GRRRL ASYLUM ISSUE #3

GRRRL ASYLUM Issue #3

Every Woman I’ve Ever Been With Tegan Smith

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french for that - Clare Vernon say i did this, the two of us sitting on the pier and i can’t look away. i know people say it all the time but i’m just now noticing there are like, a hundred thousand freckles all over your chest and the light is falling on your skin so perfectly through the yellow of your shirt that maybe i want to touch them. you seem very small, and so do they, even smaller. like pin pricks, practically. it’s a different language than wishing we could go back to that time of our lives, so i don’t say anything. i never thanked you for the cupola, that night or since. i’m not going to. i want to carry a free couch with you back to your apartment even though neither of us are very strong. i want to see you onstage. i’m not pretending any of this hasn’t crossed my mind, taking you home with me last spring and driving for two hours on the back roads of my hometown, no purpose other than driving, some song we had in common on the radio. my mom making us dinner. i’m just saying i wouldn’t 2

mind falling into that with you for a long time. the way aspen said goodbye i will carry with me for the rest of this life and into the next, i am sure of it. the look in her eyes at us, standing on that porch, about to just leave. i couldn’t have done it without you. there is a kind of affection i have for you that is not even waiting. that birthday present was as much a way of saying lying in the grass in that field when we saw that shooting star, the sky over southwest michigan last july, every july, that is me. that is who i am. as after that kind of moment, i can die.

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My Girls (Ghosts) Leslie Borozck 4

Life Lessons by Sarah Byerley I’ve often heard the phrase “learning to love” come up, and I turn it over in my mind from time to time. It always leaves a funny impression on me, not because I think it’s wrong or bad, but because I don’t think I ever had to learn to love.

Love was one of the things that came naturally for me, spilling from my mouth in smiles and kind words, flowing from my fingertips with every embrace. I was driven by love, and I think we all are in some way or another. Love for family, love for myself, love of learning, love for her. Love was never a lesson I had to be taught, nor was it some harsh reality that became suddenly clear one day. It was as much a part of me as my hair, leaving fallen strands on everyone I met.

What I did have to learn, what was a big lesson for me in life, was survival. Getting through finding the courage inside myself to talk to her, getting past the taboo of embracing her in public, braving the ceaseless disappointed looks while she and I sat in the living room holding hands and watching television, or at the dinner table when she was invited over to meet my parents.

The constant battle of being told that my relationship is unnatural, unholy, somehow disgusting and sexually appealing all at once. The being told that we just needed some good fucks to fix us, or that our feelings for each other were just a passing phase. And what if it had been? Relationships cycle, not all last forever. If it hadn’t been with her then it would’ve been another girl, or another.

Always, in one way or another, the surviving was about a part of me that others could not understand. The way my mother cried when she saw me in the bathroom, locks of sheared hair lying at my feet. The way she 5

sobbed when I first introduced her to my girlfriend. The way she would frown disapprovingly when I left to go see her.

“You used to be so beautiful!”

I am beautiful, mother.

“This will pass, you will get past this - it’s just a phase.”

This is what I am, mother.

“But what will people say? What will I tell them?”

You will tell them that I am loved, mother, and that I love in return.

Over and over, never ending. Loving her, loving myself, defending her, defending myself, every day and on. I will never stop, though. I will never cease to shine as bright as I can, to be who I am, to uplift and find joy in and give joy to those I love, and to those who love me.

Sometimes that’s the biggest part of love and survival, knowing you aren’t the only one doing it. You aren’t the only one who loves that way, you aren’t the only one struggling this way. At the end of every day I come home exhausted, ready to collapse. When I do, she is there waiting for me with open arms and kind words.

Like me, she was never taught to love. Like me, she was never told she would have to learn to survive. Together, though, we have found a way and it is our way, and we will go on like that over and over, never ending.

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Things I can show in my art sketchbook instead of another 2cm’s of a woman’s body Georgia Gibson

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To the man who assaulted my friend at my birthday party I'm going to answer your text on here because it turns out I have a lot to say. For reference, what you texted me was "basically that i want to talk with her and apologize for any harm i may have done, but that i also need to hear her story from her, because i am really freaked out by what i've heard because it goes completely against my memory and self-conception as a human being, that I think if we talked we could heal whatever is amiss."

I want to tell you that I am not sure that it is possible to "heal whatever is amiss," as you say.

Are you looking for forgiveness? Are you looking to correct something that you see as a misunderstanding? I do not think she owes it to you to develop a new understanding of the way she was upset throughout that event, and I do not think that a new idea of you as some kind of good person who accidentally acted that way towards her would be helpful to her. If you are looking more to feel better about this yourself than to help her feel better about it, I don't think asking her to be a party to that personal process is the considerate thing to do. it makes me hesitate that you phrase it as "harm I may have done", because that wording casts doubt on the fact that you have done harm at all.

