Poetry

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.

samania_1_sisterhood

 

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