Due to chronic flooding, the seminar was rescheduled to the unisex lavatory. It’s like they’re devaluing everything the women’s studies department stands for. Half-inch of water on the floor, no air conditioning, sweltering heat, fecal odors…can we please minimize the disruptions? It’s a fairly spacious lavatory, but the ongoing administrative genocide makes for a real shitshow of internalized structures of racism and patriarchy that the department chair, Alexander “Buck” Buchanan (he/him), has to deal with while transitioning.

“Contrary to all the hysterical centrist bed-wetting…” says Lauren (she/her), today’s presenter, “…ending ‘gender imbalance’ in global climate fora is not a call for gendercide. It’s merely a call for sex-neutral mass sterilization of men articulated within a culture of radical disrespect for their neo-toxic imaginary by denying, fetishizing, or appropriating marginalized identities as a way to frame recognition of attractive ghetto land pedagogies and gender-based vagino-rectal alternative geographies, and through this lens I, ahem, interrogate negative discourses to validate alliances between antiableist activistship and transabled people to engage genuine allies in becoming disabled as a strategy of authentic allyship…”

Uh oh, commotion at the entrance. Noisy group pushing their way in. OMG, it’s Peggy Brock, the transwoman/transablist icon with her head surgically reattached in the non-normative direction. Quick, check her Twitter account… pronouns: xe/xyr/xem, 80K followers. Wikipedia: “Xyr published work has been described as wonky, provocative and profanity-laced.” Xe has an eye-popping blonde rocking it on a Dolce & Gabbana leash, purring against xyr leg. Xe’s going to make a statement, but a pushy white dickwad in a VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA T-shirt is angling for a selfie with xyr. “Please. Xe doesn’t have time for that now,” says a transwoman of color with armpit stains. Zhe shoves the dickwad aside, compassionately, but he gets right up in zir face, filming with his shitty off-brand phone, yelling, “Don’t touch me! Do NOT touch me! This is America! This is America! This is A-MER-ica!” Zhe doesn’t blink. Zhe used to be an MMA fighter. Has 2600CC, 42NN breasts. “I like my feminism ‘in your face.’ Don’t like it? I’ll kick your fucking teeth in with my Ph.D in astrophysics.”

“We’re shutting this seminar down,” says Dr. Brock. “I received some disturbing info this morning. Documenting your history of trafficking in TERF talking points.”

“W…wha…what are you talking about?” Lauren’s hands are shaking.

“I’m not going to dignify your bigoted vomit with repetition.”

A swollen stump kicks her laptop off the table. Banner unfurls: NO FREEDOM FOR HATE SPEECH, militant fist, transfeminism symbol, chanting, tambourines…

“Your presence is threatening the physical safety of transpeople.”

SHUT IT DOWN SHUT IT DOWN through a megaphone…right in Lauren’s ear.

Now, the experiences you’ve had interacting with Lauren have been quite collegial and intellectually fruitful in terms of critiquing the silencing of ecofeminism and empowering the environmental thematic of lesbian habitus and subversive performativity of butchness. Together, you’ve interrogated the discourses of fallopian atonal music, developed through co-creative synthesis within the contours of the womanist abuse litmus test, and helped interrogate the femininity of shadow identities through the lens of gyno-hospitable, lesbian systems…but wait…they’re calling out Lauren??…you feel nauseous, need to process the situation…

Lauren picks her soggy, broken laptop off the floor and exits to vuvuzela horn blasts.

Someone is pulling on your sleeve. It’s a little girl with a dark full beard. She’s gesturing out the window…

“Those clouds are the souls of dead people,” she chirps as veiny whisps of black drift across a field of leaden gray.

People are staring at you. Glowing screens. Darting eyeballs. Ohmygod they’re scouring Lauren’s social media. Your heart pounds. Instinctively, you reach for your phone. Oh shit! They’re crippling your phone with another mandatory update. You tap tap tap feverishly ohmygod breathe need air rush outside.

