Author: Taylor

My self-defined role in most gay, cis-man places is to disrupt the misogyny through . . . wait for it . . . not being misogynistic (gasp!). This usually comes in the form of talking about my support for womynism, my admiration for Virginia Woolf and bell hooks and Toni Morrison, and my love for vaginas. But not being misogynistic, as easy as it seems, takes effort when you inhabit spaces where men (gay and straight) beat their chests, talk about dick, refuse to utter the word “vagina” or “feminist,” support the patriarchy (in all the ways), and then have views of gender that make me want to fall off the cliff of civil society (I’m coming, Wilderson!).

It takes conscious effort for me to check my privilege, to note my oppressive behavior, and then change how I approach the world in order for me to not be a complete dumbass.

In my experience, and in (cis-man) friend’s experience that I’ve heard, misogyny is tied into the coming out process. You drop the truth bomb that you expect to shatter your world, “I’m gay,” but instead it goes to obliterate the feminine within your life while simultaneously projecting it back onto yourself through the internalization of stereotypes to ground one’s identity. I don’t like women. What’s a vagina? Ugh, there are too many women here. Why do women keep complaining, being gay is SO hard. Vagina is a dark cave where people go to die. I’m gay and I don’t like women.

To me this sounds like not an affirmation of gay identity but a complete success in embracing misogyny.

So to help combat this tendency in myself that society approves of, puts into me, and supports, I surround myself by (cis- and trans*-) womyn. I surround myself with friends who have lived experiences, voices, and feelings. Womyn have always been an important part to my life and I want to support the efforts of all womyn to fight systems of oppression directed against them.

Last night I reaffirmed that to love cis-womyn you have to love vagina. Last night I went to the Vagina Monologues.

Vaginas are magical. They are exquisite. They are beautiful. They are dangerous. They are fierce. They are angry. They are loving. They are a part unexplored by some, unknown by others, ignored by most. And for all of the phallic imagery in society, for all the talk of penis and dick and cock, I WANT TO TALK ABOUT VAGINAS. pussy. cunt.

(However problematic it is for me to use the last two words, which it is–#cisman, I support all womyn who chose to reclaim these words for their visceral, aesthetic, and wondrous power. And when you have an audience affirming a monologist by following directions of yelling “cunt” at the top of their lungs it is hard not to join in.)

The Vagina Monologues is the perfect venue–a place (perhaps the only place on campus these days. . . ) that actively supports vaginas. I come into the lobby to find friends, soon-to-be-friends, strangers. We wander from table to table picking up handouts from SAPAC, brochures from Safe House Center, condoms from Sexperteam, saran wrap talks from Spectrum Center, and buttons from Students for Choice. It was a pro-womyn space that should be everywhere.

Although the event wasn’t perfect–as nothing is–it was, in my opinion, a success. It left me thinking of what I could do next, “how do I proceed from here?”

I will talk about vaginas more often and not shame them when conversations about them come up. I will support all talk about vaginas and menstruation. I will talk about the oppression of womyn and specifically the oppression of trans* womyn whenever I get the chance. I will not allow for my community to disrespect womyn through acts of violence, be it verbal, physical, spatial, etc.

But I will check myself. I will not talk for womyn, I will let them share their story. I will listen to their lived experiences without assuming or judging. I will do my best to check my offensive language. I will embrace the feminine in all its aspects and not shame people for doing the same.

Listen to herstory. It has always been here.

Flashbacks lead to something that never was. Or is. You seem to feel like the walls crumble and the chairs melt away, the harsh lighting of the projector intensifies to stage lights, the draft becomes the auditorium breathing, and the warm body next to yours familiarizes itself like it used to in between longs summer days.

The projector flashes off and faces fill the void. Familiar voices waft up in the air. Gone.

Like 8 months passed, at least the t-shirts look the same “ETC”. I watch those I spent 3 days with and those I interviewed and those I befriended and those that befriended me all perform. My two worlds collide–interest with social, or academic and event, or myself and others. AKA the UM Educational Theatre Company did a show on race and I had all the feelings.