I know it is a really hard thing to hear about yourself, but I think it is unwise for you and her to speak until you have fully come to terms with the reality that you did hurt her, you've 8

internalized this fact, and are prepared to take responsibility for it.

I have represented her story as she told it to me and as I directly experienced it, and I worry that you are hoping that if you hear it from her that it will somehow be not as bad as I have said and not result in you being the party at fault. I understand this hope, but I do not think that pursuing it is a constructive use of your time and emotional energy. I hesitate to expose her to a dialogue where you might be tempted to try to correct her to see the events as you originally saw them, because I think that would be a very hard and upsetting thing for her to have to go through, and i can only see it resulting in her falsely apologizing to you and pretending to see things your way in an effort to get you to stop trying to convince her I want you to understand that your original experience of the events, the "real you", and your intentions do not ultimately matter. I am aware that it was a mistake and a misunderstanding, and that you did not intend to ignore her rejections to your advances and her lack of attraction to you. All that matters is the way your actions affected her. Displaying accountability and responsibility for the unintended effects of your actions is what will make you a good person in this situation, not reminding people of who you usually are. The situation has already happened, you cannot change it or the way someone saw it.

It is encouraging to hear that you are freaked out, it would be far more worrying if you 9

weren't. Something it might help you to understand is that when you are interact with a woman, there are immense cultural pressures instructing her not to be a bitch and loudly, frankly reject you. Actions like this often anger men who feel entitled to their interest and result in threats and violence. Not all men are like this, but a woman never knows what to expect from a stranger. many women have the strength not to care whether or not they are perceived as a bitch or an uncaring person and are not afraid to get a man angry at them or hurt his feelings, but if a woman is unable to overcome this cultural pressure to be nice, she will instead focus on expressing excuses why she has to say no instead of reiterating the no itself, provide compliments to make up for the rejection, and remain polite, friendly and nice while rejecting you. It is not her fault or her responsibility to make sure you understand her communication that she wants you to leave her alone, it is yours.

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I love the way your leg and calf muscles curve and arch.

I love it when you kiss my feet and ankles when we make love.

I love it when you wear your glasses.

I love when you’re dressed down in your sweats and your hair is messy. You look the happiest here.

I love that you’re shy but quietly proud of your baby pictures.

I love that you go out of your way to make everyone in the room feel good, even if it means sacrificing yourself.

I love it when you tell me my cooking is amazing even when it’s burnt or dry or still a bit raw.

I love it when you offer to let me go to the bathroom before you go.

I love that you bring me a glass of water to bed every night.

I love the smell you leave on our pillows.

I love the way you love your family.

I love the way you think of your friends.

I love how you treat everything like a gift no matter how small.

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By Lorna Hosking

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Review: The New Black directed by Yoruba Richen -snakesmith As a queer person, the way I undertake, analyze, and legitimize my partnerships is central to my life. As normal as being a lesbian feels to me now, after years of being out and lucky enough to be a part of queer and LGBTQ-friendly communities, I still find myself frequently talking with people about partnership. Sometimes these conversations center around how best to participate and care for open relationships, or how to be seen as a legitimate partnership in the eyes of more conservative family or friends, or just simply how to care for a queer partnership at all, especially in the sense of re-writing the scripts we’ve inherited from straight culture so that the lives we live with others are more loving, joyful, liberating, and mutually supportive.

One aspect of partnership I haven’t talked about much is marriage. At best, I think of marriage as a form of partnership that carries certain legal and financial benefits with it and which sometimes but rarely works longterm as a format for maintaining healthy partnership. At worst, I think of it as a severely outdated and oppressive structure of state control that has historically compromised the liberation of women and often encourages complacency and a sense of resignation in the face of unhappiness and discontent.

To take that out of abstraction a little bit, I’m talking about how, before the 1840s in the U.S.A, all of a woman’s property became a man’s when she married him, how she couldn’t inherit— and how these oppressive laws only began to loosen in the 1840s, with decades of considerable backlashi. It wasn’t till 1971 that the Supreme Court extended the “penumbra of privacy” to cover 14

unmarried people wishing to use contraceptivesii.

Before this point, only married couples were afforded privacy in making decisions about whether or not they wanted to use contraception. The list goes on and on, but at the moment the conversation in my head is one arguing not about whether marriage is okay or worth pursuing, but actually whether it is a right.

