Here’s an excellently titled piece in Tinderbox by Stevie Edwards: Poem in Which My Student Writes Me to Explain that There Are More of Him, that He Is Not the Only One Who Is Offended by Feminists

Enjoy:

I like the way this one kind of slips off the page, it’s a detatched smearing of thick icing off the edge of the counter-top. The way it moves the pressure from the sexist remark made by one student into the unfulfillment of others — that to make the remark is to be easily marked as someone who would prefer to be playing frisbee or ticking the boxes towards whatever achievement they might want to also tick the box of. In the way that to say “you’re not what I expected” is to show that you’re unable to understand on some basic level that the world exists despite your expectations — and that parsing and understanding that is key to learning.

Which nuzzles next to the other half of the poem, the interior half that plays with the idea of conforming to those expectations — a kind of radical submission. This is rejected for the reality of self-love, identity, and a clearer non-conformity in the act of having a choice.

I spotted this because of the wonderful Nicole McCarthy, who I wrote about the other week here.

Speak here, speak clear.

Today’s song is The Rat by The Walkmen — which is a bit old but floated into my life today and was sung-along with as if ten years had not passed between now and the last time I heard it.

You’ve got a nerve to be asking a favor
You’ve got a nerve to be calling my number

[…]

Thanks for reading Etch To Their Own Number Thirty Eight. You’ve got a nerve, but please don’t stop calling. As always it was written by @CJEggett who is still in joyous, beautiful free-fall. Pick your new home. This rocks, and so do you. Please share that I exist to other people who exist.