Race is something that I talk about everyday. It is something that I would like to only talk about, even. Something that I feel like should always be talked about and something that should never stopped being talked about.

So it was both terrifying and wonderful to see this show. Terrifying in that certain scenes and bits of dialogue come from real life–real lived experience. Terrifying that in most of life I’m in a space where racial oppression and racism aren’t spoken of right away. Terrifying in that most people I interact with don’t think about race, in that most people on campus are white and that because of this, like the pervasiveness of whiteness, race becomes a topic often not talked about and it is made invisible and immaterial.

Terrifying in that there are many topics that need to be debriefed more: biracial and multiracial identity, the politics of passing, and the different impact racism has on different racial identities. So I flee into fuzzy phone calls, torn book pages, and cups and cups of coffee.

What is at once infuriating becomes also reassuring. Wonderful in that race actively confronts each and every audience member by a removal of one. Wonderful in that this space is dedicated to talk about a topic that is so embedded in culture that the entire modern world is founded on it (the middle passage and slavery) without even acknowledging it. Wonderful in that it gives the time needed to hear certain stories and gives a voice to certain experiences and allows for a place for them to be heard.

Wonderful in that IGR is here to help to facilitate two dialogues about race and the show–only moments after the performance. But these dialogues, however basic they are, are so nice to be a part of in that it helps to refocus my world view and show me how much shit is truly everywhere and how much we don’t actively talk about it. The fact that only certain experiences can be shared in a facilitated dialogue–where the scene is set, rules established, and safety made certain–make me want to vomit everything I have ever eaten and then some. This realization is wonderful.

But I only can say half of this (read: all of this) because of my white privilege. I get the privilege of how and when I talk about race because my race (white) reads as neutral, normal, socially accepted. I won’t get my white racial identity brought up by the public, I won’t get my hair pulled, I won’t have my skin complimented, I won’t be asked where I’m from and no one will ask me if my mitten isn’t michigan but something else, somewhere even “exotic.”

I have the privilege of being able to talk about race and then walk away from it and into a safe space, which by safe I mean the entire world–all of society.

Events like these, like UMETC, especially UMETC, get me thinking. They get me uncomfortable, angry, passionate, loving, and disturbed. Good theatre does that. In all of my expert opinion, I wouldn’t go to theatre if I agreed with all of it or if I left feeling comfortable. And it is here, at U of M, where racial climate can be completely terrifying but at least we have these moments where we can briefly,

ever so briefly,

talk about it.

Before it crumbles away and we’re faced

with new memories.

A guitar. A ukulele. A strap on harmonica. And a piano with sticky note reminders.

Sunday night couldn’t have been planned better with 50 people sitting around a stage, a stage all to ourselves to laugh and cry and joke and sing and make mistakes.

Humans are crazy. I critique and analyze them and their thoughts for my job. But the music let me step back and listen to someone for an hour and half with no judgment.

Antje Duvekot was the happiest person to be around. In jeans she made herself and a guitar she “exploded” her wallet over I was impressed with how much she loved what she does. Sure she has the company of a GPS and knows only crowds of strangers, but sometimes that’s all you need to make a moment special. Her voice was sweet and intentioned, every note seemed emotional and every broken note reminded me of how human she was. I forget that music is meant to be imperfection.

Imperfect because the world is terrible.

What better way to cope than to make beautiful, folky music? She whispered and belted about Kerouac, hippies, commies, peyote, and her friend–a.k.a. the dreams I have of my future as I find myself (because we all have to do it) out on the road. She sang about scenes she drove by, feelings she had about war, and her unwanted agnosticism.

I’ll be honest, at first I thought about writing this column about social identities and privilege and how they project on our view of the world. That would have been a crime. For all she did was to bear her soul and her memories for me. 15 dollars is worth learning about a human in a way that I doubt I know some of my friends.

