomfortable because if I had posted something, I know it would have been because I had something to prove.

It has become overwhelmingly clear that social media is one of the most powerful tools of mobilization. Social media goes beyond the globalization of mass media, it puts the power of the story into the hands of its users. Diamond Latchison writes in her essay “I’m From Ferguson and I’m Tired and I’m Fed Up,” published on the blog Black Girl Dangerous, “If it weren’t for Twitter, millions of people wouldn’t have seen Michael Brown’s lifeless body left lying on the ground by police for 4 hours, uncovered. If it wasn’t for Twitter, the people outside of Ferguson and even in Ferguson wouldn’t have known what was developing. The people wouldn’t have seen the looting, the rallies, the heavy military

action, any of it if it weren’t for the people on the ground that were on Twitter. I live in Ferguson and if it weren’t for people taking to Twitter I wouldn’t have seen half the things I saw… So, while people may think social activism is wack and not helpful, it is to Ferguson.”

I watched the protests in Oakland not on my local news channel, but from Twitter, where activists showed the lines of police armed with tear gas, guns with rubber bullets, and in full riot gear lining the streets and pushing the crowds together. The lifestream of the protests connected me to Oakland in the most visceral way. Social media is where conversations are happening. Facebook is no longer for the musings of our middle school selves, they are where articulate conversations and debates are held. What are our obligations to participate in these conversations? Is interacting on these forums an act of solidarity? I think that so many of us don’t know how to act in allyship and solidarity on Facebook, or really at all. Acting in solidarity is hard, and requires constant work and action (however it’s not harder than being a person of color in America).

Facebook provides an easy place to act in solidarity, and more often than not it feels like a popularity contest.

I think that at the end of the day, I didn’t post because I would’ve felt like a hypocrite.

I would have felt as though I was trying to prove something. I am one of “those” white people. It is not my silence that is the issue, it is my lack of intentional, everyday action, not just on the days when it’s easy.

A WHITE PERSON WALKS INTO A PROTEST IN OAKLAND The news the days after the protests in Oakland painted a violent picture of riots, looting, and vandalism. Among some of the headlines were “Ferguson Protests In Oakland Turn Ugly for Second Straight Night: Freeways Blocked, Looting, Fires,” “Oakland Protests over Ferguson Decision cause Havoc,” “Ferguson Ruling Sparks Oakland Freeway Shutdown, Looting,” and “Oakland Police Arrest Most Ferguson Protesters in U.S.” My white girlfriend, my white best friend, and I arrived late to one of the protests in Oakland, not realizing the amount of time it would take to drive through San Francisco’s rush hour and cross the Bay Bridge. The protest was supposed to start at 7:00 pm on Broadway and 14th Street, right outside of the 14th Street BART station. When we arrived to the empty Oakland streets around 7:40 pm, we found parking several blocks away, all silently acknowledging that we didn’t want the car near the protest or potential march, because who knows what could happen.

As we rushed to Broadway, confusedly trying to navigate the dark streets with the assistance of google maps, we all realized that we had to pee. Keeping our eyes open for shops along the way, we found none. As we grew close several armored vehicles drove past us, clueing us in that we were going the right way. Occasionally we would see the spotlights from the helicopters. Before long, we arrived.

The situation was less tense than I had expected. Protesters were chanting, but the police were only blocking one of the four roads of the intersection. The square was full, but there was was ample space between us. There was no threat of being shuffled aside or losing the people I came with. I stood with my hands in my pockets. I was surrounded by black folks, who I assumed were primarily from Oakland, as well as a myriad of well intentioned white “anarchists.”

I grew increasingly uncomfortable. Not only because of my full bladder, but for so many unnameable reasons. My companions and I kept looking at each other, occasionally whispering our common phrase of “Wow, so many things,” implying that we would

talk about the situation later and analyze it to its fullest, but we never did. I don’t think any of us could specifically say what was uncomfortable. Maybe it was that this was the second time I had ever been to Oakland, maybe it was the clear distinction between the protesters and the onlookers who were lingering on the sidewalks outside of their houses and shops, maybe it was the large number of anonymous white folks dressed in black with black bandanas over their face which reminded me of disconcertingly of black face, maybe it was the fact that I was so clearly white and so clearly not from Oakland, and maybe it was just my internalized racism.

What does it mean for a white person to wear a black mask at a protest for justice for black lives? What does it mean for a white person to choose to be anonymous in that space? Are they protecting themselves against the police? Do they need to protect themselves against the police?

Within a couple of minutes it was clear that we would not last much longer without relieving ourselves, and after learning that every store in the vicinity had closed early to prepare for the protest, we scurried down a side street and peed in an alleyway. As people passed by, we joked that the only thing we would be arrested for tonight was public urination.

As we returned from peeing, the march had begun. We began down the street, accompanied by chants of “No justice! No peace! No racist police!” “Hands up! Don’t Shoot!”

“Shut it down for Michael Brown!” and others. The march seemed somewhat unplanned, moving slowly and taking random turns. The police guarded the sides of the street, each identical with their guns held diagonally across their chest and their faces guarded by their gas masks. We walked uncoordinatedly together in a sort of comical parade, drawing people to their windows and balconies to watch our progress, occasionally chanting with us while we were within their eyesight.

“March” doesn’t seem like the right word to describe what we were doing. We weren’t “marching” in an orderly fashion, this was clearly unorganized. But at the beginning, it was also surprisingly calming. It was clear that we were all just walking along together, trying to find a way to avoid the police, and that none of us really knew how the night

was going to end.

Before too long, energy began to grow. The march would alternate between slow walking and sprinting, as a group would run ahead to around the corner to “secure” the next intersection. And the cops would run too, trying to beat us there. I found myself helplessly giggling as I watched white people with video cameras run ahead of the group, shouting “We need bodies up here! We’ll hold it down!” as I walked next to a group of black women who stared confusedly after the runners.

After hours of the cat and mouse maze that we played on the streets of Oakland, the inevitable escalation came. Shrill car alarms began to fill the air (as well as shouts of “don’t fuck with the people’s cars man”) and sounds of breaking glass caused me to jump.

About 15 feet away from where I stood, a Mercedes-Benz dealership’s front window had been broken, and a couple of men were running in. A few blocks later the a Benjamin Moore paint store was broken into, and I couldn’t help but wonder how people were choosing which stores to loot… Inside I could see gallons of paint being opened with screwdrivers and thrown on the ground. People were quick to leave and enter back into the march.

I have been to my fair share of protests — starting from the early days of the Iraq war to walk outs at climate negotiations, I have always felt that I knew what it was to protest.

But as cops with full riot gear threatened to use chemical weapons and drove with armored vehicles around the streets of Oakland, I knew that this was not a protest outside of the Whitehouse or in Ithaca, New York. As we marched, rocks were thrown at car windows, phallic images were drawn on the window of restaurants with their diners watching, local storefronts were shattered. So while I can say I’ve been to protests before, lets just say that in the protests I’ve been to cop cars have never been burned and rocks have never been thrown.

As I am standing in line with primarily black protesters and rocks are being thrown from black hands all around me, I am forced to ask myself, “Why the fuck am I here.”

I am here because I knew I had to be, because I’m uncomfortable and I’m scared and I

know that it’s not ok. Because it isn’t enough to just sit around at home and talk about how cops (or anyone) killing black boys and men is wrong.

And I also can’t help but wonder why are all of us white people here, particularly those of us who are not from Oakland.

— In some ways, the space of the protest is a competitive one. There are only so many microphones, there are only so many people. There are only so many pictures that will be taken, quotes that can be given, articles that will be written. There is only one front line. Over the past weeks, I have felt over and over the sentiment of “this is not your anger, this is not your community.” I have been thinking about the privilege of anger, and the nature of white anger. I think most of us know that as white people we often have far more privilege than we ever acknowledge. Perhaps it’s too hard for us to realize that there are some privileges that are not ours, and the anger felt by the black community comes directly from the oppression and domination of their community. By claiming that anger without acknowledging our privilege, perhaps we are simply continuing historical appropriation of black culture.

The “activist” is a historical character, a story retold again and again in different contexts, personified and memorialized through institutional memory of society. The enraged individual is often out on a pedestal, and it’s a competition to be able to stand on the soap box. When I see white people scream “fuck the police” I wonder how much of their anger is plagiarized. In action, there is no citing the author. Historically white people have plagiarized and appropriated almost every aspect of black culture that is deemed desirable — from authors to musicians to style to neighborhoods.

Maybe I should give us white people some credit. Maybe we aren’t just trying to steal some thunder, to claim some credit for work that isn’t ours. Maybe we are attempting to amplify, to shed light on those voices who are so often not heard. But when it comes to us white people, so often our “amplification” cannot be taken away from our own voices. When we are holding the megaphone it is usually our own mouth speaking into it, blasting over the crowd.. If I have learned one thing at this protest it is this — never give

a white person a megaphone.

