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Queer women are tired of hearing “it’s just a phase”
SAMANIA (Samira Mahboub and Ania Catherine) decided to call-out the less visible and seemingly innocent discourses around romantic love between women based on their experience hearing comments such as ‘I don’t get it, I’m just worried about you, It’s just a phase’. PHASE has two prongs: a SAMANIA film shot/edited by Delaram Pourabdi and a poem by Ania Catherine.
‘It’s just a phase.’ Few women haven’t heard these words regarding their attraction to or relationship with another woman. PHASE is a response to this comment. There has been a recent and dramatic increase in the visibility of female-female relationships within the media. Subtle and implicit forms of the delegitimation and ridiculization of relationships between women are omnipresent. As French intellectual Michel Foucault has written, power’s ‘success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms.’ PHASE highlights the less visible (and therefore underestimated) and yet still powerful forms of heterosexism. Increased media presence should not be conflated with sexual equality. The social acceptability of such comments needs to be challenged, as these subtle forms of discrimination could be easily eliminated if people were made more aware of their harm.
PHASE (poem)
something is wrong
this is temporary
sweet but not serious
curious but not aware
ill but arousing
a beautiful phase
drowning in tears, not their own
fleeting, confused
oscillating between feeling and numbness
most depictions of confused women don’t reflect confused women
they reflect a confused gaze
a dirty lens
the dirt is invisible
it’s called discourse
a cocktail of history, stories, and science
accounts sans accountability
phase is your film, of which we wanted no part
what is seen through this frame is not reality
it is a view
a view that won’t define or lasso our experience
this gaze is not required
this gaze may seem loving
this gaze deceives you
what is a phase, is this gaze
not our experience
we politely exit
in our absence, your frame becomes visible
see you in the future
by Ania Catherine
www.bysamania.com/phase
SAMANIA
SAMANIA (Samira Mahboub + Ania Catherine) is an artist duo. They met while studying at the London School of Economics Gender Institute, and combine their creative work with academic research (gender, coloniality, sexuality), translating sociopolitical subjects into a digestible visual form.