You find yourself in a surge of humanity. Is this a protest? Or the nine-hour line to speak to a state employee about unemployment benefits? A Black protestor rams a pine tree through the window of a patrol car. Brave Nova Scotian pygmy communities invoke their ancestors to discharge inherited traumas while Wiccan auxiliaries cast spells in support of ecosexuals brawling with firefascists hosing down the inferno of the racist 44th Romance Novel Awards ceremony. “Check your fucking privilege,” says a community patrol robot. “Can I please get four cans of soup? My daughter at home has cancer,” sobs a woman wearing a T-shirt that says “I dump in my sleep.” A Jewish hedge fund billionaire twerks for votes with his surgically-simulated fat Black ass on the hood of a cop car in ethno-pubic plushy slippers. Enormous things swoop by with savage cries and clanking wings, urinating on our democracy. Mayor Ryan Joker Feehily himself stated that Ford’s remarks were deliberately divisive and incredibly unhelpful amidst an FBI investigation into an alarming spate of defaced vinyl media logo walls for celebrities. “We’re the only major city in the country that hasn’t ratified anorexia as a human right!” says Cheeto Wang-Xiddigaha, tearing up live from her Hollywood Hills estate. TrayvonCard is proud to celebrate Black voices in the LGBTQIA+ community by joining forces with NYCPride and GLAAD for this weekend’s Black Queer HIV Positive Migrant Amputee Town Hall, hosted by Boob the Grinning Peacock Feather Dildo Attachment and Oranjelo. An indigenous trans athlete in a top-fuel racing iron lung calls out an ethno-uppity East-Asian Karen with knee-high teal moccasins and saggy, withered tits. Why are you attacking that man? So what if he shot someone in the face. Pedophiles suffer from massive normative compulsory heterosexuality; Google it, you fucking asshat. Meanwhile, hale and hearty homeless folk traffic illegal animal protein patties from tents in the water, synthetic human meat cultured from aborted fetal stem cell patties frying in the corner of their glistening irises. Do I really have to point out that simulated Black women’s hair has no place in our fleet of diversity fart enforcement cyborgs?! Donie Hazzan Butterfeld-Gonzales would have turned 28 years old today!!! Ohmygod flooding has taken out the Netflix data center, nation running out of frozen pizza, breakdown of the meat and poultry supply chain, mall workers pressing their hungry faces against a smeared Plexiglas window, amputations skyrocketing, cities struggling under horror movie conditions, hearses queued up for a mile to enter the cemetery, a runny dark hole dripping in the sky…

Phone vibrating…it’s your stress app: “You need to eat. You’re not going to sit there and enjoy your snack. You know what? Sit. Sit somewhere, eat your potato chips, take a nap, put your phone away, and think of your feelings about all this stuff for a little while. You need to sell more blood so you can afford to address another social problem.” You’re drowning in debt, no savings, no job security, no healthcare. Committee chair (fae/faer/faers) texts you: “Why u complain? U have box 2 sleep in, no?” Took a 70 percent pay cut to keep your job. “We need a ‘can do’ attitude,” said the Indian subcontractor (he/him) who called at 3:17 AM, explaining how an AI would interview you over Skype, scoring your facial expressions, eye contact, microtremors…

“Are you okay?” It’s Becca (fee/fur/fizz), a transwoman adjunct from your department. “You don’t look so good.”

“I think I need something to eat,” you say.

“I’ll go with you,” fee gently strokes your back and smiles. You mentally file the assault for future reporting to the disciplinary committee.

You end up at McDonald’s. You know well enough to stay clear of the muddy malaria-infested tracts of the franchise. Place is full of emaciated kids with ill, hollow eyes. One shits in a bookbag. “What are you staring at, whore?” says the child. “Murder your racist cishet parents, smother them with a pink backpack,” the kid says with a mouthful of filed teeth, and you apologize for being offensive. McDonald’s deserves a lot of credit for opening itself up to the homeless community like this.

You order a McPride at the automated kiosk (fuck capitalism, of course, but one percent of every sale* goes to Stop Trans Uyghur Organ Harvesting in Xinjiang). Rainbow receipt comes out blank. You wait patiently for 30 minutes, but no food. Must be a computer glitch. You try to sort it out, but the cashiers don’t speak English or Spanish or even hand gestures. They’re surly and menacing, but hey, who wouldn’t be, given the ongoing capitalist repackaging of homophobic fascism to drive slave labor for inbred white supremacist hedge fund managers perpetrating the greatest racist patriarchal genocide of the world’s livestock in history?