At the end of the night, people went home, some were arrested, the cops were left to clean up the mess of fire and broken glass, and I drove back to San Francisco.

VIRGOS, COLUMBUSING, AND SLUGS: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO WHITE, QUEER WOMEN Setting: Sitting on my friend’s bed after I have asked if I can record on of our conversations to include in my senior project. We were eating salt and vinegar potato chips and joking about how we should start a podcast. I turn on the recorder.

A: Is it going?

K: Yeah, that little red light means its recording. So, I was thinking about if we had a podcast, like what kind of equipment would we use. Would we get really professional microphones or just like record it on our computers?

A: I don’t know, I was thinking about this and I think it depends on what kind of listeners we had. Would it be for our friends? Would it be for the wider community? And what would our specific take be? Thats what I’m always interested in… Would it be a virgo podcast, where really we are just talking about random shit but we also talk about how we are virgos.

K: Being virgos is a very defining factor of our lives.

A: We are both like very typical virgos K: I keep wanting to say neurotypical virgos, but that’s not right at all.

A: What does that mean?

K: Neurotypical people are people who don’t have brain issues at all, so like aren’t depressed..

A: Ohhh K: Mythical beings… The neurotypicals

[both laugh] A: So neurotypical means someone who has no mental health issues?

K: Yeah, so someone who is privileged in terms of mental health.

A: Wow, I didn’t know that.

K: Tumblr people talk about neurotypical privilege.

A: Wow I love how its framed in privilege.

K: It’s not always framed in privilege. It’s more framed in: “shit neurotypical people say about mental illness,” like “just get over it.”

A: Wow tumblr is like the place to learn about anything and everything, and sometimes in the most annoying ways but sometimes in the best ways.

K: Yeah that’s why I love it. I don’t even know what the opposite of neurotypical is.

A: I have no idea… I mean, I think it totally makes sense and I think it’s funny that I never thought of that before because it flips mental illness on its head. Like the same thing that happened with the defining of able-bodied. So instead of defining someone by their disability or by their mental health issue you can also define someone by their lack of disability or mental health issue.

K: The funny thing about neurotypical is that it assumes that you have the “right” chemical balance in your brain. I have so many mixed feelings about that. Because I have definitely self diagnosed myself with social anxiety and depression, and in some ways it’s really comforting to put some label or “blame” it on chemical issues. There’s a sense of validity in being able to put a label on it and say “this is clinically defined.” Also sorry you wanted to talk about other things.

A: I think in terms of mental health there is never just one thing. It’s not just an event or a chemical imbalance, and maybe it is for one person and not other people. Because when you think about the compounding social factors it gets way more complicated. For example, thinking about how depression and anxiety are so prevalent for trans folks and queer folks and folks of color and folks with marginalized identities, obviously if you are being fucking oppressed it’s gonna feel shitty and its gonna manifest in your life and is going to be internalized in a lot of ways… Like, of course. In which case, maybe you can’t just be like, I’m going to medicate it and it’s going to be fine, because its a symptom of an entire structure and a system, like white supremacy and capitalism and patriarchy and heteronormativey and all the other buzzwords.

K: And it doesn’t even matter if you’re experiencing that oppression now as an individual. Because there is evidence though epigenetics that you’re going to be depressed if your grandparents were depressed.

A: What’re epigenetics?

K: They are compounds that come from stress and depression… They have looked at people who are victims of trauma from World War Two and their children have these compounds on their DNA that is external to DNA that get passed down though DNA. They think that depression is partially caused by that.

A: wowow, I mean that makes so much sense in so many ways.

K: Yeah, and so like my depression could be coming from the fact that my grandfather was like starving and in hiding in World War Two. A: Right, or folks of color could have anxiety and depression from like 500 years of slavery. This is why we should have a podcast. We could talk about the connections between social issues and science, and I would make you explain it and we would all understand something for the first time.

We continue to talk about why we should have a podcast, epigenetics, and reparations

for slavery.

A: Ok, so I just wanted to give you a list of things that I thought we could talk about. We have already spoken for 20 minutes so we are clearly on our way. My project is about identity, so anything to do with identity. Then I was thinking about feminism, and where our feminism came from, how we developed it, and the impact it has had on our life.

I know you have a lot of thoughts about hysteria and the way you are viewed and the way you carry conversations. I would love to hear about your opinions of the Mens group at COA. I would also like to talk about gender, particularly at COA. And, yeah I don’t know, I was thinking about talking about friendship and ideas of friendship.

K: I have interesting ideas about friendship. Actually I hate the word interesting, and I say it so much.

A: We all do.

K: Everyone in my classes right now say everything is “interesting” A: Anything and everything can be interesting.

K: Interesting is what my grandmother says when she has been slightly offended but knows she shouldn’t say anything because she’s behind in the times.

A: To me, interesting is the kind of word that is meaningless. Like, no shit it’s “interesting!” I no longer care about “interesting.” It’s the most neutral word. It’s like calling something nice or fine. I think it’s just a cop out. It’s a way to act like you have an opinion about something without actually having to explain that opinion.

K: It’s also value neutral.

A: It’s a way to pretend to be value neutral. I also use the word interesting when I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about and I’m trying to figure out what I think. I’m just trying to figure out what I think.

We continue to rant. We take a break to try on lipstick, talk about the TV shows Gossip Girl and Keeping up with the Kardashians] A: Kylie Jenner lips [A reality TV show start who is on the show Keeping up the the Kardashians], another great topic of conversation. White people columbusing lips…

K: She is really interesting. It’s such a prime example of columbusing and white supremacy.

A: Would you like to explain columbusing? For everyone who is listening to our nonexistent podcast, aka Bill who is reading this out loud?

K: Columbusing is the idea of white people stealing people of color’s culture.

A: And pretending to discover it for the first time. For example, 2014 was the year of butts and white people columbused butts.

K: Butts did become popular in 2014.

[K: Anyway, Kylie Jenner is praised for her large lip appearance, which she achieves with large amounts of make-up. She dating Tyga, a black musician who is 25, and has a kid with Blac Chyna. and black chyna has huge lips (an she also outlines them to make them bigger). she is ridiculed and made fun of for her face by white people. and even though she is super proud of it and it doesn’t phase her, but white people say that she’s ugly all the time. so thats who tyga used to be with, and now he is with kyllie jenner who is underage and white and is getting praised for having her large lips and everyone is talking about how beautiful she is. while slut shaming blac chyna.

A: once again white people are fools.

K: also the slut shaming of black china is horrible, because she poses a lot in lingerie and is a mom. so people also shame her for being sexual and having a child. so basically

prime examples of how white people police black peoples bodies.

A: right, and kim kardashian is called a MILF. K: though people did give comments about her posing naked on magazine covers. also so many people don’t realize that the kardashians are white. which is so western, because they are part armenian, so eastern europe.]

A: Yeah, white people finally realized that we have butts too. Oh wow we could go on a whole other tangent about the Kardashians and Bruce Jenner. [[K: I don’t know how to refer to bruce jenner, in terms of pronouns. lavernce cox and janet mock [two famous trans women of color activists] referred to bruce jenner as they.

A: every article except one that I’ve read has had an asterisk about using he. until this point jenner has requested to keep their name private throughout this transition and use “he/him” pronouns.

K: and they are using transgender as a spectacle. I am just unsatisified with the way that it has been discussed which pronouns to use… there was a two hour interview, you could’ve asked. ]]

Did you read the article written by his ex-wife? linda thompson? it was basically her whole tale of their story..

K: cause now everyone wants a piece of the story.

A: Exactly, and she goes, I was silent for so many years because didn’t want out Bruce.

She begins the article saying “I was lying in bed with elvis (yes, that elvis), and we were watching as Bruce Jenner won the olympics. I turned to elvis and I said, thats the man I’m going to marry someday.” And she talks about Bruce Jenner in this hyper mascu-

line way. “I married this hyper masculine man, I had two kids, I loved his kids from his previous marriage, he was an amazing husband and father and I was a great wife, I lived this idyllic lifestyle, blah blah blah.” She describes him as muscular and musky, and all this shit. And then how her life was so altered when Bruce Jenner came out to her. And they started taking hormones for 5 years in the 80s and she admitted that it was a lot harder for Bruce Jenner but she wrote about how her whole life was uprooted. and I’m just like.. I don’t want to shit on anyones experience with transitioning, but someone within the past couple of days it has become the entire story about rich white peoples experience with transitioning. which is so problematic because its not just about one persons being open and honest about their transition, which is also not what everyone has to do. not everyone has to go on a tv interview and display their transition K: ugh yeah lets not even start the conversation about how people don’t need to out themselves in anything, in survivors of rape, in sexuality, in gender in anything.

