Bitches, Hookers, and Sluts: What in the hell is wrong with us?

It was Saturday night at Fundição Progresso. My feet floated from the dance floor as Natiruts performed on a stage illuminated by red, yellow and green lights. I stood in the back of the indoor amphitheater with a third caipirinha in my palm. As I savored the stinging sugar cane rum, Luso-Reggae poured from the loud speakers, inciting the mass to swish hips to the triplet cross rhythms. Fans of inhalation planted herbal and cigarette smokes in the atmosphere, while a minority snorted lines of white powder off their ticket stubs in plain sight. The other hundreds of young people occupied their mouths with the rims of Skol cans, in between labial unions with old and new acquaintances.

As the band sang a translation of Concrete Jungle, nature began to call my friend and I, so both Marcela and me opted to break for a quick skip to the loo. We pushed through the couples and made our way to the banheiro line in the corridor. As we stood chatting in Portuguese, a classmate from one of those back-up UC’s came out of the bathroom and upon spotting her compatriots, she yelled out in English, “Hey Hookers! Like, how ARE you guys!”

Her first offense was that she spoke at me in English, and LOUD ASS Valley Twang English at that. Here we were trying to blend in when this Anglophone twerp shined a foreign spotlight on our heads while complimenting us with insults. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure where to begin. I did not desire to get confrontational and get myself thrown in a Carioca jail, so I jokingly spat, “Woman, who are you calling a hooker?” I wanted to get her away from me so we exchanged few words before she sloshed back to the show to rejoin the group of foreign students that had congregated a few rows behind Paulo and me.

Marcela and I had a brief conversation about the irritation of renaming us hookers as if we were supposed to feel honored that this over-made-up Californian had felt so comfortable with us that she embraced us in her community of pseudo street walking comrades. Whether she was commenting on the fact that she had just seen the two of us ficando with friends acquired an hour prior, or whether she actually thought it was appropriate to call a female friend a hooker, we were not sure. What I did decide, at that moment, was that I was pissed but had nowhere to direct those energies so I returned to the dance floor and solely grinded the memory of her idiocy into the ground.

That was the last conversation I had with the Hooker-sayer and I would turn the other way any time I saw her at PUC. She did, however, become a frequent theme in the narratives that my friends and I created on daily verbal exchanges in the living room of the apartment Kenyetta and I rented in Leblon.

It was a complete conundrum why young liberal college women would be so unconscious of their auto-linguistic battering as to embody the years of misogyny through their own vernacular. Weren’t we trained to think critically? Hadn’t we learned enough about our foremothers to know better? And since when did opening up the door of your mouth to a new lingual guest equate transactional sex? I was confused.

The other part that peeled my skin back was that I would hear her bantering with other female classmates in the same way, some on her neo-misogynistic page, others smiling awkwardly but always in silence. We didn’t want to get into fights in paradise so we cursed out our enemies behind their backs, which never solved our problems, and even before I had ever read anything by Audre Lorde I knew that she was right when she said “your silence will not protect you.” Now, I don’t know why it took me four years to speak this.

There are many women who will claim that they have taken back these words and reappropriated them, but those are the women who don’t own dictionaries.

Look up the word Hooker and tell me that is who you want to be:

An old worn out and clumsy ship
A prostitute
A Slut
Someone who is immoral, slovenly
Impure liquid

This poetry of female hatred is recited in the daily vocabularies of women of all echelons of society. I’ve heard high school girls call their female friends sluts and bitches without so much as a raised eyebrow. Is this the new language of female bonding? I’ve heard college girls say to their friends, “Oh my god girl, you are such a slut.” And then laughter occurs and I observe and wonder how much devirgin activity has to occur for one to be sentenced to the sluttery?

It seems redundant to mention the fact that the titles afforded to glutinous sexuality are almost exclusively reserved for women. Yes, a man can be a prostitute but the word conjures up notions of the female in the mind’s eye. The Spanish and Portuguese word for whore or slut is “puta” and it’s male equivalent “puto” doesn’t really exist, because this immoral activity that the word implies doesn’t apply to men who engage in sexual activities as their moral nature.