Eventually, they hand you a box. You open the buns, but it’s not soy, it’s a piece of blue fish skin, dental floss, broken glass, and a Snickers wrapper. You gingerly peel everything off the thick layer of mayo…trying to process what’s going on…animal protein in the fish skin is definitely problematic…

“You’re not going to eat it? Here, I’ll split it with you.” Becca wolfs down about three-quarters of the sandwich, almost without chewing. Also takes a long sip of your shake.

“I’m sooo exhausted,” fee says. “They’ve got me as Harassment Ombudsperson for the Secretary of Diversity Consultants’ Gender Equality Award. Chairing the Drafting Committee for Migrant and Refugee Hairstyle Authenticity Enforcement Guidelines. Helping a schizophrenic gay couple from Burkina Faso migrate to Des Moines. Mentoring a family of undocumented sex workers from rural Guyana. Trying to invest in the Nigerian solar power industry. And that’s all out of my own pocket! Plus, I’ve started wearing a combination of one regular shoe and one huge ski boot as a statement against patriarchy. What do you think? The boot’s artisanal bioplastic. See?” Fee takes a duck-lipped selfie. “Do you think my makeup looks okay?”

“Yah, you look great…” you say, liking the photo on Instagram. “Likes” indicator already at 11. Is that possible?

“Hate to be a pest,” says Becca, “but could you help me grade some papers this weekend? I’m totally swamped. Probably should’ve managed my time better, but…could you grade like 150 term papers for me by Saturday morning? I’m totally desperate. I’ve got a liposuction appointment on Wednesday and I can’t lose this job.”

Saturday morning?? WTF, It’s Friday evening. Fur face is vibrating with tension…cheerful eyes, big nerd glasses, hoop earrings, over-whitened teeth, “I’LL FUCK YER SKULL” neck tattoo, septum ring. The garish redness of fur lipstick, the nerdy precision of it, stabs into your brain.

“I’d like to help, but I’m really swamped myself…”

“Why did you delete your response to Lauren’s thread?”

“W…what? I didn’t…”
“Yes, you did. I archived a screenshot.”

“…”

“Don’t get me wrong, Kylie. I want to be on your side on this. But any reasonable person would interpret your ‘Like’ of Lauren’s post as violent transphobia…”

“Becca, please… as a woman I…”

“Nope, nope, ouch. I need you to stop right there. We’re going to have to unpack those assumptions a bit. Do you realize that when I go out, I literally have to hide my exceptionally large foreskin with special undergarments because I know bigoted feminists like you and Lauren will respond in a transphobic manner? I took a 23andme test, and the results came back with only one X chromosome. Do you know how erased that made me feel? Those services have zero accommodations for trans people. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You can’t imagine the demeaning struggles we transpeople go through…”

Becca’s real name is Frank Berglund, you recall.

“Please, I’m so sorry. I really am. You’ve got to believe me. It definitely won’t happen again. I ‘Liked’ that post over eight years ago. My mom had just passed from breast cancer and I was coping with severe trauma from a series of sexual assaults by my…”

“Can we not derail the conversation to your issues? You and Lauren did immeasurable damage to the values our women’s studies department stands for, the institutional reputation we’ve worked incredibly hard to foster, and we simply can’t stand by in the face of these concerning issues. Lauren brazenly spewed hate speech. Her private messages used dehumanizing hate slurs like ‘tranny’ and ‘dickgirl.’ And now she’s been jailed without bail on hate crime charges by the university police…”

“Please, please, I’m genuinely sorry. I had no idea. What I did was insane…stupid…inappropriate…incredibly offensive…”

“Well, that’s an attempt at a real apology, I suppose…still far from sufficient given the harm you’ve inflicted. Do you consider yourself an ally of transpeople?”

“Of course!!”

“Then you need to start acting like one. Your foremost responsibility as a cis white menstruator is to shield transgirl bodies from the violence of the cis gaze. It’s incumbent on you to actively refuse complicity, name what’s going on, subvert cis authority, and tell the truth at whatever cost. Your job is to dismantle cis institutions and never allow cis womanhood to reassert itself. You have to do the work.”