A: so you obviously don’t need to out yourself in any situation, and now its suddenly rich white people who all have this very specific experience with being transgender and transitioning or knowing someone who’s trans, now have all of the visibility. like, 15 women of color have been killed in the first three months of 2015. its so fucked up.. like how did rich white people columbus being trans? in like a two hours interview? it could be super important and elevating for all trans issues, but its not. right now its not about all trans issues, its about one trans person, who’s rich, and famous. and I get that its a super emotional thing for someone. but now its an opportunity for kim kardashian to say bullshit about trans issues. and I’m like listen, there are people who have been doing this work for years and lifetimes, and now that you give a shit and have a platform, you can say kind of ok stuff, but also not great things about the trans community… like you’re not being an asset. like if you want to be an actual ally, do it. [[K: I heard that bruce jenner is also like “thanks to people like laverne cox I am able to come out” A: I also didn’t watch the interview with him, I watched clips.

K: I also didn’t want the interview with him, I read articles. [take a break to watch laverne cox and janet mock talking about the bruce jenner inter-

view] visibility matters. when its saves lives K: so obviously lavern is being very political in the beginning and trying to be moderate and not super intense while being able to make a political statement. I also think its really interesting that they refer to it as an “Ellen” moment. because as you were talking earlier, I was thinking about the cooption of the LGBTQ movement by white, gay men. and also white lesbians, but primarily white gay men as the face of LGBTQ and their privilege.]]]

A: maybe its just where I have been looking and what I have been exposed to online, but I feel like the past two years in particular have been huge for trans women of color, and trans women of color killin it, also being killed, also suicide, also so many other things, but trans women of color actively telling their stories or trying to, and actually being published and being noticed. and also all transpeople without the kind of visibility of Bruce Jenner telling their stories, and now I’m concerned about where those stories are gonna go.. are they still going to be here or are they going to just be totally erased or talked over by someone who has a huge platform. and its also true that visibility matters and people seeing that anyone can be trans and anyone can theoretically transition, but also thats not necessarily true, because “anyone” can in terms of celebrity and wealth and all that shit, but in terms of like family and safety, its not possible for everyone.

K: and I think an important thing is that I think Bruce Jenner did not want to come out in this way. this was very much a forced coming out by the media, which is really upsetting. and I hate the media spectacle. investigatory journalism should not be used to figure out if someone is trans or not. investigatory journalism should be used to expose police brutality. and we could talk about the media forever, but there are so many people that we don’t allow to have private lives and there are so many people that we don’t allow to own their own bodies. and celebrity is horrifying to me because you have to give up all your privacy. [take break for anna to answer phone call from her partner who is on their way to see Roxanne Gay. Continue to talk about latin and K’s theory that the word for man and

virus in latin have the same root, which she acknowledges is probably isn’t] K: I mean sperm pretty much are viruses.

A: reasons I love bees. like theres one queen, and males you just get to work and provide sperm.

K: and not all of the male bees even get to mate with the queen. and after they mate they just die. like spiders, expect they don’t get eaten.

A: I love bees.

K: I still want to write a guide to gender and sex bending invertebrates. like XY chromosomes are not really even a thing anymore. like some species are density dependent and some have both sexes in the individual. like slugs for example, don’t have sex, they have sex in terms of external to internal fertilization, but they don’t have sex in terms of what we often confuse with gender and XY chromosomes, because they all have both. you should google slug sex sometime. theres a bbd clip of these slugs having sex, and its kind of weirdly beautiful. one slug makes a trail that gives off a scent that its like “ready to go,” and the other slug follows it. and they climb up a tree together. together go off on a branch, and make a slime rope that they descend from so they are hanging in mid air, which I don’t understand why evolutionarily this is how they have sex because they are so vulnerable to predation when they are hanging from a string of slime from a tree branch.

A: slime is crazy.

K: but birds just like swoop in.

A: someone didn’t plan that very well…

K: well yeah, because its evolution. but they have survived for so long. but then they spin around each other and get super intwined, and then both implant shit into each

other. and then they are both fertilized.

A: basically, what I’m understanding is that slugs are queer. of course we come back to identity… [k gets out her notes from her invertebrate zoology class and teaches me about parthenogenesis and asexual organisms] K: and this is why I need to write a master post about queer invertebrates A: basically gender and reproduction is crazy and pretty much everything is queer.

— K: I guess we could talk about our feminism and when we became feminists and where it came from.

A: yeah we really are feminists K: in so many ways. as in we are white feminists. as in it makes sense for us to be feminists because feminism has never been harmful against us… I have a lot of feelings about that as an outspoken white person and women, I sometimes really struggle with the way I act in conversations, because in some ways its traditionally masculine. but I also feel like, ugh, I’m not being a very good woman, not because I shouldn’t be speaking out this way but because empowerment shouldn’t come from taking on masculine identity.

A: and right like I think that theres no way to “be a real women” and to be its most problematic when the only way you can be heard is in that way. when someone makes you speak in a certain way that you feel in particularly masculine in order to be taking legitimately or in order to be heard or if you have to be rational and eloquent and well spoken to be heard, thats really fucking frustrating. also men are not always rational, eloquent, and well spoken and in fact they are not.

K: I don’t understand why male anger has been taken to mean some sort of rational

thing. but “hysteria” is supposedly so irrational and based on women feels.

A: and then I also think about how did I become an eloquent person and like, I don’t know. and I feel there are spaces when I have been asked and put in the situation to be very masculine, and take on a very masculine role in a conversation and I hate it. but I also think that as a women if thats the way that you communicate, you shouldn’t not communicate in the way because its seen as inherently masculine, you know?

K: I think what has been interesting is that people respond to me acting that way or me being comfortable expressing my opinion in an confrontational way as a reason to why women aren’t oppressed. and thats where it bothers me a lot. and I know that in work that the two of us have done, certain men have used the way that I act as an excuse for why there aren’t fucked up gender dynamics.

A: right, which obviously there are.

K: yeah, so its really frustrating. its kind of like being, oh well we have a black president now. or like, we don’t have the glass ceiling because Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, to use a British example. I got into such an argument with someone when she died, because there were all these tweets saying “ding dong the witch has died” and, fuck thatcher she did really terrible shit, but I don’t like where these conversations are going because of how witches have been used to oppress women in the past. calling her a bitch and a witch and using very gendered terms to celebrate her death. But why do people have to use really strongly gendered phrases like that. and theres nothing that you could use against a man in that way.

A: yeah you can only really call them a dick.

K: Yeah, and witches were women who had power and were persecuted for it. and the person I was arguing with was like, “ that history doesn’t really matter.” and this is the struggle that I am constantly having as a feminist and I think is more telling of how women are continuously still marginalized… on the one hand I feel like the issues that I’m talking about are so tiny and shouldn’t be taken seriously, and then on the other

hand I’m like wooooow you’re erasing so much by saying that. like yeah, maybe that example in itself isn’t a serious issue, but I don’t know, it obviously means something to me. thats why I really loved the term microagression, to explain the tiny things that build up into continued oppression.

A: For me, it’s the delegitimizing and dismissing of things that is really hard. because in some ways, yes, we are talking about a tweet about a dead prime minister who was a total asshole. but in other ways we are saying that this is thousands of years of women being persecuted and dying that feels distant in ways and in some moments, but in other ways and in other moments feels so close. and carrying that history with words and interactions is important. But have a serious conversation about it, and understand that the words you use have serious history and impact.

K: Also its not about Thatcher, its about the words you are choosing to slur her with. The slur itself is the problem.

A: Yeah and it’s about gendered language and the history that goes along with gendered language around witches and women of power. and the demonizing and vilifying of power. which we are totally going to see now that Hillary clinton is running in 2016.

K: Theres going to be so much shit about her being a witch. I’m pretty sure that we there was a lot of stuff about Palin being a witch. and like, Sarah Palin bothers me, but she doesn’t deserve to be called a bitch or reducing her to a hockey mom. and it turns into “you’re a stupid women you should go home and take care of your family and leave the politics to the men.” And as much as disagree with her, she is smart enough o be elected governor and control her image in the media.

A: yeah she made very calculated decisions.

K: don’t reduce her to a house wife, not that its a problem to be a housewife.

A: but don’t use that as a derogatory term

K: like no one is too much of a soccer dead to be involved in politics.

— K: Should we talk about the Mens group?

A: Oof, that might be a rant.

