Three black women:

1) Going down to the subway platform the other night, I saw a couple younger teenage (black) girls standing at the top of the stairs laughing, and as I waked towards them, I saw a friend of theirs get up from squatting and pull up her panties and her pants over her curly black thatch, as she laughed and passed by me...  There was piss on the stairs.

2) On my way into school, a high school age (black) girl who was very traditionally feminine looking had on a hot pink baseball cape with neon green letters that said “I WANT TO FU*CK RIHANNA”.

3) On the bus on the way to school, this mid-20s (black) woman was standing in the aisle and totally absorbed in reading some book that had a shirtless (black) guy on the cover holding a very thick (black) woman in his arms, and as her hands moved, I saw not only the ad blurb “HOT AND UNCENSORED”, but also the book’s title, “EVERY THUG NEEDS A LADY”.  As she got off the bus, she closed the book, and I saw that someone had used a red magic marker to put on the book’s top edge the name “SHAY SHAY” – who I guess was the owner of the book, had read it a lot of times, and would loan it out, but always wants it back when you’re done with it, she reads it so much.

Lesbian separatism class (2 of 2): My main point.

Overall, I really tried to hammer home the point that even though gender is socially constructed, “socially constructed” doesn’t mean “unreal”, and people have real experiences constituted through those categories, and just because you can pass as one gender now, it doesn’t mean you have the total life experience from which to relate to someone who’s been that gender forever.

I said that esp. b/c students couldn’t understand why some “womyn-born-womyn” would want to exclude male-to-female transsexuals from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

“But they’re womyn,” they were like.

At one point, before I made my point explicit, I asked students since race was a cultural construct, too, whether I could drop into Democratic National Convention events for African-Americans only, if  I learned the cultural norms of speech, manners, etc., which idea most of my students were really resistant too, initially.

“How many of you have seen the original Hairspray?”, I was like.  “And I’m not talking that musical remake crap.”

A couple had, and I brought up the scene where Ricki Lake and Link are on the run from the law and are making out in an alley and they pause from frenching to say, “On our insides we're black,” and after they say that, they start frenching even harder.

“What if I’m black inside,” I was like, “And I can act black, couldn’t I go to that event?”

At that point, the students were kind of befuddled, and I brought up how if you switched babies in a hospital, they could conceivably be brought up in totally different racial cultures, since the example of intersex babies being able to get raised as male or female gets brought up a lot in gender discussions.

“And you can get surgery to look like a different race,” one of my thoughtful (white) (female) students volunteered, the one who’s into gamer events (! - go her for thinking through the analogy farther than I did!).

 All of that made some of the (white) students kind of start volunteering that maybe it was okay for someone like me to go to an all African-American DNC event.

Then, my one (black) (female) student stepped in, and was like, “But there’s something different, you don’t know what it’s like...”

She really was the only student who got the argument from experience, the rest didn’t.

In fact, my one (white) (gay) (male) student said it was cis-gendered privilege to exclude transwomen from womyn-only spaces.

Then, since we had to move onto other things, I dropped the explicit point about “socially constructed” not meaning “unreal”.

Overall, I didn't want to put my one (black) student on the spot by discussing race, but the analogy was worth laying out, and it's not like I called on her to be a spokesperson or something.

Lesbian separatism class (1 of 2): Acting.

My last class at the art school was on lesbian separatism, which the kids just didn’t get.

“They’re like stereotypes of what people think feminists are,” one of my (white) (female) students said.

One of my (white) (gay) (male) students brought up this section from the reading, where Sonia Johnson posits that once men’s violence disappears from the world, animals will stop killing each other, some evidence of which we have from the Bible, which, although a record of the systematic genocide of goddess peoples, has vestigial memories of lions lying down with lambs.

“I just don’t find that plausible,” he was like, after he read out those several paragraphs to the class, at my request.

“Why?”, I was like.

“Science,” he said.

At that point, I decided I had to defend Sonia Johnson, so I asked my class how Sonia Johnson might respond to that remark.

No one really knew, so I stepped up, and began talking in a  painfully immediate stage voice.

“But nature is a web, we are interconnected, violence ripples out and effects *everything*,” I was like.

“But in nature animals kill each other,” he was like.

