what happened to shame? or at least a little guilt?

Ok are we shameless hussies fr? Is it hussies or hussys?

I live in an area where we have what we call a “parking crisis.” It isn’t a real crisis. It just means there are more cars than parking spaces, and we all pay for residential parking permits, but that doesn’t guarantee a space. Some people use their trash cans or orange traffic cones to block off the spot in front of their homes. The white woman across the street (one of few white people around here), however, was placing her trash cans directly in front of the house my partner and I rent in order to reserve a parking spot for herself. Ms. A, the elder woman who runs the block, has told her multiple times that she shouldn’t do that. I quietly moved the cans and parked there the first time but was annoyed the second time. This time, she and her car were both home, and the spot she was reserving was likely for the boyfriend who visits, with his big ass SUV. Wouldn’t be the first time. “Emily,” I said, “please stop putting these trash cans in front of my house. You can reserve a spot in front of your house, but not mine.” She said a dragged out, “EXCUUUSE MEEEE?” as though I was supposed to be scared of her blaccent and her I-date-Black-men-and-got-a-biracial-baby-named-Jayden haircut. “Please don’t put them trash cans in front of my house,” I repeated. She said ok.

One day I pulled up and was coming home from work. She was out there putting the trash cans in front of somebody else’s place. Not my monkeys, not my circus. Another neighbor said, “hey, how you doin, Destiny?” to me and I replied. Then he turned to her, “oh you making trouble,” as she set out the second trash can. I was getting bags out of the backseat, not looking at them, but I heard her say, “I’m empowering us! We need to claim our spots.” None of the spots she’d been “claiming” were hers. In fact, people usually have to stop in the middle of the narrow, one-way street, get out of their car to move the trash cans she’s placed in front of their home, and possibly hold up the cars behind them before they can park. She’s really lucky she has yet to catch someone after a bad day, because people get hurt very badly over stuff like that, even though they shouldn’t. I giggled as I turned my key in the front door. “She better stop before somebody empower her ass into Swiss cheese,” I thought, but didn’t say aloud, as I shut the door and took off my shoes.

I find the brand of empowerment that infringes upon or disregards what other people got going on…laughable and pitiful. And white. But it actually reminded me of something I’ve been noticing for years among some Black upper middle class people who got the ways of white folks despite themselves. And some portrayals of liberated and self-possessed women in recent years. Thank you for the metaphor, Emily.

Two weeks ago, I got to go see Lynn Nottage’s play, Intimate Apparel, at the Arden Theater here in Philly. I’m doing this thing where I’m trying to see more theater shows, but it can be financially punitive. Since this is a small, community theater, I was able to get a seventh row ticket for just $63.

Intimate Apparel is about Esther, an African American woman seamstress in 1905 New York (though she hails from North Carolina), who creates lingerie for high dollar clients. She is saving up to own her own store while carrying on an epistolary relationship with a man named George. She has never met him in person, but he has reached out to her from Panama. She does not read or write, so she has the people who come through her studio read and write letters for her. Initially, she seems reticent to having folks in her business. She seems like the opaque type. She seems to feel at least a little shame about not knowing how to read and write, and a great deal of shame for not writing those love letters herself. She is deceiving this man, who believes he is reading letters from her own heart and pen. Of course, it’s 1905, so it’s not like she’s the only one in the world who was never taught to read. I’m not saying her shame has to do with a belief that her lack of access to literacy is some personal failing. I think she has a problem lying to this man with whom she is trying to connect. She values truth, and she’s ashamed when she doesn’t tell it. I interpret her shame as an attachment to an internal moral code (though, of course our internal codes are socially informed). And that is not the only thing about which Esther comes to express some shame. The Romanian Jewish man who sells her the beautiful fabrics she uses to make these elegant garments expresses to her that he cannot be touched by any woman who is not his wife. Not even a “harmless” brushing of the hands when they exchange goods and money. Esther is intrigued by this man and sneaks a touch one day. Later, she confesses to a friend, “I touched someone…who I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch. I touched them because I wanted to. It was wrong, but I couldn’t help myself.” This moment of confession is a chance to glimpse into Esther’s interiority. Through her shame, we get a chance to see what she values. She seems to value respect for another person’s bodily autonomy and religious beliefs, regardless of how different they are from her own.