And the crazy part was that it wasn’t just me learning about her. The old man, two rows beside, me was there too. There was even a child across the stage from me! Students. Adults. Teachers. Friends. Spouses. Couples. Friends. Granted I think we all hailed from very similar situations and our whiteness could’ve been compared to the Crayola crayon labeled “milk,” but it was so refreshing to be surrounded not just by 20-somethings.

The show ended and the encore came and went. I packed up my belongings and my friend and I headed the wrong way out the door. SHE WALKED BY US. Smiled and thanked us for being there, she walked to greet the rest of the crowd and waved goodbye as we left her life to return to our own.

The Ark is a great place to get some perspective. When I fret about an impossible midterm about boring English empiricist philosophy and over a paper on gender and distance and work and waking up early and going to bed late and running out of coffee and money and food and friends and breath and forgetting pesky commas and pondering on Toni Morrison I will know that last Sunday I got to feel again. “Oh, that’s what it’s like to be a human.”

And even if I’m pushed back on the Merry Go Round, I’ll have more balance now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dWTG6MkvUY

#Blasphemy

I am greeted almost daily with red. Royal angry velvet-smooth. Apple red . . . darker: rose red. Red rose. Read rows. Rows, streams, rivers and roads, pool in water that is sometimes urine. Sometimes feces. Today clear but tainted–wine red. Unholy, Bloody nose.

Intense. I swear I’m not. I simmer down low over 2 or 3, electric–no flame–coils morph like snakes but not at all. Or perhaps I boil. Either way. Stimulus with humans and vocal cords necessitate two reactions, a third unspoken–play dead. The chef’s nightmare: tepid water–Conversation.

Pumpkin carriage scares me into sleep. Wherever I fall I call home. Ma maison is always close, right below my feet, always almost within reach. When I arrive I’m already away. Gone to wander old classrooms, play old games, read old books, my childhood lays old beneath my eyelids to disappear as I see time dissipate into dreams. Midnight.

Midas touch without the gold. With air, some would say. Not even my touch–more of a button. Silver grey today. Tomorrow my eyes might not be my own. Makes living more palatable, more scrumptious. A whole meal in itself that fills the belly with exhales of machinery. Soda water.

Ripped thoughts, torn canvas, soiled trees. Worse than dirt my fingers smudge continually as I apply more lotion more pen more neon more soap. Lemon soap. Citrus cuts through words like . . . my eyes through sentences like chronology through linearity. Ha. Book cover.

Like a deck of cards with no heart. Just diamonds, die minz, dye mends my hands and brain and ears. Silver rubs off, cheap. Glass breaks. Queen and Kings pay for this for birth, or rather just Kings. Queens still kept silent as their 13th century counterparts did. Ate hundread yirs dew nuthing two hour stand-herds. Herds. Thats all we are. Connected through one shepherd. iPhone.

Alarm set for 30 minutes earlier than the day before or the day after, instead of music it drips brown, caramel syrup that fills the void in my morning ritual. It wafts into every space be it nostril or ceiling or itself and finally into the depths of my self. Coffee Addict.

Wafers from heaven, moist manna wet from yesterdays [not] rain and snow. Clings to my clothes like dust bunnies. Frolicking in meadow’s dew when the sun cried last or when the moon got too clammy. Tender Buttons.

Wake up with a failed conversation and  midnight soda water left over to spill onto my coffee addict of a book cover, or so the stains prove, to catch my blood from my nose as I type away on my iPhone, “tender buttons. stop. help. stop.”

—Mn. All I know how to do is read, so why not read life? The author is dead and god is dead, so I have to make the plot myself before I, too, am dead. Live the plot. Create plot out of random instances where life seems void of content. Create something out of nothing. Destroy the tabula rasa to live a life backwards through the book so when tomorrow comes you’re not just eating celery but you’re living celery as water as life as new as day as back cover to front cover sleep as as as . . . yes.—