K: Mostly I just wanted to add that I have no issue with men meeting and talking about toxic masculinity. I do think that they should acknowledge that toxic masculinity may emotional harm males, but physically harms women. and men who aren’t seen as “masculine enough” either by the fact that they are transgender or are effeminate. and usually related to their sexuality and their gender identity. but as soon as there is any pubic opposition, which was originated by a white male, so many people came up to me and told me not to get angry about it, which made me angry. because of the perceived response that I would have. and people were like literally, “all these angry feminist women.” and I was like, who are you talking about? The fact that people expected me to be angry, and before I said anything publicly told me that I didn’t have the right to be angry. people told me to sit down and talk to them in a “calm manner,” and that is when I got fucking pissed, because that is not a way to handle things and it is presuming that I’m going to be an angry feminist attacking them.

A: I think that my thoughts on the men’s group are exactly what you just said, and also that I think that the framing of it is problematic. I think the deep question that I have is why is a space that is exclusive to women inherently safe. and we have talked about how “safe spaces” don’t really exist in public spaces, and so many thats not an expectation that you should have. also, what is it about the absence of women that makes it safe for you? honestly.

K: Like would you feel more comfortable talking about jacking off without women in the room?

A: The same question should be asked of me, why would I feel safer in a group of ex-

clusively white people? why would I feel safer? I would feel more comfortable, which is not the same as safety. And if you’re comfortable it doesn’t mean you’re safe, and you shouldn’t always strive to feel comfortable.

K: Right, why should you be comfortable talking about something that is problematic.

A: Yeah, and I think that men just have a lot of space.

—-

TRAUMA / SAFETY / HUMOR trauma noun (pl. traumas or traumata |-mətə| ) 1 a deeply distressing or disturbing experience: My friend and I wanted to start a podcast called “Man-Hating Moments,” where everyday we would come home and record all the things men did to us that day. The experiences would be broad: men taking up an exorbitant amount of space on public transport, men refusing to look away from our bodies after catching our eye, men following us for several blocks, men telling us they’d like to fuck us, men telling us they hate us, men throwing things at us… Anything goes really. It would be unapologetically misandrous.

Men and I have an interesting relationship.

The first time a man threw something at me was in the summer of 2014. My partner and I were walking around downtown Ithaca after a dinner date. We had both dressed up nicely—I was wearing a white chiffon shirt and black skinny jeans, with my hair up and make up on. The dusk had just turned into night, and we were waiting at a stoplight to cross the street. The light was green, and as a black Subaru drove by I heard the shouts of men and suddenly felt something hit my chest. My partner had already started running after their car as I looked down, dazed. I found a dollop of wet, goopy, ice cream on my top, which was slowly moving down and dripping into a growing puddle on the ground where a broken waffle cone had landed. I began wiping the ice cream off of my top as quickly as possible. I let some tears slide out of the corner of my eyes and quickly brushed them away.

We drove back to my house so I could change, and I sat on the couch in the living room, where my parents reluctantly paused their TV show. I told them about the interaction and they were modestly upset. My dad seemed to think that it was strange, abnormal, weird, unusual, and, above all, random. They seemed to think it was the stupid musings of young boys. They asked me if my partner and I were holding hands or being

otherwise “affectionate” with one another—nope, we were just standing there. I thought to myself, It’s good to know that I now have options about why I’m hated… People can choose between my queerness, my gender, or both.

Later, I told one of my male friends about the incident, and he told me, “I have to be honest, I can’t help but laugh… Because it just sounds so messy.” And, sick to my stomach, I laughed too. Because of course it’s funny: Ice cream is a thing of comfort.

I eat it in cones, cakes, sandwiches, and shakes. I eat it on hot days at picnic tables and out of a pint on cold days in my bed. Ice cream has been sold to a lot of women as “comforting”—to comfort us from heartbreak and puberty, from the regular and irregular traumas of our lives. And so, of course it’s funny.

The irony of having ice cream thrown—literally chucked—at my white shirt is oddly brilliant. It wasn’t particularly dangerous: I wasn’t physically injured. I was just humiliated. That was the genius—that they had marred me with one of the most innocent objects, with one of the least violent. We live in a country were the term “legitimate rape” has been coined, where violence is only taken seriously when it’s “real.” We are now attempting to quantify and verify violence and trauma, and I’m sure on the great scale of things an ice cream assault would not rank particularly high.

This is just another example of the everyday traumas, the slow and seeping realization that I’m not sure if I’m ever totally safe. The knowledge that those boys could’ve pulled up to a red light—what then? Would they have waited to shout and throw once their car was moving again? Would they have taunted us until the light turned green? Would they have noticed our humanity and kept to themselves? Would they have gotten out of their car? What if either of us had been alone? There’s no point to playing the “what if” game, because I know that every time I play I will get to somewhere I don’t want to be, that there are realities too horrible to imagine, that maybe I don’t need to think about every day.

I went home and put my shirt in the washing machine with some bleach. I still wear it. I still eat ice cream and stand on street corners with my partner, where we still laugh and hold hands and kiss. I stand on street corners alone. I don’t think about the event often,

like every time I wear that shirt or I eat ice cream. Because I cannot be traumatized that easily—there are simply too many things to be traumatized by over a lifetime, and I need to reserve my strength.

The first time I was spat on I was walking in Ocean Beach, San Diego with that same partner. I had just arrived in San Diego, and it was the first time I had seen my partner in about three weeks. We were holding hands. Ocean Beach is known as the “hippie beach,” where wafts of patchouli and weed linger together and many white folks with dreadlocks hang out with their dogs. In some ways, it reminds me a lot of home.

As we walked, a man noticeably stared at us. My partner flashed him the finger — something I have never done to a stranger. Another man, who was sitting with a group of men on the ground stood up and yelled,

“What the fuck bitch, why are fucking flipping me off?!”

My partner, who does not take kindly to being called a bitch by strangers, retorted,

“I wasn’t flipping you off, I was telling that guy to fuck off for looking at us.”

The man responded: “He was only looking at you cause he thinks you’re beautiful.”

“I don’t give a fuck if he thinks we’re beautiful.”

“Fuck you bitch, you’re ugly.”

He was closer now, and my partner pushed his head away with their hand. That’s when he spat on me.

The first time a man pushed me onto a bed was in the spring of 2013.

The first time a man followed me was in 2006—I was 13, and the man offered to buy my

superman tank top off of my body because he “really loved superman.”

A couple of months ago, I was walking around San Francisco’s Mission, when a friend responded to a group of men’s cat-calls with a “Fuck you!” One of them responded, “Oh yeah I’ll fuck you, you fucking cunts.”

This shit isn’t random and it’s not once in awhile. Honestly, it’s normal. It’s the everyday.

The methods that I use to cope with traumas are contradictory and complex: anger, defiance, fear, excuses, and humor are all in my arsenal. I do not frequently act explicitly angry: my anger is dangerous—it could be the death of me. My rage often manifests in tears, angry ones that I shed alone, or when I least expect. I walk away from these interactions quickly, usually with my face unchanged. Sometimes though, the emotion catches me off guard and, like a child who’s trying to hold it in, my eyes gradually fill up with tears like a dammed river. I blink once, and they are released in big teardrops.

I find that I have surrounded myself with loved ones who cope with their traumas with anger, who have punched and screamed and scratched and clawed. I respect them for their righteous, dignified rage. Their bravery astounds me—their quick responses and snappy retorts, their bold movements even when I know they’re scared.

But also… I can’t help but think that this is how our assaults escalate, this is how we get raped, this is how we die. And many are dying. And not slowly.

Don’t get me wrong, I am angry and I am brave, but in different ways. I keep going outside at night when everything tells me not to. I keep going outside when men have offered to buy my shirt off of my body, have followed me in the night, have told me they hate me, have told me they would anally rape me, have told me they would kill me.

I use the fact that I’m safer than a lot of people to distract myself from inevitable danger.

I am a ciswoman. I am a white woman. I am tall. I look older than I am. I know that if I called the police they would be there to help me. In many ways, the odds are in my favor.

safety |ˈsāftē| noun (pl. safeties) 1 the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury I used to be defiantly oblivious of the “dangers” people told me to be aware of. I confidently strode through the streets, ignoring the passersby, refusing to feel afraid. I was a innocent girl, and in many ways I am innocent now. Perhaps, I have chosen to be innocent. I have chosen to be unfazed. I am told not to walk alone at nights, I am told not to stay in hostels by myself, I am told not to get too drunk at parties, I am told not to go home with strangers. I am told the many number of things that people and women are told to prevent themselves from being raped and assaulted. Why the fuck am I being taught how to protect myself from being raped? We live in a society that profits off of the culture of danger, of sensation, of horrendous stories. We live in a society that shares and likes and sells not only the stories of victims, but also the photographic evidence of assault. Rape and assault can now be captured and shared at the moment that it occurs, saving that moment for the victim forever (one that ironically, the victim might not even remember themselves). Drama sells.

