The right to opacity

EJRThe right to opacity

#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: Yes but that is exactly what Hartman did, right? She will go down in history now.

L: The opaque black womxn. The opaque womxn. 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?

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.

N: But you have told me once, that you also quite enjoy the fact of being invisible or,

L: The reason why I enjoy my invisibility sometimes is that… there is no judgement. Judgement as in when I’m being ignored there are no eyes. No nasty comments. I can make myself small. I can observe. like eye contact—and I was just welcomed. Everyone was seen and welcomed there, like we see you, you exist, and you can exist here, truly.

N: That’s nice.

L: Yes, just acceptance.

N: Hmmm… But when I think about that… Well you know I see it like this: When you are translucent and people don’t even notice, that basically means that you are non existent. If nobody acknowledges that you exist, do you even exist at all? Like your presence...

L: But that is something that I struggle with. I struggle with what you just said: Do I even exist? Why am I not being acknowledged? I don’t enjoy being unseen.

N: But you know I think you are not the only one in the community, who wants to make themselves as small as possible, like ‘don’t mind me, or don’t even see me’. Because I think for a lot of people it is the only way to be safe, but by doing so they are diminishing their own existence and are slowly fading away. I think it’s crucial to exist. But that is easier said than done.

L: That also reminds me of one of the speakers at Black Pride. One of the speakers said, let me quote: ‘Don’t dim your light and don’t ever let someone dim your light, because we have been dimming our light for far too long and if we shine too bright, let them wear sunglasses’. And that is a little segue back to the text—the right to opacity. I’ve had a positive experience with not being translucent or opaque in the Ballroom community. I went to this ball, and that for me was one of the first times in a long time… N: I just don’t understand why it has to be so hard. That was also one of the things that made me think, because of this text, of another text by Gloria Wekker. She talks about the Dutch people and Dutch society and how it is built upon the remnants of its colonial past. According to Gloria, the Dutch have a collective memory, or as she calls it, a cultural archive, which is the product of receiving education and growing up in a post imperial society. With this cultural archive comes stereotypes and a deeply rooted fragility. The Dutch, therefore, believe that they are in fact a very progressive country, who accept everyone as they come. We are non-racist, don’t have racist traditions, and are, as we like to say it, ‘multiculti’. A famous phrase we like to use to emphasize our anti-discriminatory society is that we are colour blind. I think that colorblindness is in fact a quite dangerous phrase to use, because by doing so you completely diminish that there is in fact a difference between black, people of colour and white people, especially in the way we are treated. Again, I think this could be connected to the LGBTQ+ community and how our experiences are diminished by people who believe that queerness is a choice, or that non-binary-ness and the pronouns that come with it are mere fussiness. So yes, acceptance, but specific acceptance. So yes, Esther Brown should have the right to opacity, but this opacity should not result in colorblindness, which would, just once more, devalue her.

N: Well excuse me I noticed you!

L: Yes dear. In a long time, I truly experienced being seen. I was not bumped into, people gave me space, people smiled at me—