“That’s all I fucking do is work!!” you say, bursting into tears. You’re about to vomit from the stress.

“Not going to cry your way out of this one, sweetie,” says fee, chewing and smacking furr lips. “You literally advocated for the torture and murder of trans youth. Now, I’m an exceptionally empathetic human being, so I’m not going to dox you, although I probably should, and it wouldn’t be my fault if you were terminated. These decisions are always made in the best interests of the university and its students, in accordance with university policy.”

Becca eats your last French fry.

“You’ve got a lot of amends to make,” says fee. “Grading these papers will be a good exercise. My students have an excellent grasp of transphobia, and I’ll be watching closely to see what you bring to that conversation.”

Becca slides the thick block of papers across the table. You load the papers into your backpack, manage a wan smile, and take your tray to the trash.

An attractive blonde girl cuts in front of you at the trash bin. Fucking white women confident in their physical appearance make you so fucking enraged. Of course you like what you look like, you fucking white supremacist Barbie. Fucking malignant Nazi lookist assertions that people with severe genetic disorders like Down’s syndrome are somehow unfit for responsible management positions in the workplace…

Back outside, Chinese refugees with Louis Vuitton shopping bags hold their noses, wading to their rose-gold Lamborghini SUV through a cliff of sewage foam. A Black boy radiantly smiles, tucking in his white tank top after crapping on the sidewalk. Old people lined up in the water, trying to access medical care. Ladders up to the second floor of the hospital because the first floor is now a lake. A Latinx drug dealer fires a warning shot at a man with a cast, ordering him to stop climbing the rusted-out air conditioning racks.

A tall Black man approaches with bloodshot eyes and complicated pink sneakers. He pinches your cheek, reeking of alcohol. “Gimme your phone,” he says. You hand it over. Grinning, he gives your cheek a final bruising twist and kicks you in the stomach. For an instant, you feel a flash of anger and resentment. Thankfully, you’ve trained yourself to spot that sort of shitty, white supremacist ideation. As a privileged white woman, you need to get out of your comfort zone. The climate crisis isn’t about the environment. It’s about civilizational justice, and nothing is going to change until we confront head-on the intersectionality of frames around race, gender, and ecophobia and engage in recovery strategies centered on self-determination of Black bodies in ecoracist environmentally degraded environments.

Night coming on…flickering signs. As always, you draw inspiration from the 100-foot-tall Disney Magic® hologram of Harriet Tubman at the end of the block. One can only marvel at its transformational ecstatic power. A tear runs down your cheek, then another. African woman takes her rightful place, smiling and triumphant, atop the garbage heap of history! You raise a militant fist!

Granted, the horrendous stink from the Georgia-Pacific biomass plant masked by the hologram makes the neighbors ill, but hey, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Priority #1 right now is climate justice. Obviously, no one is in favor of mass Form-206ing all arrestees in accordance with Title XVI, but VRFEs on the DRE registry have engaged in a pattern of behavior. An overwhelming majority of the public supports common-sense sentencing of domestic terrorists who have confessed and pled guilty. Certification of the permissibility of EIP during lawful Schedule 6 hate crime interrogations was mandated, with appropriate LPR(3)(a) safeguards, by the BIPOC Community Safety Plenary, Fielding v. United States, and a blue ribbon committee of stakeholders from commerce, academia, media, and the intelligence community. Spare me the phony Oh mY GoD ThEy HaVe RigHts bullshit. Conversion of output wastes to carbon-neutral syngas is currently being phased in to mitigate carbon emissions and fuel environmentally friendly natural gas vehicles providing free bus service for underprivileged preschool children in inner-city neighborhoods.

Ah, home sweet home…outside, the sounds of muffled rain. You apply a cleansing foam to wash away the day’s filmy residue. Rinse and dry thoroughly, pat pat pat because you’ll be chemically exfoliating. Pooch out your cheeks like a chipmunk and rinse. Then a cleansing stick to melt away blackheads, rinse again, buff dry, apply toner and moisturizer for your crow’s feet and eye bags, and pat pat pat to absorb.

Now slosh down three Adderall with a glass of wine and stare at the pile of papers you have to grade, waiting for the pills to kick in.