6. before i was a woman,
even before i was a woman
at work
i am Darling or Sweetheart
i am Love (a goddess?
a cyborg? i didn’t ask
to be so abounding
in subtleties a vending machine
doesn’t have to smile)
these are all things people
have said to me - until
they read the dead
words on my name badge
under which i
am legally employed
i am not taking poetic liberties
except perhaps “dead”
joseph pemberton walks free
american troops still occupy the Philippines
fetching flowers herself
i don’t have time to debate you jack
actually i lied
i’m late for work.
—
On 11th October 2014, Joseph Pemberton, a u.s. marine stationed in the Philippines, murdered a 26 year old Filipina trans woman, Jennifer Laude. At his trial Pemberton deployed the ‘trans panic’ defense. He was released early for ‘good behaviour’ on 2nd September 2020. u.s. troops do not strictly “occupy” the Philippines at present, but there is extensive u.s. military activity there, both in continuity with long histories of u.s. imperialism, which possessed the Philippines as a territory from 1898 to 1946, and also as a valuable strategic outpost in their competition with China over the important South China Sea region. You can read more in these articles from the Communist Party of the Philippines; here and here.
I had been thinking about the relationship between my job in customer service and becoming a woman and working on this poem for a little while, but finished it thanks to the (bad, bad) discourse around Jack Halberstam’s article for Trans Studies Quarterly on Andrea Long Chu, entitled, ‘Nice Trannies’. Don’t read it.