The biggest debate is likely to be over the word, Bitch, which has been integrated into our vocabularies in a more complicated way, and is also the title of one of my favorite feminist magazines that I used to read at Pegasus books on Shattuck religiously during the height of my Slam days. Here is a found poem on Bitch:

A female dog

Malicious
Unpleasant
Selfish
Lewd woman
Awful sound of voice
Spoiled
Negative

To think of the way in which women verbally abuse one another unconsciously is much the same way in which children who are victims of violence turn violent in adulthood. These cycles of self-hatred are difficult to break, and become tolerated. I consider hitting children as violence, my mother would call it an appropriate punishment. I would never hit another person and then expect them to be peaceful. Non-violent social change should extend to non-violent verbal exchange. How can we expect to be treated as equal to our male counterparts when we are bringing ourselves down.

Sexual revolution? Still unresolved.

Now let’s just take a little gander at some popular music, and if you have seen Chris Rock then you know what I am talking about. He has this great sketch about the confused moment in popular hip-hop music, with special attention given to the womanizing lyrics of some rap. He talks about the whole skeet-skeet phenomenon but my personal favorite is the song by Ludicris that chants, “Move Bitch, get out the way, get out the way.” When Chris Rock pointed out that most women singing along and throwing up their firsts say, “He’s not talking about me, “ I agree. He is not talking about you or me. He is talking about We.

In a survey of American pop music we could turn our attention to the pre-psycho Britney Spears and post-virgin Christina Aguilera. When Christina released her sophomore effort “Stripped” and wore jeans and nothing else but her hair, she had been transformed into this over sexual freak show that couldn’t be shown to young impressionable girls. People couldn’t handle the fact that she was dueting with Lil Kim and pointing out the contradictions between sexually liberated women who are marginalized and the glorified pimp princes who bind them to the periphery. Parents complained about the effects that Miss Aguilera might have on young innocents, who if anything like me, already knew what sex was by they time they were five thanks to the love scenes on day time television and interpreted these roles during their episodes of playing house. Whereas Britney Spears was out there submissively begging, “I’m a slave for you,” she was welcomed as a slave for us, well, probably not for me because I haven’t grown a penis yet, but that’s how we like our women, begging and in chains.

The problem, too, is that even if we attempt to redefine these words, it’s impossible to rid them of their etymological histories. A slut, hooker, or whore is by nature a negative, questionable character who is selling herself and therefore unvalorizing the self. Men, who buy them, of course, are simply supporting their sexual economies and why is it that sex workers are the ones in jail as opposed to the ones who cause the demand for this service? Johns in the slammer? Highly unlikely.

One can obtain money from a great number of services, some of which border on the profane – like massages. I had a neighbor who used to give massages in her bottom floor apartment but also added in other services including something that, at 7 years old, I wasn’t quite sure what it was because the word “blow-job” was new to my vocabulary, but it sounded like work for which a person ought to earn money.

Why is the transaction of sex such a threat? If anything, Transactional Sex Workers, or TSW, if you will, should be afforded the same sort of protection that, say, soldiers in Iraq get, if not more. On a battlefield of penises, one never knows when they might meet their masculine maker.

We are constantly being reminded that oversexing ourselves will bring us impending doom. A few years ago on the evening news in LA I witnessed a female psychologist say that it was the fad for university women to be promiscuous. Well, unless she was talking about lesbians, she could of at least had the sense to say University students, but anyway, she said that these promiscuous ladies were going to all end up with STI’s as a result of too much sexual fun. Instead of promoting condemnation, why not promote condoms? I say stop investing money in propaganda, and put those funds into the development of microbocides. Stop putting money into fundamentalist Christian teachings on abstinence, simply prepare and protect. And provide and market female condoms that are less that 16 dollars at the drug store. In Ghana, female condoms are as cheap as a male ones, so tell me who is still developing?