A few days ago I attended a screening of The New Black, a documentary directed by Yoruba Richen which focuses on the fight for marriage equality in Maryland, particularly as this fight pertained to and hinged upon black voters. In the 2008 decision on whether to uphold or repeal California’s Prop 8, black voters were denigrated for being the demographic that held California back from achieving marriage equality, even though the statistics leading to this criticism were misreported, despite the fact that many black queers and allies fought tireless to get the measure passed. In The New Black, Richen really skillfully delves into some of the many reasons that the black population is stereotyped as staunchly opposed to marriage equality and also the way, in tried and true queer fashion, these mechanisms of traditional oppression can be reinvented and turned against the system they originally empowered—namely, the way the black family and the black church have historically been seen as reinforcing homophobic attitudes and the ways they can effect change in the future.

Richen centers her documentary on a few activists in the fight for marriage equality movement, alternating throughout her film on documenting their activism and stories and delving into the multifaceted worlds of the black church and the black family.

I was most fascinated by her portrayals of these latter two aspects of the marriage equality fight.

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Throughout the film, the black church makes appearances. It is described as the center of the black community, and is at points portrayed as the headquarters for “traditional marriage” groups and at other points is where those fighting for marriage equality meet. Richen makes clear in her film that religion in the black community is not a facile issue. For every homophobic statement in the film made by a black minister or church member, another church goer is shown extending their acceptance or in fact working as an activist on behalf of the queer community. For precisely the reasons that the black church can be such a powerful cornerstone of homophobia and conservatism, Richen shows in The New Black that the church has the incredible potential to spread a new gospel of equality and radical acceptance. A position of high esteem and responsibility, black ministers such as Reverend Delman Coates who preach in favor of marriage equality can effect unbelievable change in the personal and political actions of their congregations. I found Coates’ courage in taking on such an unpopular stance moving, and was impressed by his thorough research into his professed beliefs: “For Coates, a Richmond native who holds a doctorate from Columbia University and also studied at Morehouse College and Harvard University, the decision to back same-sex marriage legislation is grounded in theology and civil law.

He said that those who claim the Bible abhors homosexuality are misreading the text. Instead, he said, his study of theology and the Bible in original, ancient languages suggests that sexual abuse, violence 16

and exploitation are being condemned.”iii Even more importantly, he stresses that gay and civil rights generally are not matters for removed and erudite academic or theological study, but matters for open discussion in the church, at schools, and at the dinner table.

This raises another central aspect of Richen’s documentary: the black family. Myriad black families are portrayed in the film itself. There is a lesbian couple with two children, a straight couple hosting a gathering for an extended group of friends and family, an interview between one of the young LGBTQ activists talking with her foster mother. One of the most powerful consequences of this film is that it makes visible these various manifestations of the family, disrupting the sense of their being a “normal” black family, and showing the ways in which the black lesbian family is every bit as stable, traditional, and supportive as the straight family. Though the film should be critiqued for relying too heavily on the normative aspects of the lesbian family— relying on their privilege as an apparently upper middle class family to demonstrate that they are respectable and worthy—I found this kind of slip unsurprising, if unfortunate, as it seems consistent with the film’s technique and representation of working through the system to create systemic change rather than working outside of the system to destroy the system itself. There were, however, a few moments where I found a strain of radical possibility in the representations of the black families—moments where open, engaged, critical, and loving conversations between family members were represented. These 17

conversations fearlessly took on homophobic attitudes, questions of gender identity and sexuality, and civil rights rather than silencing them or sweeping them under the rug. I think these kinds of conversations are hugely important in creating change, and that we all have the responsibility to take on these conversations in whatever way we can with those in our community.

Finally, I wanted to point out that the activists introduced in The New Black have my high esteem, and I felt lucky to learn of them and their work. Despite the fact that they work within the system, I nonetheless respect them for their commitment to their convictions, their tireless activism, and their success at creating systemic change. Karess Taylor-Hughesiv, Sharon Lettman-Hicksv, and Samantha Mastervi were three of the activists featured in the documentary, and all are worth further research (see footnotes for some relevant other stuff to look at!)

There are countless qualms I have with the institution of marriage, not to mention the legislative process that is represented in The New Black as the only way in which to effect change. However, I think that The New Black makes a nuanced argument for why, before marriage as an institution can be destroyed, the right to participate in it and the legal benefits that it affords should be extended to all people. Even more particularly, the argument it makes for why this ability to participate in our society’s current highest mark of a family’s legitimacy is so critical to the black community. The question that we must begin to ask ourselves now, as legal same-sex marriage begins to achieve purchase across the United States, is how we 18

can collectively begin to work to recognize the legitimacy of each individual to privacy, self-realization, and civil rights, whether or not they choose to participate in a traditional family model.

