Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

I was reading along in Whit Griffin’s new Beard of Bees chapbook, Solomon’s Seal, enjoying the ambiguities, mundane mysticism, and blended mythological motifs when I came upon these lines:

Resident celibates, and those of the feminine
gland, fear not the frotteur, waiting for the parade.
It’s not a feel to worry on.

Isn’t it nice when male poets casually drop references to street harassment and  sexual assault into their work? By addressing “[r]esident celibates” along with “those of the feminine / gland” (so much more clever than just saying women!), he even manages to reference the idea that women who don’t enjoy being hit on and objectified are asexual. Now, I suppose it could be argued that the deliberately odd language is intended to show the statement as absurd, but within the context of the poems, the language isn’t so unusual.

Maybe, then, it could also be argued that the lines are part of building the character of the speaker, showing the rest of the statements to be absurd and problematic. This ignores the reality that the ideas which underly the lines I quoted are unfortunately commonly held: namely, that street harassment isn’t a big deal and that women who don’t feel complimented by it are defective. If such opinions were widely considered repulsive, if the poem were written for consumption by an explicitly feminist audience, these lines could function to impugn the narrator’s other statements. Even still, it would be a problematically unconcerned use of a real issue women face; my pain is not your literary device.

Frankly, it wouldn’t be difficult to read these lines as connected to suggestions of religious and mystical fertility and thus as a celebration of frottage in which consent is irrelevant. In all fairness, however, I think that would be a reading that ignored the general ambiguities of the work.

Perhaps Whit Griffin had some very good intent here that I’m just not seeing. Overall, it seems to me that the uncertainties that make the rest of the work so delightful (and playful) are precisely what make these lines offensive. Too bad they’re offensive to people already oppressed rather than the powerful.

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