It’s worth mentioning the importance of not referring to women who actually do operate within the various sexual economies as prostitutes, sluts or whores as a way of derailing the trains of thought that circulate in this vicious linguistic cycle. To utter the word “prostitute, slut or whore” is to pass on a judgment, even when attempting to Switzerlandishly state facts. To call someone a Transactional sex worker, or even a sex worker provides a more gender equal notion of the trade. Because essentially a sex worker is a social worker, of the body. It is a vocation of mutual exchange in which one individual pays for the services of another. When you want a grande mocha, the baristas indirectly pleasure your mouth with the taste of chocolated coffee in exchange for a dip into your dollar stash. So what is the difference between consulting a sexual specialist on a chilly night and warming your taste buds at Starbucks? Whoops, I mean, Slutbucks…

...

And now, I leave you with this quote I saw on a friend’s wall:

"Think of my vagina as a vase. If you've had sex with me, it's time to send flowers!" -Bethenny Frankel



To be continued

Meeting Mona

You know how when you meet someone for the first time and they ask you to marry them? Well, in keeping with my promise to say yes to all propositions post-Honduras, I embraced the power of Sim on one chilly September night in Maputo.

It all commenced when some random bum tried to kill me. Okay, perhaps “kill” is an overstatement. All I know is that this disheveled city-dweller popped out of an alleyway and chased my hostel mate and I with a rock raised over his graying head while yelling at me in the language of inebriation, despite the fact I had done nada to provoke him. Perhaps my friend and I were mistaken for evil spirits – being quasi translucent, and all.

My initial reaction was to run, which is what I did across Samora Machel boulevard from the corner of the 24th of July Avenue. The angry bum followed suit, thus obligating my friend and I to take refuge at Gil Vicente – a Jazz club across the street from Independence Square.

I had been at the film festival all day and after watching two feature length films that night I was exhausted and prepared to head back to the hostel on Rua Lumumba. My friend and I had just masticated a light dinner at the café Continental and had no plans to get swept up in nightlife. However, our unexpected encounter with a louco man forced us to shirt gears. As it was, we had no choice, so we paid 100 Meticais cover charge and slipped through the red curtains of Gil Vicente. The small, bohemian space was occupied by local and international young people who sipped bottles of Lourentina – Mozambique’s prize-winning beer, while watching sets of Afro Jazz Jam sessions.

My friend and I quickly found our groove on the scant dance floor, responding to the demands of the drummer’s polyrhythmic hand slaps.

We sat for a break at one of the small tables in the foreground and I took in the surroundings. If ever a place exuded cool, this was it. The red walls were occupied with the painted portraits of local and internationally respected musicians who had played at Gil Vicente on one occasion or another. The intimate space created a dazzling dynamic between the local musicians and the crowd.

As the night folded in on itself, my friend and I decided to brave the emptied streets once again in the hopes that our bedeviled opponent would have found another walker to throw stones at by this time. Thus, we paid the Meticais we owned for the Lourentinas and Cuba Libres and passed through the red velvet threshold onto the street.

Outside the club door there were a group of young people, some of whom had previously been on stage. They talked while a few smoked cigarettes or herb. As we said goodnight to the individuals we passed, one asked in Portuguese, “You’re not going home, are you?” The one who posed the question was sitting on a drum while holding the ends of a guitar case that he propped up on the pavement. I turned around and saw him posted on snare top, smiling. I began to tell him that we were tired and in unison the crowd said, “Tired? No, the night is still early, don’t go!” It was only 1 a.m., which on a weekend in most countries with any sense, is the height at which a party lights its flame. Seeing as how this was a Lusophone nation, previous experience in Brazil and Iberia had prepared me for such a culture, though my friend and I were equally tired but we decided to chat for a while.

When I introduced myself to Mona he asked if I was married. When I demonstrated my jewelryless hand, he proposed that we wed one another. He posited the question with the quotidian calmness that one might use in requesting a movie ticket or a cup of coffee. In the past during my travels in Europe and Latin America I had tried to kindly decline such offers from strange men, although I learned that, while in Zanzibar, a simple, “Labda. Je, mahari yangu iko wapi? (Maybe. Where is my dowry?)“ Caused such a chuckling response that I was able to sidetrack my potential husbands with laughter. However, on this particular night at 1 am in Mozambique I decided to go for it, so I responded, “Sure, why not?” After all this was the first time a stranger who was the same age as me and quite fascinatingly artistic had asked me to marry him before knowing anything beyond my title.

