Being mean isn't for (if: $goaround is 1)[everybody.](else:)[(link-goto: "everybody.", "everybody.")]
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(if: $goaround is 1)[It's best practiced by those who understand it as an art form.
These virtuosos live closer to the divine. They're [[queers.]]]}
(text-color: white)[When was the last time you were mean for fun?
When was the last time you were mean for politics?
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(text-color: white)[In college, I met a conservative gay writer [[with HIV.]]
My immune system was [[fighting]] something fluey, I could feel coughs [[growing]] inside me.
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You would think the being gay and having HIV wouldn't coexist very well with being a conservative.
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The word growing makes it seem more dangerous, more alive and easier to agitate.
Easier to give in to.
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In a tiny way, I felt [[powerful]]. Powerful enough to [[kill]] Andrew Sullivan by coughing on him.
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(text-color: "#b536da")[**A.** *adj.*
**1.** Of a person or group of people: having power over others; holding control or influence over people and events, socially or politically influential; mighty.
**2.** Capable of exerting great force (physical or immaterial); having great faculty or ability to do; strong, dynamic.
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(if: $c5 is 0)[(set: $c5 to 1)](text-color: "#b536da")[His immune system wouldn't be able to fight it off.
To be able to kill someone because your immune system works and theirs doesn't, as easily as coughing, that isn't the time for being mean.
When //is// the time for being [[mean]]?
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While his immune system couldn't do much of that.
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When was the last time you wanted to kill someone but chose to be a bitch instead of a murderer?
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The [[white girl]] and I are [[pharmaceutical sisters.]] I take estradiol twice a day and progesterone once a day to supplement my failing ovaries. I take spironolactone to fix the mess my adrenal glands make. The white girl takes these same hormones and androgen blockers for (link-reveal: "other reasons.")[
(transition: "dissolve")[Mainly because her ovaries exist on an [[alternate level of consciousness.]] She's trans.
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(css: "font-size: 250%;")[Divine]
A play-through analysis of queerness and meanness in Myriam Gurba's *Mean.*
(text-color: "#b536da")[With analysis and digital collage-craft by Rose Mostafa.]
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(if: $c6 is 0)[(set: $c6 to 1)](text-color: "#b536da")[They may be sisters, but she remains nameless.
The white girl.
Someone to get high with.
Someone to feel [[inferior to.]]
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]
I was sitting on the carpet, hating my body. To my right, a huge flat-screen played a music video. White girls in swimsuits ran on a beach, showing off their peaches. The white girl's endless legs hung off (link-reveal: "the couch.")[
(transition: "dissolve")[Her fingers (link-reveal: "curled.")[
(transition: "dissolve")[Purple acrylics scratched her thigh, tattoed with the word //misandry// to express her hatred for the male [[sex]].
This tattooed thigh makes her the ultimate (link-goto: "woman.", "womanhood")
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]
]]
(if: $c7 is 0)[(set: $c7 to 1)](text-color: "#b536da")[She still builds a kinship to her even if she doesn't name her. She and the white girl can be sisters in one facet of life, can share the same experience, but at the end of the day her whiteness isn't forgotten.
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]
(if: $c8 is 0)[(set: $c8 to 1)](text-color: "#b536da")[Despite everything, the narrator is never mean to her, especially not for being transgender. She doesn't deny her that personhood.
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(text-color: "#b536da")[The use of "sex" instead of "gender" is interesting, because many transphobes still insist on referring to "biological sex" when talking about a transgender person's gender assigned at birth.
Gurba uses the word sex here to flip this script, especially when the next line proclaims her to be the ultimate woman. She elevates her beyond claims that she could be of the "male sex".
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(text-color: "#b536da")[Gurba also plays with the idea of the ultimate woman, specifically in relation to whiteness and 'Western Civilization'. To hold a trans woman to that standard both to try and undermine it, but also to bring attention to her whiteness, despite any other identities she might have.
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Any time we could, we sat next to each other. Our teachers yelled at us for talking to each other too much, and when we got home from school, we sprinted to our phones so we could call each other and keep talking. I slept over at her house even more than I slept at Frida's.
That's what you do when you [[love]] someone a lot. You spend time unconscious with them.
I loved her when I was five, I loved her when I was six, I loved her when I was seven, I loved her when I was eight, I loved her when I was nine, I loved her when I was ten, I loved her when I was eleven, I loved her when I was twelve, I loved her when I was thirteen. I have loved her up till now, and I have loved her in the [[future.]]
Memories of every mean thing I'd ever done to Ida (link-reveal: "returned.")[
(transition: "dissolve")[When she called me crying to share the score she'd gotte on the Advanced Placement Language and Composition exam, a two, and asked what I'd gotten, I answered honestly: "A five."
Was it an act of [[meanness]] to admit that I'd gotten a perfect score, especially when one of my parents wasn't even a native speaker of the language?
[[Maybe.]]]]
(text-color: "#b536da")[When she's speaking to Ida, is she speaking to her friend, crying on the phone? Is she speaking to something bigger, to her white self with two native English speakers?
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(set: $topic to (a: "power", "privilege", "guilt", "identity"))Being mean is about (link-repeat: "[(print: $topic's 1st)]<topicset|")[(replace: ?topicset)[(set: $topic to (rotated: -1, ...$topic))(print: $topic's 1st)]]
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(text-color: "#b536da")[**End.**
{(if: $topic's 1st is "guilt")[In what ways is being mean rooted in conflict? Why would you be mean to someone you care about?]
(if: $topic's 1st is "identity")[How does Myriam Gurba deal with different identities in Mean, specifically ones she doesn't share? How does that relate to the concept of meanness?]
(if: $topic's 1st is "power")[In what ways does being mean give you power over someone? How is being mean different depending on how much power you hold over the other person?]
(if: $topic's 1st is "privilege")[How does Mean call back on our previous discussions about anger and hatred? Is being mean ever justified?]
}]