My feelings of un-safety are not unfounded—I have at times been notably unsafe, in a variety of ways. I cannot count all of the times, and I don’t want to. They are daily and seemingly unending. Though this is true: I’ve never been afraid of death, I’ve never been hit. This shouldn’t make me feel lucky, but it does. It is hard to balance my feelings of un-safety with my attempts to understand my undeniably privileged place in the world.

I go between feeling unsafe as a woman and a queer and fundamentally safe as a white, upper-middle class person. I often feel misunderstood, misrepresented, and unavoidably unsafe. I often feel unsafe when I am walking alone in the streets at night, when I catch a stranger’s eye, when I sit alone on the subway with empty seats next to me. I feel unsafe when I am waiting, particularly at night.

Many of these moments when I feel a lack of safety happen at night, when the darkness has descended, when my surroundings are unknown. When I have been told it is unsafe for me to wander, unsafe for me to exist outside of my home, and perhaps outside of my own bed. Darkness in general has been taught to be unsafe—the darkness of the night,

the darkness of stairways after dark, the darkness of humor, the darkness of secrets, the darkness of wounds that are splayed open, the darkness of skin.

Maybe these moments of un-safety are so remarkable to me, because I spend so very much of my life in almost complete safety, right down to the gate guarding my home and those I love. I am not a black man; I do not have a statistically one-in-three chance of going to prison. I will most likely live beyond the age of 23 (the average lifespan of transwomen of color). I will be paid more than woman of color, I am less likely to be assaulted than women of color, I am less likely to be imprisoned than women of color.

I am not a victim in many situations. I am also safe a lot of the time. I am safe when I walk around this island in Maine, I am safe when I walk around my primarily white community at home, I am safe when I walk around a primarily white community anywhere. I am continuing to try and figure out what this means.

The world is a fucking terrifying place. It can feel awful sometimes. And it can feel awful to let other people make it awful for you. But I would be remiss if I let myself believe for even a moment that it is worse for me than the majority of other people.

I do not write to pretend I have any answers, to pretend that I have it the hardest, or to pretend it’s easy—I know it’s not. I know some people have suffered traumas I cannot yet imagine, and maybe I won’t ever have to. I know that I’ve been protected. I have no suggestions for woman or people to act to make us safer. I am a strong advocate for each of us doing what we need to do to survive, and helping each other survive along the way.

We live in a place where no one is really safe. Women are told that we or someone close to us will likely be raped, and that’s true. Men and boys are systematically injured by societal expectations, by schools, by other men and boys. Men hurt women. We live in a world of brokenness. In a time of exorbitant wealth, depression and suicide rates are higher than they have ever been. I tell myself the reality that I have it a lot better than other people—like the fact that I’m statistically less likely to be assaulted should be some comfort, like that’s good enough.

humor |ˈ(h)yo͞omər| (Brit. humour) noun 1 the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech 2 a mood or state of mind As I sat with my friend laughing at the men or boys who decided to waste their ice cream by throwing it at me, I remembered that who controls the laughter matters.

The principle of this is one I learned through playground bullies years ago: those who control the laughter often hold the power. And so sometimes, I laugh in the face of their violence, pitying their attempts at trauma. Sometimes I need to laugh as I cry at the invisible ice cream stain on my shirt.

In her book of essays Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay writes:

“It’s not hard to feel humorless, as a woman and a feminist, to recognize misogyny in its many forms, some great and some small, and know you’re not imagining things. It’s hard to be told to lighten up because if you lighten up any more, you’re going to float the fuck away. The problem is not that one of these things is happening; it’s that they are all happening, concurrently and constantly.” (189) Sometimes I laugh, because of the inevitability of it all. Sometimes I laugh because my father and brothers think that this behavior is random, that it’s unusual, that it isn’t everyday. Sometimes I use laughter to float away; sometimes I used it to weigh myself down. Sometimes I weigh myself down with the hands and hearts of my friends.

Sometimes my heart is so heavy that floating away seems impossible, and sometimes so easy. Sometimes I rely on amnesia. I forget those moments that I was really scared.

I write them down, I tell someone, but I won’t let myself feel that fear every day of my life. I choose instead, when I can, to walk knowingly ignorant from how dangerous things really are. I will myself to be naïve for one more day, refusing to let the fear and the inevitable violence rule my everyday. I cannot and will not be told what I can and can’t do, and I know I’m one of the ignorant lucky ones.

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON MY DISDAIN FOR ACADEMIA

When people ask what I plan on doing after college, I have a relatively prepared answer: I will move to a larger city, apply to some jobs in the social justice field, and probably work in a cafe. I often make a poorly formed joke about the usefulness of having a human ecology degree. I explain how I am planning on “exploring” for awhile and hope to focus find finding myself and a community instead of a career. I am fully embracing the wandering that these post college years will inevitably be. I am often congratulated for this, that this seems like an “enlightened” course of action. When people tell me that your twenties are a time to be whoever you want to be, I can’t help but want to plead with them to never say that again. I want to tell them that they are not helping with my imminent quarter life crisis and the glorification of youth. But, instead I smile politely, tell them that I am grateful for my college education and glad that it will soon be over.

This past year, I have had many conversations about my distain for academia. I have argued that it feels bad and leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I have claimed that it is emotionless and cold. My disregard of academia has been largely personal and introspective; I have no yet turned my look outward to the broader context. As I graduate from the “academy,” I have received what is considered by many, including myself, a remarkable education.

I am allowed to dismiss academia, because I don’t have to prove myself to be smart and talented—I’ve been taught by my family, friends, teachers and colleagues my entire life that I will be [successful]. The world has taught me that I’m good enough. I am able to choose to dismiss academia because I never really needed to prove that I would be good at it. As I graduate from college, I don’t even need a plan. Working in a coffee shop is not a failure—it is a reflection of my ability to choose and decide my fate in an extended time frame.

I do not have to prove my intelligence as my intelligence has never been in question. As an eloquent, white girl with a presentation of a good balance of confidence and humility, I can convince most people to give me a job. Proving things to myself is very different than proving things to everyone. And the rest of the world believed in me.

Full-time enrollment in colleges an universities has been steadily increasing, and according to the National Center for Education Statistics enrollment increased by 32% between 2001 and 2011. Women are enrolling in university in at higher rates that men, with women enrolling at 71.3% and men enrolling at 61.3%. Since 1988 women have been the majority in postbaccalaureate programs. Meanwhile, women are still earning 77 cents to the dollar, and women of color earn even less. Many have argued that academia has become “balanced,” and in some cases “dominated” by women. More women are engaged in the academic setting, achieve higher scores on standardize tests, and are working in professions that were previously exclusively male. But that doesn’t make me feel better… Part of me can’t help but think that of course women are going to college, because that was the way that we were taught to achieve success—woman had to fight to go to college, had to fight to be taken serious, and had to fight to be included in spaces that were seen as “legitimate.” Maybe some men don’t have to go to college because they will be taken seriously regardless of their education.

Until last year, my mother was the only person in my nuclear family to have a college education. She had achieved a masters as a single mom. My father on the other hand, dropped out of high school (he told me that it was all over when he had a car), got his GED, and started working. He cultivated his craft, and became a knowledgable builder and stonemason. Within a couple of years though, my father had inherited my grandfather’s business and started making money. My mother, after achieving a masters degree, was struggling to feed herself and my brother on food stamps. These experiences are not necessarily comparable—they are not two sides of a coin. But I think they are notable.

I always knew that getting a college degree was important to me—I never really thought about why other than that I opened my first college savings account when I was ten years old and went on my first college visit when I was eleven. My life as a teenager was framed by high school and its relationship to college. Of course, I would go to college— it was the natural step. It was also a step that my mother had fought for and a step that my grandmother never had. But honestly, that isn’t my narrative. I cannot say that I “fought” for my place in college. Yes, I have worked very hard. However, just because I work hard doesn’t mean that things have been hard. In terms of my future, things have

pretty much all been in my favor. Everyone in my life has always wanted me to succeed and, perhaps more importantly, believe that I can.

I talk about disliking academia a lot — when I’m reading pretentious authors, when I am trying to write research papers, when I am sitting in class and feeling entirely disconnected from the class discussion. I hate competition. I hate getting grades or feeling as though I have to fight to have my opinion taken seriously. I think that this is valid: I think that it’s okay to dislike the dick-measuring contest that so many conversations in the academic setting seem to be. In the past couple of years, I have grown to think of these conversations as masculine — they are conversations in which the participants are allowed and expected to interrupt, they are loud, they often involve the surnames of authors that we are all expected to have read and understand and take seriously, they get heated but often are still considered to be lacking in emotion.

Thinking of these conversations as “masculine,” I was able to dismiss them. They exemplified what I dislike most about supposed masculinity: the inability to listen, the need to be heard over all others, and most of all the need to be right. I would walk away from these conversations in bars, and slowly grow more and more disconnected from classes in which this manner of speaking was tolerated and encouraged.