We stood there amid the artists and talked about politics and Brazil, the country everyone had to learn I wasn’t from despite the fact that I spoke their language like the characters on the famous novelas aired daily on Mozambican television. We readjusted to the mild winter air after exiting the heated atmosphere of Gil Vicente. There on asphalt we exchanged ideas about music, about life in Mozambique and in the world. We bought chips from the kids who carried trays of South African imported treats and shared these qualudes outside until we exhausted our vocal chords.

As there were no taxis around we still had to walk a few miles back up the hill to our temporary abode. Our new friends disapproved of us scouring the ruas solo, and thus walked us all the way back to The Base. Along the way, we paused on Karl Marx avenue, where Mona took the guitar out of his case as my friend and he began to sing on the street corner in English, Portuguese, Dutch and whatever other language the two decided to toss in. Passerby’s smiled as we occupied the corner of Lumumba and Marx with a short set of multilingual exaltation.

You never realize what a blessing it is for someone to try to inflict bodily harm on you, until you can retrospectively see how that action directly affected the making of a new fascinating friend. Among the group of musicians I befriended that night at Gil Vicente, Mona proved to be the best. We used to ride the Chapas around town and he’d introduce me to people as his wife which I just thought was funny. One night when we were at a suburb outside the city we got on a Chapa and while waiting for it to fill up with passengers, the bus driver asked Mona a question about me. I never learned Shangana, but I did understand the word for "mine", which sounded like the same word in Swahili. Mona had told the driver that I was his wife, and instead of saying that we were just friends I agreed with the statement. The other people on the Chapa got into the conversation and were pleased that I spoke Portuguese. Then they said that since I knew Portuguese, I had to learn Shangana and people in the van began to teach me greetings and were overly enthusiastic about my questionable pronunciation.

As Mona and I hung out with one another we strangely referred to each other as husband and wife, though beyond these linguistic flirtations, he never made any moves to jeopardize our friendship. I still don’t know why so many people ask you to marry them when all we really want is a friend. Although thankfully, I made a good one.

The same thing happened to me in Zanzibar, when I met a guy one afternoon while trying fresh made peanut candy from a group of women who were studying culinary arts and where selling their cuisine along the waterfront. Their younger brother was there to enthusiastically explain to me the different foods for sale. After I introduced myself as Ashura he asked me if I wanted to marry him so I said yes and we became best friends.


I have a friend who really gets irritated with all the requests for marriage. It's much easier to not say no, as a negation only incites more arguments in the proposers favor. Thus, yes becomes the magic word, to which one can always discuss it later. Really, I say, Bring it on. Hey, if you want to join my colony of polyandry, then you are more than welcome…

Firing Myself in Tanzania

One morning when I was at work in Zanzibar a man came to the front desk and asked, “Is this Dar es Salaam?” His English was heavily bombarded with the tones of his original language and so I assumed I had misheard him. Both of us were foreigners in this space, me from California and he - from somewhere in North-Eastern Asia. The visitor approached the desk while looking around the room the way a child might the first time seeing a life-size replica of T Rex.

I was standing at the entrance to Ngome Kongwe – a fort built in the late 16th century by Omani Arabs to keep out Portuguese intruders. Today this Old Fort is used for the annual Zanzibar International Film Festival. It was still early in the day, most of the patrons were coming to purchase their tickets for that evenings events or to ask questions about upcoming film screenings.

The man blocked the front desk while locals and internationals waited behind him. He repeated the question, to which I informed him to walk to the front door and gaze 40 miles across the sea to the mainland if he wanted to know where Dar es Salaam was. The other ticket sellers smirked in disbelief. It wasn’t as if one could have taken a wrong turn on a freeway and end up in Zanzibar. It took work to get here – you had to either pay extra money to fly to the island or take a two hour ferry boat ride from mainland Tanzania. When I asked him how he had arrived on the island he began to gain a stronger awareness of his surroundings when he asked, “Oh, is this stone city?” Although he got the first word in the name correct, for some reason my working friends and I all bust out in hysterical unison. I tried to hold it together upon informing him that this was “StoneTown” not “stone city”. Had he been kidnapped by pirates and let loose on the shores of this paradise? How had he arrived here? I continued to ask questions but he lost interest and returned to the street.