The people who read and write the letters for her include Mrs. Van Buren, who is cool people in some ways, but also…acts like what she is in that instance: a kept white woman being serviced by an African American woman who works for her living. On one occasion, she invites Esther on vacation with she and a few of her friends but adds that she would be expected to service the friend group if she comes along. I am most interested in the Black woman character Mayme, who is a sex worker, in part because she is more friend to Esther than client. I think she’s supportive of Esther’s work, but she is not there to patronize Esther. She is the brazen to Esther’s demure, the shameless to Esther’s pious.

A memorable scene is the one in which she sits (slouches, really) down on a wooden chair, spreads her bent legs, and fans her crotch area. The rest of the audience seemed to like that, too. They let out some polite laughs, but I hollered. In this scene, Mayme becomes a sort of feminist icon, or self-possessed woman, at least by the following standards. For one, she reminds us that her pussy is hers. It does not belong to any husband. She is a woman, not a wife. Second, and relatedly, she bares no shame for using her pussy to make her living. Third, she is not ladylike. She pays no mind to the cult of true womanhood (piety, submissiveness, domesticity, purity). Fourth, she likes joy. She reminds Esther to drink some gin when she finds out George from Panama has asked Esther to marry him. She cracks jokes. She seems to like herself. To be self-possessed, like lots of characters I’m drawn to in Black women’s writing. It makes me curious about her.

One man, who Mayme says she has come to love, is married. Of course, this is not the first married man Mayme has fucked. She has to pay her bills. But she isn’t charging this man. She is fucking him because she fancies him. He is married, but she don’t give a damn about that. Esther asks Mayme, “what about his wife?” and she responds, “What about her? I’m sure she just a sorry gal.” When Esther gets to lecturing her about how this man might be the husband of a good and kind woman, Mayme tells her, “I don’t want to hear it!”

Wait. I left out a spoiler and plot twist. Wanna hear it? Here it go: Esther has just realized that the man Mayme is talking about it is her husband, George, who came in from Panama after all those letters to marry her, live with her, and use her for her money. Mayme does not know that the man she is fucking is Esther’s husband. Only Esther knows. Keep up. He hardly calls Esther pretty or fucks her, manipulates her out of her life savings, is lazy and intimidated by her drive and business acumen, but he has her heart by now. And she has just learned he is fucking Mayme and telling her things she wants to hear.

Mayme’s shamelessness has played a role in the spiritual destruction of her good friend. In another scene, maybe some days later, Esther tells Mayme exactly who the man is. Plot twist: Mayme says “maybe I known all along.”

At this point, I sat there disgusted with Mayme. In my academic training, I am taught to approach art non-judgmentally, to consider characters, figures, sounds, shapes, events on their own terms. But on this night, I am not at work or school. I am not teaching. I am in a theater on the Friday after Thanksgiving, with a belly full of chitlins and dressing and enjoying my leisure. On this night, I can wish what I want. So I wish Mayme had some damn shame. I wish this woman who has seen men as nothing but a way to pay her bills up until this point in the play had some shame about giving a man the satisfaction of walking through the world saying he’s got two women on his dick despite all his misogyny and shortcomings as a partner, of which there are many. I wish she had shame about hurting another woman and not even getting paid for it. I could not care less about any threat to the sanctity of the puritanical and already fraught institution that is marriage. And heterosexuality maybe? I do care, though, about her shamelessness when it comes to disregarding another woman, probably because it reminds me of something I have noticed in my real life in this Wild New World (this is what I call progressive Black middle class, upper middle class, and bourgeoisie settings).