Growing up, I was never taught to interrupt. I was the youngest and only girl. While masculine traits were modeled for me by my father and my brothers, I identified most with my mother, from whom I learned the epitome of patience, restraint, and etiquette.

In conversations with my mother, she treated me as an equal, no interruptions were necessary because we were given equal space in the conversation. As I have grown up, conversations with my father have also evolved. When I return home, I will have long conversations with my parents about complicated issues, and while I have to remind my dad to not interrupt me (he is getting better), we are on a mostly equal playing field. As much as my story is one of being ignored and talked over as a child, it is equally one of having parents with the time, attention, and care to talk to me every single day.

I think about privilege a lot. I am self reflective to the point of annoyance. I go back and forth about what I think about myself, about what I think about who I am. I try to admit when I am wrong, when my opinions change, when I have learned things that I did not

used to know.

——

I think I have been careless about my distain for academia and clumsy in my critique.

While in my view the “academy” is an physically and theoretically exclusive space, intellectual work continues to be incredibly important. The relationship between intellectual work and academia is not a natural one. Intellectual work—the deconstruction of assumed realities—is work that occurs every day outside of the walls of academia, particularly by those people most marginalized. By nature of their identities, marginalized peoples are consistently questioning of the world that has been reflected, the constant concern for the things that we take for granted have in fact been artificially constructed. Queer people, for example, inherently deconstruct and take apart something that has been taken for granted as true—heteronormativity. However, queer theory, as it is named in academic institutions, is something that is often inaccessible to many queer folks unable or unwilling to participate in that setting.

Academia has in many ways claimed the language of intellect—going so far as to create physical and social structures to restrict its access and quantify its worth. Intellectual work does not have to be a cold, frigid practice that is married to academia. This supposed marriage of intellect and academia disservices many—black feminism, queer and gender theory, and other marginalized folks who are at the cross hairs of race, class, and gender. Academia systematically rejects those members from participating, telling them that intellectual work cannot be done outside of the academic context.

NOTES: [Academia must be cracked open. There must be flexibility of choice, the acknowledgment and celebration that deconstruction happens on a daily basis by those who do not mirror artificially constructed realities. That those who are doing intellectual work are often excluded from academic settings. Intellectual property is often owned by those who are within the academic structures that exclude marginalized peoples doing work of deconstructing on a daily basis.]

Respectability politics (the idea that if someone fits the mold of “respectable,” then their lives and ideas are worth more.).

AMNESIA the springtime feels late this year. the shoots and blossoms are still nubs from being frozen in the particularly cold dark months. the last of the snow at the side of my driveway has finally melted, leaving a fresh bed of mud for my car to cover in its tracks. the grass looks as though it was under that snow for the whole winter, fermenting. it is brown and trodden, resilient in the weight is has bared, but nearing its end. it is not green, but sometimes the smell of mudz is in the air.

I hear coyotes at night now, sharing stories i know nothing of.

I’ve never seen them, and i wonder where they wander. where do they sleep?

I often awake to the sounds of birds.

I did not hear them all winter, but they are back now.

Where did they go? did they know what was coming, were they much smarter than me?

I also don’t know where they sleep. sometimes i wonder if there are just parts of my life that i have forgotten like how every winter i think that its the worst one yet like last year didn’t seem that bad or like how maybe things weren’t as good as I remember them like maybe they were really hard

like that time when i was thirteen i told myself i was depressed, but that “its ok, in five years you’ll remember back to this moment and you’ll remember that you were depressed, and know that you aren’t anymore.” they say that the body forgets after it gives birth, that it allows the birther to forget the trauma it went through, to kid itself into thinking that it wasn’t so bad… that maybe one day it would like to do it again. maybe my body has learned to do that as well. i am almost always fine, until I’m not but before long, that ends and I’m fine again. i forget what its like to miss home, i forget what the snow is like, because eventually the spring comes and the skies lighten. i’m so naive because i forget that the winter always comes back around and every time it is the worst i tell myself it is the last winter i tell myself i will not stay here again.

YOUNG ONE hello, young one, i said to the boy with his head down, stick in the med, worms curling around fingers with dirt under nails i hope you have not yet been hurt his eyes were so open, like the marbles he still played with like the window of my bedroom window like the red moon rising over the bay there are things that you may do and see, that you do not yet know exist people may ask you to be something that you were not intending to become the lightness of your heart may be heavier your soul may be muddled i will not pretend that soon i will probably not be scared of you [i will pretend that soon i will not be scared of you] why, said the bouy. the worm on his hand aching for the darkness, the bacteria in the deep deep soil There are so many answers that i do not yet have. pieces of thoughts, once whole, that the telescope light of my inspection has broken through. sometimes when things are seen so close up, we dont remember where they go.

he does not yet know what i mean, but he nods, returning his attention to the stick in the mud, the earth i do not know when is too young to let you know that you will have to be careful. that there are some things that are very fragile here. and perhaps you are more fragile that i can imagine. i know you are. i cringe to myself. oh young one, none of us are pure.

WHY I LOVED THE MILPA appropriation noun 1 the action of taking something for one’s own use, typically without the owner’s permission.

We had driven through the dusty streets of Comalapa, Guatemala, past the cemetery and the largest store in the town, to the outskirts where the millers were laid out like a quilt over the rocky soil. It was the first time I had driven in a car in weeks, and I remember the feeling of having missed the wind on my face and open windows. Usually we walked everywhere, or possibly took a tuk-tuk if the roads were dark or the distance was particularly long, but even then the three-legged open sided vehicles seemed more like glorified tricycles than actual cars. In a surprisingly short time (I’d forgotten how fast distance was covered in a car), we were past the familiar sites of the low metal gated homes and tiendas, and were surrounded by the milpas. I didn’t usually walk this far out of town, unless I had an interview particularly far away.

German pulled over his car along a small patch of fields. The milpas are small, as they are only meant for subsistence. They are only as large as is needed to support the family’s needs of beans and corn throughout the year. In German’s case, his was especially small, as he and his wife were “mayan intellectuals,” who could purchase the difference between what their milpa produced and what they consumed throughout the year.

As we pulled up to the small patch of land, we saw an older Kaqchikel man planting in German’s field. The man didn’t speak any spanish, and he and German spoke only in Kaqchikel. German explained to us that he was a campesino who didn’t own land, so German employed him to care for his. He had clearly been there for hours, slowly making his way through the rows. German had brought cloth bags of corn and beans and two shovels. He told us that he would go first, and dig a small hole, then Bogi would plant three beans, I would plant two corn kernels, and Benjamin would follow and cover the seeds. He told us that as women, it was important that we plant the seeds,

as our fertility was spiritually important to the growing process. He also told us that we should plant one extra been and corn kernel for the birds — that it was important to share with them. We started off, clumsily stumbling over the dry dirt. I kept a handful of corn in my hand, trying to carefully drop the kernels into the holes, trying to conjure some sort of spiritual fertility that was apparently inherent in my womanhood.

I sweat as the sun beat down on us, but it didn’t feel laborious. My body didn’t feel the intense strain that I knew it would if we were really farming. It felt like this was another excursion, another tourist site for us to see. This was relaxed, as if we had taken a lazy Saturday to learn about the “life of the campesino.” By the time we were done, German translated for the Kaqchikel man that we had saved him many hours of work. Though his words were grateful, I couldn’t help but feel that we had cost him several hours of labor, a sacrifice to give three gringos an “authentic milpa experience.”

What is real farming? I had been told time and time again that the milpa is important.

It goes beyond a supply of food, it is central to the “culture” of this place. The milpa provides the corn that makes the masa, from which the tortillas are formed and cooked around large wood stoves with cast iron tops. I was told many times that a woman who does not know how to make tortillas would never marry, that she was not a real woman.

A red light outside of a door does not imply prostitution, but rather that tortillas are sold there. A campesino told me that if you had no other food, one tortilla could sustain you for a days work — that the corn grown in the milpa was special like that. Tortillas are not simply a snack. They are a way of life for many in Comalapa. A full basket was made for every meal. Tortillas were fed to the cat, to the dog, to the chickens. Tortillas soaked in soup were fed to children who were ill. The tortillas come from that same milpa where I was stumbling with clumsy feet and sweaty hands. That milpa where I felt like a tourist, where I felt uneasy, trying to connect with the “spiritual” and my “womanhood.”

