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11/11/14

Fariha Róisín


Montreal-based publishing entity Metatron is guest editing Everyday Genius this month. We'll be featuring excerpts from our new fall catalog as well as Canadian writers we like. Today's author is feminist herFariha Róisín.

Mansplain Nation

whenever i see you
you explain things to me
“is that how you 
really feel?”
you ask, taunting, 
taunting, taunting
as if you have 
the right answer, 
hidden
beneath all those 
other secrets.
what you know
or don’t know
are the same thing, 
pursed lips,
goofy mechanical eyes, 
you somehow devastatingly
question
others sincerity, but never
your own.
why is that?

“you once told me 
that
you’re not a feminist, 
you know?”
using it as a weapon, like
“how would you know 
how to be a woman?
you’re not even 
a feminist.”
Lana Del Rey,
decontextualizing 
what i said,
only to inflate 
your own cock 
momentarily;
ephemeral pleasure.

do you know 
how many times 
i’ve heard a man 
declare he’s a feminist?
only to side eye 
me and my intelligence
with a glaring swipe. 
like the finger on tinder
your insolence, 
begrudgingly spoilt 
by society’s 
insistence
to exhonerate men.

white male privilege
characterizes you,
that perennial smirk.
let me break it to you:
your theoretical understanding
of “class divide,”
reading baudrillard; habermas; graeber
(white man/white man/white man)
doesn’t make you
any less 
of a piece of shit.

waiting, 
waiting, waiting
to be acknowledged 
by you,
as if you held 
my self esteem
in an infirmary 
privatized 
by your hubris.

men only win
because their lies
seep out seamless; the 
burning empty cavity
of their plundered souls, 
linger
without exhaustion.
they’ve gotten used
to the calcified taste
of a personality 
of their own 
design;
who cares,
if they’re betraying 
themselves?
anything to not be labelled 
the dirty word: romantic,
ugh, 
romantic.

mansplain that to me again,
oh it’s so sexy 
when you
re-explain things 
to me that
i already know, or i daresay
just told you, 
e x a c t l y, 
like that, just 
seconds ago. 

remember how 
when i said k 
was
looking at my tits, once
and that it made me feel
uncomfortable?
and you said: “well 
they are hanging out, 
what else is he 
supposed to do?”
we were crossing 
a street, 
the green light was 
delayed,
and my heart 
pounded 
to that sound 
of internal mourning.
at the sight of my sadness, you 
exasperatedly said: 
“ugh i’m just joking!”
it was such 
a funny joke.

Fariha Róisín has written for IndieWIRE, Filmmaker Magazine, QuipMag and the Film Society of Lincoln Centre. She mainly writes film and culture criticism and has a podcast called "Two Brown Girls" where she discusses sexism, race and their respective implications on popular culture. She tweets at @fariharoisin.

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