While volunteering at a juvenile detention center in college, I discovered slam poetry. I was completely unaware of the awesome slam poets out there like Andrea Gibson. So, I googled it and found one of my favorite youtube videos ever which addressed another issue I had been struggling with — insults. I get angry occasionally just like anyone else. Bitching to your girlfriends about what some idiot has done now. However, as a feminist, I have struggled with insulting people. It is actually as ridiculous as it sounds.  I am paralyzed by an inability to fully express my feelings fully without choking on words mean to insult me, as a woman.While, I have not completely conquered this issue, I wanted to share with you this bad ass poem/video with you. A transcript is below the video. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Transcript:

I remember how the park, outside of parked cars, was frozen with quiet and darkness, when your anger shot through the night.

“Why do you call yourself a feminist? You guys are equal. And as a man, I am always expected to be a man, to make the first move. If anything, it is harder for me; you get all of the good stuff and none of the bad.”

With your brows furrowed with concern, with the capacity of my inferior mind, and your eyes grasp my shoulders, pushing me down as if to add to the gravity of your words.

“Do you understand where I am coming from now?”

I sat there small, draped in a label that was then too big for me. Struggling in the creases that were smothering the pieces of ideals taped together to form my skeleton. Feminist fell over my frame like an old baggy shirt. Suddenly embarrassing, the tag started to itch.

All of the good stuff and none of the bad. Women like Orwell’s pigs squealing to be more equal than others, while you’re pressured to be a man in relationships. The dilemma of having to choose who you spend your most intimate moments with. So while I sympathize with your burden of boyhood bravery, it’s hard to be the problem of a cloud’s troubled position of [working the ward] water while you’re the parched flower waiting for the rain to come only to be bother by the thunderous booms of ingratitude.

This is when you tell me not to get hysterical.

Hysterical, the word invented as a diagnosis to given to women showing inappropriate emotion, like anger. Supplemented with a daily dose of the question”Are you on your period?” As if an internal chemical explosion is the only thing that warrants my passionate opinion. But I am not suppose to talk about it. So I’m still trying to figure out why the hell I am to hide the fact that I bleed.

You illegitimatize the cries of my sisters. You try to deny me of my history. Give me hysterectomy that misdirects  me dissect the women from this.

You know what? I am done with the futility of civility. I feel like cussing you out.

I would call you a pussy but that would mine. Cunt is the same predicament because it’s your dick I meant to insult. Can’t call you a slut, bitch, or whore because those are reserved for the ladies. I’d call you a son of a bitch but that would just insult the women you came from. The male equivalent of a bitch — bastard — is calling your mother a whore. Douche-bag, one of the dirtiest descriptions, just depicts the drippings of a woman. How about motherfucker? Throw in a  feminine connotation to make it extra horrifying. Or a universal fuck you punctuated by erecting a phallic middle finger, in order to provide you with a visual representation of how I want you to be fucked… like a woman. Use sexual politics as the ultimate degradation.

But I don’t say any of this. I sit in silence because it has been hard to be a word in edgewise over your alpha male gorilla chest pounds. King Cock atop dangling buildings squeezing me  in your leathery grip dangling me over the edge asking me why the hell I don’t enjoy the view. Oblivious to the fact I can’t even talk to you without choking on the language designed to remind me of my place. And anything I throw at you as an insult simply boomerangs back and burns my own tongue and threatens to drowned me in these thick veiled fabric of sexist dialect. But I will continue to rip these assaults apart, tearing these baggy rags and tying them tight and proud across my body, filling to the limit the fabric will allow until they fit my feminine form.

Reflecting back on your furrowed brow, I ask, “Do you understand where I am coming from now?”