Reading Day 2
The right to opacityEJR #essay, #dialogue, #queerness, #experience
We just moved into our new place. Boxes scattered around the rooms. They contain our life. Kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom. We lay down on the mattress that is lying on the floor. For lack of better, we drink wine out of coffee cups. I’m tired. You are tired. We will unpack tomorrow, for now we will talk. My head resting on your belly, I hear your heartbeat, I hear you breathe. I hear your voice deepen and resonate in your chest. N: Opacity is a noun. It means the quality of lacking transparency or translucence. L: That would mean that synonyms are opaqueness, non-transparency or lack of transparency, maybe even cloudiness, filminess, haziness, and mistiness. N: Yes. But also blur or blurred-ness, dirty-ness, dinginess, muddiness, griminess, and smeariness. Opacity could also be seen as the quality of being obscure in meaning; I mean in the meaning of being unclear, impenetrable, unintelligible or incomprehensible. L: All the things that Esther Brown so longed to be. To be seen, to be taken seriously in her choices of how to live her life, to live free. To not be translucent. One of the countless and countless young black womxn who didn’t go down in herstory. That were forgotten.
N: I immediately had to think of an experience that a dear friend of ours shared: The feeling she experiences every time she goes out for drinks, goes into public spaces or even just enters a room, as a tall black womxn. The minute she walks into the room there are eyes on her. She explained how this always sparked, even though she’s very confident, a feeling of discomfort. This often happens in mostly white, cis dominated spaces. It just made me think of Esther Brown. Even though they might live in very different times, they are both put under a magnifying glass. Esther Brown cannot go out and do as she pleases, as a young womxn who wants to have fun and make her choices. Because, if she does she will be picked up from the streets and put into prison or a reformatory. All eyes are on her, and yet she is not seen as a human being. She is translucent. The translucency is in the singular way she is seen, as a black womxn. If she would have the right to opacity she would be seen as an intersectional being. How do you feel, well I know but for argument’s sake, when you enter a public space, room, etcetera?
N: Yes but that is exactly what Hartman did, right? She will go down in history now.
L: When I enter a room, as a trans person, I personally feel completely invisible sometimes. This might be my own doing, but I do experience it as not being seen; in that way being seen through. Unnoticed. When people do notice me it feels, hmmm… it uhh feels more like an attack than it feels like sympathy. But you know, this is merely personal, it sounds super dramatic but that is my personal feeling at times.
L: The opaque black womxn. The opaque womxn.
N: But you have told me once, that you also quite enjoy the fact of being invisible or,
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