Press release by hannah baer, January 2023

[To be read aloud]

women and girls, a defended category, who gets to talk about defended categories, who gets to talk about women and girls, who gets to align themselves with women and girls;

better yet, who gets to look at women and girls, who gets to look inside women and girls, who gets to know what’s happening with women and girls, who gets to decide what happens to women and girls;

better yet still who decides who gets to know what women and girls see, who knows what they look at, who gets to see what they sense, what they perceive, what they suspect, who stares back at them, if you could answer these questions you could make a lot of money, it doesn’t have to be political, women and girls can just be for money;

who is who of women and girls, who’s who of people who look at women and girls, who knows all the women and all the girls, who knows all the people who look at them, who touch them, who think about touching them when the women and girls are not in the room, who hold the women and girls in their minds, who in their minds are holding the women and girls, who are holding themselves in their hands while holding the women and girls in their minds, who is who does this;

even better yet still, who gets to stare at women and girls without worrying about them staring back, who gets to look at them and inside them just as they are, no heisenberg, no observer bias, not a fantasy not a picture, the real thing just as she/they is, a real woman and/or girl, the genuine article, the real deal, the main attraction, straight no chaser, just getting to see inside of her/them, just getting to look at her body and her insides, just getting to identify her/them, just getting to say what kind she is, undefended, just really open to you, looking at her; don’t worry she’s not looking back you can stare, you should stare, look at her slash they, look as closely as you want she can’t hear you or smell you, she’s not looking back at you just look at her, she’s not defended anymore, you’re OK, don’t worry she’s right here for you to look at.

how delicious, how lucky you feel, to see what she sees, to know what she saw, to know, from seeing her, how she sees you, a network of meaning like a cloak for you to wear, what did the women and girls think of me, how did they/the women and girls see me/I/us, how did I get seen and held, how did the women and girls look at me, how did they hold me in their gaze, how did they make me whole by beholding me, how did they make my hole open when they held me, how did women and girls make me whole?