“Equality, Property and Marriage.” History 120.

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. 2014. Web. 9 Feb 2014.

1 EISENSTADT v. BAIRD. The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. 9 Feb 2014.

1 Spivack, Miranda S. “Speaking out for same-sex marriage law, black minister stands apart.” The Washington Post. 13 Feb 2012. Web 9 Feb 2014.

1 Taylor-Hughes, Karess. “Yes, Coming Out Matters.” Ebony. 11 Oct 2013. Web. 9 Feb 2014.

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“Sharon J. Lettman-Hicks.” National Black Justice Coalition. 2012. Web. 9 Feb 2014.

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“Samantha Master.” Trans People of Color Coalition. 2012. Web. 9 Feb 2014.

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Suzy Leslie Borozck

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Hymn for a Smashed Coffee Pot

By Elizabeth Burton The day collapses And her hands forget How to pick up its pieces, Instead fluttering nervously About her throat Like a flock of small, pale Birds.

It isn’t always A coffee pot. It could be A paper for class Pulling on a skirt Milk that has soured The sun being too bright (Or too dim) Days are fragile, And must be handled Carefully, like a gloved Librarian handling An illuminated manuscript.

She shatters in sympathy With the coffee pot, absorbing Its pain in the already fractured Infrastructure of her, A road that has been neglected And buried beneath too many winters’ Worth of snow.

Dig her out in the summer And you see the cracks That keep her from moving Forward.

When all my mugs broke Last year, I threw them away.

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What use could I possibly Have for broken things?

But I look at her cracks And see something different And beautiful: A vast Spiderwebbing of lightning Strikes that have burnt But not broken her.

There is not reason for her To be standing, and yet She does not fall.

I want to take her cracks And fill them in with gold.

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By Lorna Hosking

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To the Girlfriend of a Classics Major (An Epic) Allison Wray I wish I could write an epic, Titled with your name.

I could write about the peaks and valleys That map the geography of your skin.

The constellations that connect in your freckles.

(Which I tried to count once).

The ocean that tosses and turns In the green of your eyes.

And the strength and determination That courses through your petite frame.

If only I could catalogue each expression Every smile And put a word to each.

Epithets for your porcelain skin Your wine-dark lips Goddess-like, divine.

And love. An epic would be remiss without it, Wouldn’t it?

For I would present the Golden Apple to you With a chaste kiss to your rouged cheek.

I would not need to be persuaded with Power, Wisdom, or Love.

I have no use for any of those, Except for love, perhaps.

But I wouldn’t have to steal you away And start a war.

(Although I would gladly fight for you).

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You said once that I love ferociously.

And it’s intoxicating to be on the receiving end.

(To which I blushed, naturally).

But that’s nothing compared to your eloquence Your words.

Words you craft so carefully, And I stumble through Like a twelve year old with a crush.

But I’m trying, my dear. I promise.

Give me a moment to compose myself.

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Building a Nest for Womanhood Georgia Gibson

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ARTIST INFO: Natalia Soueid – Cover Art TUMBLR: http://xxxsoueid.tumblr.com Tegan Smith – Every Woman I’ve Ever Been With TUMBLR: http://ladyvictoriaart.tumblr.com Clare Vernon – French For That CARGO: cargocollective.com/clarevernon Leslie Boroczk – My Girls (Ghosts), Suzy TUMBLR: http://lb-lb-lb.tumblr.com Sarah Byerly – Life Lessons TUMBLR –http:// fem-for-thought.tumblr.com Georgia Gibson - Things I can show in my art sketchbook instead of

another 2cm’s of a woman’s body, Building a Nest for Womanhood TUMBLR - http://georgiagraceartthird.tumblr.com/ Jolie Ruin – They Can’t Put A Restraining Order On A Heart TUMBLR: http://the-escapist-artist.tumblr.com ETSY: www.etsy.com/shop/theescapistartist

Lorna Hosking – Artwork on Pages 13 and 23 FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/Lorna-Elaine-Hosking-Artist snakesmith– Review: The New Black EMAIL: aolundsmith@gmail.com Elizabeth Burton – Hymn For a Smashed Coffee Pot Allison Wray – To The Girlfriend of a Classics Major Darla - To The Man Who Assaulted My Friend At My Birthday Party

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NEXT MONTH’S THEMES: TRANSITION ORIGINS BODIES SEND SUBMISSIONS TO GRRRLSSMASHPATRIARCHY@GMAIL.COM ALL SUBMISSIONS MUST BE IN BY MARCH 6, 2014 FIND US AT https://www.facebook.com/GrrrlsSmashingthePatriarchy http://grrrls-smashing-the-patriarchy.tumblr.com/

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