untitled 114
I am a member of the unending wave
of women just trying to be people
letting men be people just trying to be people
and reveling in the beauty of it all
I am a card carrying feminist of the forefront pedigree
and I carry the card because the card keeps me careful
of my sorrys and my silences and my sweet stuck-on smile
but also of my bitchy bullshit and my desperate need to assert my authority
over other women
and to remind me that I do not have to be afraid to flirt and fall for a man
and also to be careful (because I am not safe yet)
I am a feminazi
(although I thought that term fell out of fashion)
and I claim with all my might that sometimes I might cry hysterically
but that does not make it hysteria
except that sometimes it does
and that I do not have to apologize any more
except that sometimes I am wrong
and that sometimes I say one thing
but then turn it around and amend it to mean another
and that does not make me crazy
(stop using that word – crazy
if I were crazy, you would know it, and it would not be so humorous)
not crazy, just changeable and malleable and human like the moon
because I am not utilitarian like a man is fabled and supposed to be
I am just me and I live in the contradictions that I am
you have no idea what it is like inside my head
I am post-feminist third wave unchartered
and I yell at my mother whom I love
for telling me to wear overalls and go to school
but also wouldn’t it be better if I found a man too
and I yell at my feminist queer teachers whom I adore
who taught me that I am too preoccupied with men
and I yell at all the older generation whom I revere
for making me believe I had to be like man to have a voice that sang like power
til I stalked around in steal toes afraid to be beautiful
when the pounding male power is not my power
and made me want to rip my skin off because I was not perfect pretty
and I have had to unlearn everything I came to believe about who I had become
because I am relearning how to listen to my own vibrating voice, singing (really singing) like thoughtful, listening, compassionate, unwavering, deep and sure and fuck you if you fuck with me power
which is only possible because of these women
I stand unsure, knowing, still and grateful, in that deepest way I can’t express
because despite it all I owe them everything
and finally, I am a woman
because, of course, I am not a man
whatever either of those two terms mean (no of course. I do not believe in of course)
I am feminine (I discovered far too late)
because I believe myself to be a woman
and believing myself to be a woman
I am thrilled to find all these little inlets into what that term
and all the weight of baggage of hundreds of thousands of years of oppression
(oh but it all disappeared in thirty years
thirty years and poof! all gone!)
what every nook and crany of my gender means and can become
with all the history, real and dreamed and mine and not mine at all,
because I believe we all, all of us, are trying to say I am this and I am that but I am not this too but wait I want this part of this and that part of that
I am third wave, no wave, end of wave
because I believe that I can believe in my own femininity
while also confronting that term at its root
and revel in the blood and oozing wetness and inherent contradictions
of all my tears and screams and sex itself
and I am of a wave to say
that I acknowledge that men too suffer
because (as a woman) I have held the suffering men
and kissed womanly tears and listened to emasculating sighs
it is not that I say no you cannot suffer too
but that I, for once, though patient (like a woman) and listening (like a woman)
am finally, for all my compassion,
still concerned and curious with me