Almost a decade ago, I had a conversation with someone I’d just met who told me how much they loved Toni Morrison’s Sula. Many people love Sula, but/and this person said it was their favorite novel because they could relate to the urge to fuck a man who just happened to be in a monogamous relationship with someone else. In this case, it was their close friend’s boyfriend. I was mortified, but mostly surprised she still had all her teeth. Oddly, I’d heard of that exact connection to Sula a few more times. Over the past few years, I have heard some version of this from multiple women who date and fuck men, whether it’s about sleeping with someone else’s boyfriend or husband. I’ve even heard some people say that they have not yet fucked anyone who is in a monogamous partnership with another person, but they have a goal to “break up a home.” It never seems to be revealed as a confession, but rather a matter-of-facts or point of pride that have to do with their journeys to self-possession. In one of the short stories in Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (which I couldn’t put down, by the way) a woman who sleeps with multiple married men shamelessly sets ground rules to let us know she does this on her terms, and not for the love of any of these men. She doesn’t hope, beg, or pine, which I love. She is other but it’s not identity. When I engage in gossip, Sometimes I hear about this person or that person fucking someone’s man. On one occasion, I asked “why would you…say that she’s doing that? That she’s fucking somebody partner?” Someone responded, “why did I say what? That she’s only human?” Of course, not everybody is unashamed, and not everyone makes these kinds of choices knowingly, but the fictional character, Mayme did. Some people are proud and “empowered” during, but shameful years later.

I don’t know what to do with this notion that being both “only human” and being “shameless,”—both of which are celebrated in at least some of today’s mainstream feminist discourse—mean knowingly hurting another woman. It’s not just hurting a woman that irks me, it’s…*throws up in mouth*…doing it in cahoots with a man. Actually, since we’re talking about Black women’s theater performances, the “I am only human, nothing more, nothing less” or “I’m not perfect,” response when considering one’s own misdeeds sounds a lot like the manipulative apology that the ensemble mimics in Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf: “I’m only human, and inadequacy is what makes us human. And if we was perfect we wouldn’t have nothing to strive for. So you might as well go on and forgive me ’cause I’m sorry.” How did some feminists go from scoffing at the ridiculousness of the feckless men in this choreopoem to sounding just like them? Ok but also there is a poem about three women falling in love with the same dude in for colored girls, but they not sorry either but in a different way, and they are all really close and it gets weird.

This isn’t entirely about fucking people’s men. I think the topic of being the other woman is simply a vehicle for me to think about the conundrum of presenting interpersonal betrayal in general as some sort of vehicle to feminist liberation and self-possession. I’m equally as critical of ruthless careerism and isolationism. A caveat is that betrayal implies a connection and responsibility to other women in the first place. I have learned that not everyone who takes up the term “feminist” as a political designation actually likes being around or being in community with women, which makes sense because it’s not about “women.”

Relatedly, it’s also about how greedily, shamelessly, and indiscriminately pursuing one’s desires and disregarding others in the process while arguing that it’s empowering is more reflective of, well, cishetero patriarchal practices than anything progressive. Mayme better be lucky that Esther sees this as a moment for the pair of them to leave George together, and that she ain’t beat her up or go grab a musket or whatever the hell kind of weapons people were using then.

I mean, it’s also about my misandry. When I think about how there are cishet men out there walking through the world thinking to themselves, “I have two women in love with me at the same time, one of whom is so in love with me that she is willing to wait for snatches of my time when I can get away from Woman Number 1, and she is willing to hurt another woman in the process,” I worry I will start throwing up and never stop. Not a single solitary cishet man deserves that satisfaction and ego boost, unless he is the highest paid NBA player, and the Other Woman is on her last pump of lotion or last squeeze of toothpaste.

I’m proud of us (women in general, but if it don’t apply to you, let it fly) for adding shamelessness to the rolodex of feminist values at the level of the personal, of considering it part-and-parcel of self-possession and separating one’s own identity from violation. When I learned about Shameless Hussy Press as a college kid, I was taken by the title alone. It existed between 1969-1989, and had published a work by Ntozake Shange, who was, at that time, my favorite Black feminist thinker. I was so proud to be learning in some kind of tradition of women who dared to call themselves that. I even loved how dated the term “hussy” was; we usually just said hoe or rat during my teen years in St. Louis (I was a teen from 2008-2015). But even in college, I figured shamelessness had to do with how we categorized the things that were done to us by the systems of this wretched place—not the things we did to others, especially when those others are women. Double especially when those others are women with whom we have broken bread. Like, Mayme girl that is your friend.