“Why are you separating manunkind out from nature?”, I was like.  “That’s mensgame, we’re here, and animals are here, and we’re separate from everything, and we can dominate and destroy them at our desire.”

“But that’s just not plausible,” he was like.

“In my heart, I know it’s true,” I was like, “And I know you’ve seen it too.  We’ve all seen glimpses of a womyn’s world, we’ve all felt it, we all know it can be true again – at least those of us who aren’t afraid.  Why are you so attached to your science?  It’s keeping you from so much, that’s a classic part of mensgame.  Let it go, let it go so you can dance, let it go so you can live, let it go so you can *dream*.”

 Then, after a very short pause, I was like, "Dream."

Then, after a third very short pause, I was like, "DREAM."
 

Then, after a longer pause, I broke character and asked students if that was a plausible response, as if Sonia Johnson was here.

They nodded, and one was admiringly like, “It’s all so earnest.”

Later, after we discussed how a lesbian separatist commune gained knowledge of chainsaws, my one (white) (gay) (male) student spoke up again, and was like, “If it’s okay for them to get traditionally male knowledge and incorporate that into part of their community, why is it wrong for me to take on feminine behavior?  That upsets social order, that makes me be an ally.”

“Class,” I was like, “Did the readings address anything like that?”

It hadn’t, and the class said so.

“So then, class,” I was like, “How might a lesbian separatist respond to that objection?”

No one really knew, so I gave them a minute to think over the answer.

“Anyone want to step up and rebut?”, I was like.

No one did, so I was like, “Let me try,” and I began by thanking my student for voicing serious, substantive objections, and having the good will to be an opposition opponent in public debate.

Then, I got intense, and was like, “Okay, you want to be woman, you really want to be a woman?  Well, you know what?  You’re welcome to it.  You try being raped, you try being murdered, you try being sexually abused at the hands of men, and then *you* tell *me* how *you* enjoyed your vacation.”

After I let that sink in, I broke character and was like, “Okay, so how was that, was that a plausible response from a lesbian separatist?”

People nodded, and my one fashion student commented after a pause, “I liked how you did that little movement with your head at the end.”

Then, someone else was like, “You really got into that.”

I didn’t directly respond, but again thanked my one (white) (gay) (male) student for his participation and goodwill.

Union solidarity.

The other week I was picking up some envelopes from a Staples near me, and I was wearing my union t-shirt from the Scott Walker protests, which is bright red with a blue fist in the shape of Wisconsin on the front and “STAND WITH WISCONSIN” in caps on the back.

As I was leaving my register, a(n older) (white) woman at the opposite register to which I had my back was like, “Hey, what’s your t-shirt?”.

I walked over and showed her, and she complimented it.

She then said something about how she just had started working there, and we both talked a very little bit about how unions needed to step up and fight more since the working class was getting fucked.

To close the conversation, we fistbumped, then I left.

(Black) women at a subway stop.

A few months ago, I just missed a subway train, and as I was at the bottom of the stairs, I saw a very tall and heavy (white) man in a sports jersey pound a few times on the just-closed doors, as the train went to move away.

From the way he moved, I could tell he was really drunk, and he staggered over to some younger (black) woman who was waiting for a train the opposite direction and who he was much larger than, and he said something nonsensical to her in a kind of threatening way...

I edged up to the far end of the platform, keeping them in my eye, in case I needed to run up the stairs there, either to get help for her, or to avoid him.

Luckily he left her alone, and staggered and slouched over to the other side of the platform down at the other end of the platform.

Then, another younger (black) woman came down the stairs, and was going to go down to where the really drunk guy was, so I quietly called over to her and told her to be careful, since there was a really big drunk guy down at the other end who was approaching people in a weird and threatening way.

She looked down where he was, composed herself and got all meek, and went down past him without him noticing her.

Then, a few minutes later, these three older (black) women come down the stairs, and they also went to head in the direction of the really drunk guy, so I also quietly called over to them and told them to be careful.

“Don’t worry baby,” the one was like, “We got you covered,” and she dug in her purse and pulled out a big container of pepper spray.

“Oh no, not again!”, one of her friends cried out, and started laughing.

“Seriously,” the first woman was like, “Thanks for the warning, but don’t worry about us, we know what to do.”

Then, they began walking down toward the big drunk (white) guy just as my train started pulling up.