institutional feminism: structure of bone

10-26-20

Dear Hannah,

1.

A conversation begins

with a lie. And each

speaker of the so-called common language feels

the ice-floe split, the drift apart

as if powerless, as if up against

a force of nature

A poem can begin

with a lie. And be torn up.

A conversation has other laws

recharges itself with its own

false energy. Cannot be torn

up. Infiltrates our blood. Repeats itself.

Inscribes with its unreturning stylus

the isolation it denies.  

10-26-20

3.

The technology of silence

The rituals, etiquette

the blurring of terms

silence not absence

of words or music or even

raw sounds

Silence can be a plan

rigorously executed

the blueprint to a life

It is a presence

It has a history  a form

Do not confuse it

With any kind of absence

Adrienne Rich

 Cartographies of Silence

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, certain molars hold grief and others hold anxiety. Lets talk about teeth. I have lost three molars to transphobia-homophobia-genderphobia. The first I lost from a punch to my face[dw1] . Madmen hallow hate with speech, spectacle, and sabotage, written on a body in the vacant lots of my teeth. The second tooth I lost to medical homophobia after my lover fin spent a year[dw2]  on chemotherapy at the saskatoon cancer centre. I spent that year shielding us both from the institutional homophobia, because our relationships always bare the weight of our queer/trans identities. By the end, my molar brimmed over with all the grief at the root. Some folks can pay for the veneer of a tooth fashioned to a pig bone embedded into the gum. I had my tooth pulled on my way to work on a kitchen renovation. $129 for a pair of pliers and a steady hand, because we were already bankrupt from the cancer, and the homophobia.

But it is the third molar[dw3]  I want to think through right now. The oppression I experienced in the 1990s was a danger held by my visibility. The oppression I experience right now has shifted the danger to my invisibility. I must write in the margins, flush out the intangible entanglements of invisible institutional transphobia scantly concealed by highly visible bureaucratic equity countermeasures. Trapline feminism separates the entangled from the intangible on a cutting plane, the interior detail perspective of those margins. To see what is not seen within a structure, an institution.

The first feminist supervisor invited her grad students to her house[dw4]  on valentines day. When it became obvious I was the only student not familiar with the path to the wine glasses, she offered a weak and uncomfortable explanation[dw5]  that the other students had been invited [dw6] to family gatherings I had not. Crowded around a small den, fire burning, she asked me to tell a story about myself. I wanted to tell all the straight women in the room how this day is significant to me. My friend Shauna died of suicide [dw7] on this day 2006. I wanted to tell them shauna died in her second year of an English phd in upper canada. In the 1990s, Shauna introduced me to Adrienne Rich and Jeanette Winterson when we were the only two visibly queer kids on the University of Regina campus in our undergrad days. I wanted to tell them about our queer kinship, to make shauna’s queer death visible in this institution, just for a moment. To mark this day, I sent flowers to my friend ruth in saskatoon. I knew it would not be lost on ruth the significance of marking my own first-generation scholarly survival. I wove and stitched my story into a language for an audience gauged and read as quietly hostile. With impatient disdain, the supervisor instead jumped to the next conversation [dw8] about divorce. A 27-year-old straight student regaled a half-hour mature history of being married and then divorced to a much older 42 year old man who was once exciting/dangerous until he became stale/expired. The night of my first academic toothache[dw9] , the poison at the root was the impatient disdain of casual erasure.

Tooth pounding rage at my cheek, I set up my installation exhibition “Genderfluid Geography: Unmapping Heteronormativity” [dw10] in the cultural studies lounge. A last-ditch futile effort to engage my classmates and colleagues in a conversation on institutional heteronormativity. Radio silence[dw11] . Another feminist academic chased me down the hall for our first and last conversation[dw12] . She offered to hire me to do some carpentry work [dw13] on her house. I pondered if she had any comprehension of my grad school “lifestyle” as a mature student. I had moved across Canada, away from my home/family/community/connections/support/art studio/carpentry shop—[dw14] my entire life.

For a grossly inflated $900/month I lived in a bachelor apartment smaller than a hotel room. No deadbolt on the hollow core door of this bird cage on the 10th floor. A 1972 brutalist university social housing project turned cheap private capitalist housing death trap. But Princess Towers is a student movement failure and architectural gem to be studied in Cultural Studies. I did not bring any carpentry tools[dw15]  from Saskatchewan to upper canada phd school. Offended by my obvious lack of gratitude[dw16]  falling flat, she defended her position[dw17]  by offering she liked to help grad students whenever she could. I wanted to know if there were any other trades people going to phd school[dw18] , (in upper canada, or anywhere). She thought not, signalling the expiration of her help[dw19] . Soon after, she appointed [dw20] a trans designated fellowship [dw21] to a baby-cis-white-homo, in a long-established history[dw22]  of helping baby-cis-white-homo students[dw23] . I suppose they know how to play their part. I have never been very good at that game. A fag hag and her pets.[dw24]  Radio silence. At times trapline feminists adeptly use that finely honed blade [dw25] to carefully separate the homophobia cloaked in the deeds of classism.

The Cartography of Silence-Written on the Body.  With three teeth less, I am hanging on to this degree by the skin of my teeth.  My queer ancestors Rich and Winterson[dw26]  say it is so in the weight of the textural testimony held by our invisible history.[dw27]  I see a game trail through the muskeg. A way forward. Trapline feminism is counter-cultural studies spoken in allegory[dw28] .

[dw1]1994

[dw2]2008

[dw3]2018

[dw4]A conversation begins with a lie.

[dw5]And each speaker of the so called common language feels

[dw6]Silence can be a plan

[dw7]The ice floe split

[dw8]Rigorously executed

[dw9]The drift apart

[dw10]A poem can begin with a lie

[dw11]And be torn up

[dw12]A conversation has other laws

[dw13]The technology of silence

[dw14]A blueprint to a life

[dw15]Recharges itself with its own false energy

[dw16]As if powerless

[dw17]Cannot be torn up

[dw18]As if up against a force of nature

[dw19]Infiltrates our blood

[dw20]The rituals, etiquette

[dw21]the blurring of terms silence not absence

[dw22]silence can be a plan

[dw23]inscribes with its unreturning stylus the isolation it denies

[dw24]Rigorously executed

[dw25]Of words or music or even raw sounds

[dw26]It is a presence

[dw27]It has a history   a form

[dw28]Do not confuse it with any kind of absence