I am shameless about lots of things that this world has tried to convince me to be ashamed of. I have no shame about being born to a single mother. I have no shame about the fact that my daddy died in jail a few months before I was born. I have no shame about the fact that Black English is the first dialect I ever knew, and the one that feels most comfortable for me, whether I am at work or school or home. I have never had any shame about not growing up with money. My mother taught me about systemic racism very young, and then as a teenager, so much of what I read drilled home the idea that Black poverty really ought to be the shame of the policymakers who are fucking corporations. On days I don’t feel very pretty, I do all the same things I do on the days I do feel pretty. It would never occur to me to not go out in public. I don’t feel any shame at all about the times my appearance strays from traditional standards of beauty. I don’t feel ashamed of my lil mustache, the hairs that grow on my chin, my stretch marks, or what I am told are called “strawberry legs.” I don’t feel shame when I gain weight. I’m not ashamed of having lived with some pretty severe depression in the past. Beyond those larger things that society wants me to be ashamed of, I don’t feel shame, embarrassment, or guilt regarding my honest mistakes.

I feel shame when I am disregarding or do something that I know for a fact can negatively impact another person. I’m not talking about the things I can’t really do much about, like buying things that have been produced unethically, or being a citizen of a country that’s funding a genocide. I am talking about deliberate choices. I feel shame when I am unkind, especially if there was any tiny part of me that knew it was unkind when I did it. I feel shame when I am disregarding. I feel shame when I wield even the modicums of power I do have over someone—yes, even if it’s unintentional. I feel shame when I am greedy and selfish. I feel shame when I am falling short of showing up for someone that I love, when there is no significant barrier to showing up (not that I can even define significant). And while it’s not quite shame, I feel embarrassed when I have miscalculated my time on my way to meet up with someone, and I keep them waiting for me for any longer than fifteen minutes. Of maybe that’s just annoyance toward self? It’s probably not dogmatic like that. Some of these things that bring me shame have to do with being socialized to center others above myself as a girl and now a woman, but some have to do with the beauty of being raised in world of interconnectedness among women, and one in which my oldest, first, and best friends have always been girls and women. Which has nothing to do with being immune from internalizing misogyny or something. My shame comes from failing to embody my own values. Some of those values are socially derived, but I know which ones are still mine.

At the end of this scene, I shift gears. Mayme says to Esther, “And I ain’t worthy of your forgiveness” and I am grateful. Some people might see it as groveling, but I think of it as a moment in which Mayme takes some accountability and is honest. I don’t see “not worthy” here as a value judgement any more than I see “not wife” as a statement of fact. Maybe she isn’t worthy of Esther’s forgiveness, but Esther forgives her anyway. After all, it is not Mayme’s fault that the man on whom she’s spent her life savings never loved her. He’d have cheated with someone else if it wasn’t Mayme. That’s who he is. But if Mayme is her own feminist hero, or at least, her own self-possessed woman, knowing that she might not be deserving of forgiveness does not preclude her from self love. Mayme, the character in this play who sat with her legs a full foot apart toward the beginning of the play can still, at this point in the play love herself “fiercely” (in the words of the women in for colored girls) while also allowing herself the “only human” range of emotions that include shame. She doesn’t say she hates herself because she isn’t worthy of forgiveness, just like she doesn’t hate herself for existing outside of bourgoiesie and white notions of woman in terms of how she meets her material needs as well as her status as a Black woman and not a wife in 1905. Basically she does her big one when she expresses some level of shame.

I once heard the distinction between shame and guilt described as, “guilt says ‘I have done something wrong,’ but shame says, ‘I am wrong.’” Sometimes I feel one or the other, and sometimes I feel both. Shame is not a deterrent of self-love or self-possession, for me. I don’t need to think of myself as inherently good to like myself, and I am honest enough with myself to know that when I am disregarding, it’s not simply because I’m “only human.” Sometimes, I have done something wrong. Other times, I am wrong, which is to say, sometimes I notice that I am consistently or habitually doing something that runs counter to my values, knowingly or unintentionally. Whether I have done something wrong, or I am wrong, I am my favorite person and the muse of much of my curiosity. Basically, I rock with Mayme and Esther and them as sisters by the end of all this, but not in a romantic way.