Yasmine Tadross

I am just a fetish, When a white boy tried to play with my trauma in order to have sex with me He told me that I was beautiful for my light brown skin as he never wanted to give me pleasure  because like capitalism, he commodified my brown body for an orgasm and left me vulnerable on the white, cracked sidewalk    I am just a fetish, when straight cisgender white and women of color only care about my lipstick How I look on stage, but not when I talk they wonder how I look, but not how I am going to get home tonight  When I tell them that people say I am ugly, disgusting, and a fa***t they just say that I am beautiful and move on to the next thing as if I am worthy of my own violence I am just a fetish, When people compare my womanhood to Caitlyn Jenner  Even though she is like the countless other white women  who told my mother to only speak English I am just a fetish, When I am up on stage  Heart on my sleeve tears coming down my eyes  A

I feel like you all don't actually see me I live in a stream of double consciousness in which I take charge on one end but I become obedient when I am with you all I am full of rage, impatient, and invisible The latter occurs even when I am fully myself I understand that emotion is not actually expressed within our dynamic We swipe everything under the rug and hope that it will cover the baggage and the trauma When the pile gets to full, we just find a bigger rug to hold everything in Sorrow is a western thing Because westerners have extracted our resources I am raised in a Coptic Christian Egyptian Household, Where I am told to embrace being male, heterosexual, whitewashed and having my face stuffed with food Go to church every Sunday and talk to a priest who has hypnotized my parents to thinking that they are the reason I am an Afro- Egyptian Brown Queer Hairy Transgender woman I don't want to go to church to disappoint you, but because I am traumatized by the d