One big-boy critic on a big-boy website, HTML Giant (part of their series of posts on “The New Sincerity,”), accuses me of being too sincere because, as a critic, I still make distinctions between truth and falsehood when it comes to representation and subjecthood. Another bad-boy writer and former fan (maybe he still is, who knows. But doubtful, since he doesn’t have any real feelings to appreciate anything) tells a writer friend that I am writing kitsch now. But is there anything more kitsch than male misogyny? Than acting like a (white) male genius? For aren’t white men the only ones who even really get to think of themselves as geniuses, as artists, as cultural taste-makers, and therefore have other people think of them this way? Aren’t they the only ones who have access and rights to such terms? So even when a (white) woman claims to be a genius, she can only get away with it, or even be thought of as one, if she acts like a male genius. Does genius the way a male genius would do genius. And by being a white female-male genius, she gets to do to other women what a male genius gets to do to women: exclude them, alienate them, decide who is and who is not a genius like them, therefore allying herself with other white male geniuses.
When I was all covered up, in vines, in thorns, in ice; with the fire and green underneath (not on the surface in plain view) for only the right heart to thaw or weed (rip off with love, if necessary), I was called other names. My work has been called other names. So I can’t win, and I don’t want to. What’s winning and who wants to win all these dead, cold hearts who don’t even mean what they say or think? Who will think and mean something different tomorrow anyway. And who never asked, who make a point of not asking so they never have to be responsible for anything or anyone; to anyone, to be believed in.
Besides, I couldn’t win. Not in this world. Not given what winning entails. Not as a woman, not as feminist, not as a critic, not as someone who mourns things, not as a true lover. And no one like this can, really. Not anyone green or trying to stay awake (“During the night I count the hours”).
”Came across this today in Masha’s book Love Dog and it hits so close to home with all the thinking I’ve been doing lately about what the system values and what I value, about when I feel like I’m succeeding in the work I’m doing, even if, by the standards of our culture, I’m not winning.
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