When I arrived in Zanzibar to attend the cinematographic fair that celebrates the cultures of the Indian Ocean, I had no idea that I would be working, I mean, volunteering there. It all began my first night on the continent of Africa when, despite the fact that I was utterly energyless from a two day journey across three continents, my friend and I had a meeting with the head of the festival for an interview. Even though we assumed we would engage in 30-minute conversation, the festival leader decided to put us to work as jury assistants. When not assisting the jury I was to stand at the Old Fort threshold, collecting shillings from the foreign festival attendees.

Zanzibar, for those of you who do not know, is a semi-autonomous archipelago off the coast of Dar es Salaam. Once it’s own country, in 1964 it joined Tanganyika to form the nation of Tanzania. Zanzibar (Unguja), also known as the spice island is a Swahili speaking isle that attracts global visitors to the film and music festivals held in February and early summer, as well as to the paradisiacal beaches. Last July, at the 11th annual Ziff, I had been put into selling tickets in exchange for a staff pass to the festival. At first it was exciting to work with a group of Swahili speakers, who freaked me out with their rapid fire Swahili that had me convinced my entire year of previous study had been in vain. Every time they began a conversation I begged that they spoke “pole pole” so that I might understand a phrase or two. After I got over the initial nervousness to speak I began to have my first real conversations in Swahili. When not at the desk my new friends would yell at me, “Ashura!” They’d say my Swahili name and tell me to come back to work.

One evening while selling tickets a Tanzanian man asked that I tell someone on his cell phone what was being shown that evening. I gave the description of Theresa Prata’s cinematographic interpretation of Mia Couto’s amazing novel “Sleepwalking Land”. When I asked whom I was talking with the speaker announced that this was “Radio Tanzania”. The host requested my information and the Radio Tanzania liaison had never thought to inform me that I was being broadcasted as I spoke. Later that week when I spoke to the BBC I was prepared!

It was dazzling to have a group of co-workers my first week in a foreign country. Even though it began as a challenge to communicate as I was new to their language and the women I worked with knew only a few phrases of my native tongue, we bonded instantly and they helped me figure out the system of separating the tickets for locals and foreigners and where to stash the money I received, which I was responsible for.

In the first few mornings my friend Agazit and I were called to staff meetings, which we thought sounded cool, but it was a bloody nightmare. There were people from all over the world working for the festival, including a pompous Argentinean who runs Africala in Mexico City. No one seemed to have any clue what their co-workers were doing, each individual was hard pressed to hand off their assignments to the next person. My friend and I were sent to “assist the jury”. At this point I hadn’t seen anything in the country – other than the buildings between the flat where I was staying in town and the Old Fort and the hotels that I had to visit to sort out the problems of the Jury members.

There were 12 jury members in total and each assistant (there were three of us) were assigned to 4 people. First of all, these people didn’t need “assistants”, or maybe that is my independent self talking. When I go to another country - I figure things out on my own. I carry my own bags and figure out what sorts of attractions are available before questioning the people in my host country about where to go. Suggestions, of course, I always ask, but who did these people think they were? Weren’t they capable of taking their bags to the taxi in order to switch hotels? Couldn’t they feed themselves?

Mainly the jury members where sweet hearts, but there was this Princessy British chick who had that kiss-kiss plasticness about her. When she met me she swore that she “knew my work” and complained about everything. We had just arrived in the country and were sent to show the guests around town. This, I thought, was quite hilarious, as I had no clue where anything was. I tried to get assigned to the jury members from Cameroon, Mozambique and Kenya who were nowhere near as demanding as the ones from England and Italy.

A few days into the festival I slipped away unnoticed, with my badge in tow, hoping to see what the city actually looked like. I got lost in the maze of streets, felicitous to find myself outside the fort. Why let the jury members bother me with yet another task I was unable to fulfill? Although my ticket coworkers would ask me why I wasn’t selling any more stubs, they are the only ones I showed my face to. At night, during the screenings, I ducked behind wooden statues and stone walls every time I saw one of the illusive film judges heading my way.

