tyn 8/5

i'm thankful for a year or so later, when i sent my long distance friend s copies of my white boy hip hop covers of e-40's "tell me when to go" and jay z's "girls, girls, girls" and "hola hovito," she very gently but firmly told me about the importance of recognizing and resisting the misogyny that permeates a lot of hip hop, which was an issue i had never thought of. i'm thankful that i unthinkingly spit the n word in those covers, which is something that makes me cringe now but was something i had never thought about being inappropriate back then. i'm thankful to remember doing karaoke years later with a friend who is nigerian and thankful that before i did my first song, i listened to and noticed her skipping over the n word a song she was singing and, despite being drunk, took this as a clear communication of what i should do when i did my song. i'm thankful that in the first song i did, "99 problems," when i skipped the first n word, she seemed to visibly relax a little and smiled at me. i'm thankful to have done young money's "bedrock" in the same manner later in the evening, which is the best karaoke experience i've had.

i'm thankful that early in our relationship, d and i went to dinner with another couple and our friend c to the local irish pub. i'm thankful for the other couple, who were our good friends, even though that evening they were annoying me by monopolizing the conversation, such that i was just sitting there bitterly eating mediocre fish and chips. i'm thankful that i got increasingly annoyed and that when i finally got an opportunity to say something, i was telling some story about d and addressed her as "this bitch." i'm thankful for the moment of dead painful silence that followed, which was then broken by our friend c giving me a dark glare and saying "d, you have my permission to slap him." 

i'm thankful to have apologized (though probably not well enough) to d when we got back to my apartment after the dinner and thankful that she accepted it. i'm thankful to not have ever used the word "bitch" in anger again, but i'm thankful that the issue recurred some time later when she got made when i referred to some chocolate chip cookies i loved as "slutty," which i thought was an interesting and poetic way to describe the overwhelming buttery sweetness of the cookies but which d described was using a demeaning and offensive word that hurt her and other women. i'm thankful that around this time, we also had another conversation about the b word in hip hop, where i used the totally played arguments about it, because of its syllabic and phonemic composition, its way of functioning as the glue holding flow together, meant that it had evolved from a specifically misogynist slur into a unisex insult, the equivalent of "asshole" or "motherfucker."

i'm thankful that d is a strong person and she did not let my "logical" argument, which i kept repeating that day with small differences, drown out the personal pain and humiliation she felt when she heard me or others use the word "bitch." i'm thankful that eventually i stopped being a stupid little shithead and finally heard her and stopped using the word "bitch" altogether. i'm thankful that at first, this seemed to be a huge diminishment of the range of my personal expression that i was having to force myself into in order to appease her, but thankful that stupid selfish feeling quickly faded and i realized it's actually totally possible to be as profane and cutting and funny as i want to be without using a word that is specifically targeted at demeaning women. 

i'm thankful that now when i hear others use the word, in conversation or in art, i experience a small tinge of its wrongness, of the anger and hatred baked into it, which is not the same as what it must feel like to hear it as a woman but feels like a kindred emotion. i'm thankful that not liking to hear the word hasn't prevented me from listening to hip hop, even though it's knitted into the lexicon of even generally thoughtful and progressive rappers. i'm thankful, though, that i am aware of it whenever i hear it in a new song i love, since when i hear a new song i love, i usually think about sharing it with d but then think, "why does this great song have to have this hurtful word in it that will, to whatever degree, diminish her enjoyment of it?" i'm thankful that after the conversation where d changed my mind about using the word, the next time i was home visiting my family, my dad and brother were using the word casually for some reason and expected me to do the same and i'm thankful i said "i don't say that word anymore" and i'm thankful that didn't make me feel small or weak but instead made me feel strong.