We had been introduced to German our first day in Comalapa, and our Kaqchikel lessons were held in his back patio. As in many houses we’d seen so far, his house was overflowing with greenery and sunshine. Hammocks were hung outside and there was an empty pool slowly filling up with leaves. Birds seemed to flock to the house and something was always cooking in the kitchen. German and his wife were clearly

important; she worked for the Department of Education in Guatemala City (a four hour ride away), they owned two cars, taught all of their four children to speak and read Kaqchikel, and had strong connections to the community. German had been a resource to us the five of us who were living in Comalapa throughout our weeks there. He gave us all interviews, books, essays, and connections within the community. He seemed to know a person that would be able to shed light on each of our projects. The day I began my project I went to German’s house, and within a half hour he had convened a meeting of four men who were planning the Earth Day celebration in Comalapa, and conveniently all scheduled interviews with me. There was no denying that German was an intellectual and an academic.

It is easy for me to dismiss academics and intellectuals, maybe because I am so uncomfortably close to being one. But I do not dismiss German, nor do I want to . There is great power in his choices, and he knows it. He employs a landless Kaqchikel man. He advocates the printing of Kaqchikel books and the creation of curriculum in Kaqchikel.

He teaches, with great care and pride, the complexities of his milpa to those he trusts — even if we are three gringos. As an intellectual, he could buy his corn. He could buy his tortillas.

The milpa is a claiming of culture. It is German claiming where he is from, that he exists in a country that attempts to say over and over that he does not. He lives in a country that attempts to say that he is Guatemalan, not Kaqchikel. The milpa is essential for both physical and cultural subsistence.

I was in Comalapa doing a project on the “perceptions and impacts on the changing weather.” This meant that I had been asking campesinos about their planting cycles, about when they plant their corn versus their beans, how they know when to plant, what the signals are, and when the rain come. From my conversations, I knew that German was a little late to the game… Most campesinos had already planted their milpa, as the rain was already close by. However, As a citizen of a nation that is systematically attempting to deny his cultural identity, proving that Kaqchikel culture exists (even in somewhat artificially constructed ways) is an important step in claiming its legitimacy.

Both farming and Latin America have been romanticized at College of the Atlantic, with students valuing “the beauty of working in the dirt” and “the life sustaining seeds.”For years I’d pretended to myself that I liked farming, that it connected me in some visceral and spiritual way to the soil, to the cycles of life, to my “environment.” That it was good, honest work, that someday I would work on a farm and get tan and strong and carry carrots around in my dirty overalls (as I think of it, I think that’s the premise of many queer romance novels…). That I would learn how to drive a tractor, that I would connect to something earthlike. But I know in my gut that I don’t like the sun, the labor, the back pain, the silence that comes from the hours of working in a field. I’m not a very meditative person.

— I’m sitting here writing, thinking to myself, don’t be cliche Anna, don’t be cliche… Think of something original… Go deeper… And it’s hard to talk about something like “my exchange program to Guatemala” without being fucked up. And it’s hard to talk about something like appropriation and romanticization without being cliche.

I don’t have an equivalent to a tortilla or a milpa — there is nothing of such importance and routine in my life; I have no such ritual. I often wonder where the obsession of Latin America, the milpas, and Spanish begins. I have read books and blogs telling me that I am inherently lacking in “culture” as a white anglo saxon person (the books don’t generally specify this, I do… most of these lifestyle blogs to not make the connection that there are people who have cultural connections beyond that of Europe). They claim that materialism has fundamentally overtaken my life, making it impossible to appreciate the “simple” pleasures. However, these hours laboring in the sun, this place, this milpa, the tortillas — they are not “simple ” and they often are not pleasurable. They are not “pure.” These are challenging, interrelated, issues, that are political and complex.

People always say that they’ve “fallen in love”with a place they’ve visited, insisting that the couple of days, weeks, or months that they spent could give them a realistic view of life. I think that this romanticization is dangerous; it simplifies the complexity of the situation, white-washing it wish sweetness.

But there are things that I think I can say I love. I find myself having dreams about walking the streets of Comalapa, remembering the way the dogs would case me at night, remembering the sounds of women’s hands smacking tortillas into shape, remembering the way the sticky masa felt around my own white pudgy hands, always cracking as I tried to form it. Remembering the way that I practiced forcing my mouth into different shapes to make the sounds necessary for the Kaqchikel language. Remember eating ice cream and drinking coffee. I think that there are ways of writing about the dusty roads and the stray dogs and the market with tents so low that I was in constant danger of losing an eye, but I don’t know if I’ve yet found it. There are ways that I am changed, maybe fundamentally, by these experiences. I wonder if I have romanticized it in my own head, if I am unable to call myself out. If I am obsessed with the Spanish language because it’s cool here at COA, or maybe it feels good to speak it.

I’m more comfortable with the critique and with criticizing myself and intellectual analysis. Maybe it’s all these years spent in an academic context, but letting myself have an emotional connection with something without immediately dismissing it is much harder. And maybe it’s just cool to be critical and deconstruct everything. The emphasis on deconstruction and analysis has been made and accepting something whole and emotional is unnatural. It is hard for me to find the value in recognizing that for those hours spent in the milpa, I felt the soil between my hands and that maybe there was a generous exchange of knowledge and feeling. Claims of “exchange” are made so often that it makes me scared to make them. I doubt that my appreciation of Spanish or Comalapa can be genuine, that it is not just the romantic appropriation so much of “exchange” seems to be.

How does appreciation differ from appropriation? Are there ways as a white, North American student to discuss my time in Guatemala? We get to try on a lot of different hats at College of the Atlantic (maybe under the guise of “human ecology,”). We are less adept, however, at recognizing that there are hats that maybe are not ours to try. As a white person, I struggle to remind myself everyday that there are things that are not and cannot, be mine.

In the months I was in Guatemala, I started braiding my long hair all the way around

my head, relishing when people would tell me that my hair was “como las abuelas.”

I wore the earrings and shawl that I had purchased from a local vender. My aesthetic changed into what would be called by many as “bohemian chic.” My shoes were dirty and had holes by my big toes.

As years have past, it’s hard for me to remember the details. I don’t remember how the roads of the town connected to each other, the geography, how to get from once place to another. I can’t remember the directions I would tell the tuk-tuk driver to get to my house, and for moments I cannot even remember my host mothers name. But I remember the way the coffee tastes — sickly sweet and weak, like a watery after dinner treat. My host sisters would dilute the coffee in a large pot and spoon several soup spoons of sugar into it. Eventually my host mother noticed that I never put extra sugar into mine, and she gave me a small jar of instant coffee so I could make it to my liking.

It was these simple moments, like when she would bring me my coffee, or a small cookie, or give me an extra avocado because she could see my face light up whenever I saw them. These moments made me feel like maybe for a moment, worrying about appropriation and deconstruction and analysis was not the point; maybe genuine connection was the point in that moment. Further analysis and deconstruction would necessarily come later, but there in that moment, I was there holding a coffee cup in my dirty hands.

GUTS PART II I’ve been thinking about guts: about bearing them, about the truth contained in our flesh, about how often we don’t splay them. I started drawing and writing poems about guts several months ago. I have been fascinated with the visual metaphor of “spilling your guts,” how honestly manifests in the body and how bloody it can really be. How writing is hard, and its messy, and so often that’s what makes it worth anything at all.

Within the first week I had returned to College of the Atlantic, I began reading Gloria Anzaldúa on a whim. It just so happened that in the introduction to the first book I read, I found this quote: “It’s not on paper that you create but in your innards, in the gut and out of the living tissue — organic writing I call it… The meaning and worth of my writing is measured by how much I put myself on the line and hoe much nakedness I achieve.”

Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers. (198) These were the words I had been looking for, they spoke to my essence and were exactly what I needed to begin my project. I couldn’t wait to quote Anzaldúa in essays throughout my senior project, to absorb her words and write down as many of her quotes as I could get my hands on. I wanted to drink up her metaphors, bathe in her poetry, and banks in her insights.

And yet… Her writing is specific: A Letter to Third World Women Writers.

This writing is not for me, I can clearly see and acknowledge that. I am not a third world woman, I am not a third world woman writer, and I would barely even call myself a writer. I don’t know if it’s alright that I’m quoting Gloria — or even asserting that I’m on a first name basis with her. I’m not sure how she would feel about that.

Why, if I am writing about ‘whiteness,’ do I have a bibliography of almost solely authors of color. Am I longing to “be a part”? Exoticizing the black experience? By reading black authors am I attempting to legitimize my own thoughts, am I depending on the words

of authors that I will never understand to express the sentiments that I don’t have the right to? Maybe I need to figure our what I am trying to say before I quote them. Maybe their words can never be uttered by me. But then how do I interact with them? For my whiteness does not, and cannot, stand alone. It is defined inextricably from its current and historical relationships. It is necessarily defined by its domination.

Am I reading to understand? Am I seeking some semblance of identification? Am I seeking a pat on the back? The unanswered questions are endless, and I know that I some point I will have to attempt to answer them.