Initiation - Ghana

At first I didn’t see the blood. I sat on a wooden bench in the small waiting room at the University of Legon hospital, when, under the harsh illumination of florescent lighting, I noticed a lake of redness had melted into the teal fabric that covered my arm. I gazed down and saw my fingers splattered with blood. I never realized how fast hemoglobin dries.

I scraped the flakes of another’s sanguine fluids off of my skin. The sweat that poured from my forehead in the nighttime heat dripped on my hands and the blood smeared like weird paint. I told myself not to cry. The other women in the waiting room stared at me, while they conversed in what I assumed was either Twi or Ga. My eyes watered. I rubbed my hands together, while earing the anthem of mosquito’s buzzing.

It was my first hour in Ghana and I was trying not to imagine accompanying my friend home in a casket. The nurses told me to sit and wait. I’ve never been good with patience, but what else could I do but sit , sweat and esperar?

Neither one of us saw it coming. We were strolling down the campus on the side of the road. I was closest to the sidewalk, while Deborah meandered on the side closest to the cars. The two empty lanes beside us were occasionally occupied by taxis, though at 10 pm, the cars were few. As we walked towards the main gate of campus, discussing our upcoming plans for my two-week stay, cabs and private cars sped past. One car flew by so quickly Deborah made a comment about the stupid goats trying to show off.

I never heard the next car, which I saw only after it had past and sent Deborah’s body a yard flying in front of me. Half of her body was hunched in the trench used for drainage while the other half rested on the sidewalk. When I saw her lying in front of me my first thought was that it was a joke. It was that unreal. I called her name and asked why she was playing around, why had she flung herself onto the ground? It took a few seconds to register the fact that the smashing sound had been the beat of car against flesh.

Students walked towards us at which point I asked for one to call an ambulance. An ambulance? I had been in Accra for all of an hour and it seems I must have hit my head, in forgetting where I was. She might bleed to death waiting for an ambulance.

At this point Deborah raised her head from the ground, blood cascading from her eyebrow. She was coherent enough to say, “Get my phone.” Her I phone had ended up on the other side of the street beneath a tree. The battery was about to die as I frantically searched the contact list to call her roommate. At this point students were coming from all directions to aid us. A car stopped and strangers helped my friend into the back seat.

For the five-minute ride, Deborah shook as her blood soaked the Samaritan’s car seat. She rocked back and forth holding out her arm in shock. I tried to comfort her, ensuring her that she would be all right, even though I secretly panicked.

I sat there waiting in the university hospital, which was about the size of my apartment, trying to distract myself by observing my new surroundings. There was a small boy on a stretcher attached to an IV. Women in vibrant wraps with their children, sat quietly and were not shy about fixating their gaze on me. It was almost completely lightless outside, save the occasional flash of headlights. I faced the door, swatting the malaria inducing buggers that snacked on my flesh.

Within 30 minutes Deborah’s roommate and her friends arrived and greeted me. Everyone wanted to know what had happened. They requested descriptions of the driver and the guilty car. I had been standing there when the car whipped by in a fury and smashed against her rib cage. I had been standing there as it sped down the roadway. I had been standing there when it was stopped a few yards away. And yet I couldn’t remember. Heated arguments were exchanged in Ga among her friends, and it was decided that they knew who the driver was, based on an exchange of information provided by the Samaritan who had driven us to the hospital. I sat there, useless, and wearing someone else’s blood.

An hour later Deborah wobbled out of the little room where a doctor was treating her. They placed a hideous patch above her eye, had wrapped up her arm where the skin had come off around her elbow and her calf. Even though they had injected her with painkillers, she winced with each step. The doctor’s sent her off with a hand full of prescriptions and told her to return in two days to redress her bandages.

Outside the hospital she lay on a pile of rocks and started to cry. Her friends crowded around her and told her not to cry. Crying only makes the pain worse, they said.

It was a miracle that she had been hit by a car and hadn’t broken any bones. Sure, she had stitches all over the place and pain up the wazoo, but she could walk.

Even though she was in pain, the next morning she ring leadered us into going to two other countries. I have never known anyone as warrioresque as Deborah. That next morning we tossed disposable thermometers and bandages into a plastic bag and set off to the market to find transportation to the border.