I can’t help but think that Gloria Anzaldúa would hate this. She might call it the rape of her tongue, she might call me out on the fact that “people of color are hip right now” (La Prieta, 47). And I know that. Which leaves me where I am now. Reading. Letting her words awaken my mind, not knowing exactly what I’ll do with them and how I can give her the credit she and so many other authors deserve, but being so, so grateful that they’re there.

SELFIE The front facing camera on my iPhone 4 changed my interaction with the world around me. I was able view the myself in my surroundings at any time (that my phone had battery). I downloaded Instagram, and slowly built a humble list of followers who liked and commented on the images that I choice to show case of the world around me.

Not yet comfortable with the idea of promoting my own face, I uploaded photos of my family, my location, my pets, and the world that I saw through the extension of my own eyes. It was not until the spring of 2013 when I uploaded my first selfie (the same year that “selfie” was webster dictionaries world of the year). I had been given 5 avocados, and photographed myself holding them all, with the caption “avocados for life.” Over the next 3 years, the number of selfies that I took escalated exponentially, each garnering more likes than the previous. With the introduction of Snapchat into the lives of myself and my friends, I began to see my own face with increasing regularity.

The proliferation of selfies has been the subjects of many articles and blogs, and seem to be a new cultural phenomenon that everyone would like to share their view on (myself included). 91% of teenagers from the United States have reported posting selfies online, and selfies have been taken everywhere from Nelson Mandela’s funeral, to presidential inaugurations, to bathroom stalls, to the Oscars, to outside the temple destroyed by the devastating earthquake in Nepal. There is seemingly no event too traumatizing for a selfie. As Elizabeth Day writes in an article published in the Guardian, “This then, is the selfie: the self portrait of the digital age.”

Many critique the selfie: “To some, the selfie has become the ultimate symbol of the narcissistic age. It’s instantaneous nature encourages superficiality, or so the argument goes” (Day). According to many the selfie is a symptom of selfie women’s self objectification, claiming that porn culture and the male gaze has led women to see themselves as objects themselves, “actually doing to themselves what the male gaze does to them” (Gail Hines, Day article). Day’s article attempts to present a well balanced introduction to selfies and the critiques of them. She also argues for those who think that selfies are an empowering source of photography. However, Day’s final sentence is this: “You can use digital technology to manipulate your own image as much as you like.

But the truth about selfies is that once they are online, you can never control how other people see you.” I want to ask Day, what makes you think that you have control over how people see you in any situation? What is it about selfies that specifically give you less control? Selfies do not pretend that we are not being seen, viewed, and evaluated.

Instead, they allow for each of us to curate our self image. The selfie for women is particularly important—it acknowledges that we are constantly under evaluation and investigation. As in the explosion of online dating, it gives women the opportunity to show the parts of their lives and themselves that they want to show when they want to show it.

A couple of years ago, my brother’s girlfriend at the time told me that he didn’t give me compliments because he didn’t want me to become “conceited.” I have been told by several people after they have given me compliments about my physical appearance that I shouldn’t “become an asshole.” I had been given the strict impression that the appearance of humbleness and undertones of low-self esteem were “attractive” traits in women. I was not supposed to look in the mirror too much, I didn’t want people to be able to tell that I wore makeup, believing that I was beautiful or valuable was somehow shallow, conceited, and inherently undesirable. The first single “That’s what makes you beautiful” by the boyband One Direction was played endlessly one summer, chanting the chorus “You don’t know you’re beautiful, that’s what makes you beautiful!”

I thoroughly believed that by curating my bodies and presentation I are somehow “masking” my “genuine” self. I was told that there is a “genuine” self, unaltered, and bare, that is somehow the most honest, truthful, and valuable self I could me. I was convinced that make-up, stylistic choices, and other body modification were only used to make myself superficially more “desirable.” To me, “beauty” was seen in its most “honest” and “natural” — not recognizing that natural beauty in itself is carefully curated and defined. Natural beauty was humble, acceptable, and pleasant (and pale, thin, and palatable).

What used to be mainly images of my surrounding life has been replaced by what I really had been wanting to show all along—myself and my presentation. I posted my first selfies cautiously, pretending that they were ironic. While I had been defining

myself through the mirror of others, I came to realize that I didn’t beed to see my own presentation reflected in others, I could see it reflected back into myself. I was beginning to understand that I was making editorial choices everyday, that “presentation” will always be curated, and “bareness” is not necessarily honesty. Acting as though we don’t make editorial choices is blinded to societal norms — accepted norms are seen as the basis, while those who fall outside of the narrow “norm” are seen to be “dishonest” and “false.” The idea that altered bodies are false bodies? That there are some bodies that are somehow more inherently natural and acceptable than other bodies? Are those who think about their bodies self obsessed?

As a women, I have rarely held the lens. I am viewed every day by both friends and also strangers; by cars driving my me as I walk into town, by fellow coffee shop viewers, by acquaintances in the library, by Facebook friends and Instagram followers. In many of these situations, I have learned that my control is limited. I can control where my body goes and how it moves. I can control what I choose to put on it and how to carry myself.

I can control the words that I use and the register of my voice. My presentation is careful; I almost always think about the way that I am moving through the world, how I look, and why. By valuing the “natural” and the “genuine,” I have been asked to give up my presentation. I have been told that presentation is dishonest and inaccurate, forcing me to give up the power in the way I move through the world. It is asking me to believe in the myth that there is a natural, that we are not each making choices daily for how we move in the world. I am told to allow the eyes of others to focus on my body in a way that is easy for them to understand.

The selfie, in many ways, has given me a lens, albeit a small one. It has allowed me to present the moments that I choose to present. I do not pretend that I am constantly under gaze. I am not pretending that there is a normal, a natural, an accurate. Bodies can be modified—in real life and digitally. There are many people who feel as though filters, photoshop, and even make-up are used to mask oneself. Who is to say that we aren’t masked already? Why are we pretending that there is a state in which we are naked?

And as many of us in the queer community know, we are not necessarily our true selves at birth. Body alteration and modification is something that we are all taking part in daily, we match our outsides to our insides.

In many ways the critics of the selfie are promoting the idea that there are some forms, bodies, and people who should not want to see themselves or be seen by others. In many ways, those who advocate that the pervasive “selfie” is a narcissistic expression do not seem to understand the nuances between confidence and self obsession. Young people are under constant scrutiny, by themselves and others. Allowing them to find beauty (or not) in themselves through self-curated perhaps allows them to create healthier self images. Allowing young girls to acknowledge that they are under scrutiny, not asking them to pretend could give them power to define themselves. Self presentation is not obsession.

For queer and otherwise marginalized folks, the selfie not only shifts the gaze, it gives power to the holder. It is ridiculous to pretend that we have any control over the way we are viewed, in real life, in image, in writing, in any sort of presentation. We make daily choices on the ways in which we present, hoping that we do our best to project who we are in a way that will be accurately perceived by those around us. This is of course fundamentally flawed, because those who are around us will never be able to view us objectively, in the way we want to be seen. The selfie gives us the power to frame ourselves, instead of retreating from inevitable view, it allows us to choose the manner in which we are viewed.

Many critics believe that the selfie (particularly in snapchat form) is a manifestation of our need for everything to be instant; the idea that we want to see an image, and we want to see it now. It is supposedly a way of cataloging our days, of saving our memories, or sharing our experiences. But in my experience, it goes far beyond that.

It also allows us to present the process of rewriting ourselves, of putting forward who we are in a moment, of allowing us to portray the different pieces of ourselves that cannot be captured in one image, as we are a mosaic of pieces. the scrolling through an Instagram feed is much more accurate than one selfie.

We are living in a decade when language has expanded with a wide array of language to describe our new practices: our feeds, filters, hashtags. We are living in a decade that has promoted the concept of “natural beauty” and self acceptance, while at the same

time profiting massively off body modification. We are living in a decade noted for it’s hungry consumption and subsequent discard of visual imagery, with a combined lack of visual literacy. We are now able to see ourselves far more than ever before.

FLEXIBILITY: A POEM FOR MY BEST FRIENDS i feel my heart doing jumping jacks, stretching around other hearts, moving around other peoples rib cages, trying to see things from their point of view. perspective is just whichever direction your feet are pointed in. if you aren’t careful, perspective can mean you lose yourself. relations are fibers, ropes that tie pieces the together. weathering through together, feeling the fiber of our bodies connecting as we slowly erode in the wind and rain, not knowing where they end and i begin, we fray together.

Sometimes I feel like I have to convince my ribs to uphold my muscles.

They cave so easily, crumbling into each other. when i had my first crush, i used to say that it get like there was something inside my stomach trying to get out while an equally strong force was pushing down on my ribs sometimes ill need your hands to fight through the skin and bones,

to the inside, to where my ribs crumble, and push them up, just for a little while, just for a day, just for a moment. and when you need, my dear ones, ill do the same for you. ill do the same for you.