An Ugly Carnival
It's all the same
I woke in the dark hours of the morning, reaching for a Hamilton lyric. I couldn’t get the words. It wasn’t even an obscure lyric, or remembering how many troops were in New York Harbor,1 just the words that slot neatly between “I am not” and “my shot”. Hamilton 101.
In my state of quasi-consciousness, I panicked. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t remember the words to bridge the span.
I’ve felt the same way all week about writing this essay. I keep reaching, trying to bridge the space between what’s inside my head and what’s outside of it, between what I feel and what I know.
I tried words. I tried other words. Nothing got me there. All of them seemed wrong.
I wrote by hand. I do that when I’m stuck or caught in a loop of anxiety or rage or just trying to clumsily bludgeon my way through a block.
We are all Renee Good to some degree, I wrote, one comment, one gesture, one slight—imagined or real—from having violence heaped on us. Colonization, oppression, assault, death. At the hands of men, or groups of men, or countries who feel entitled to take whatever they want by force.
It’s all the same.
The government has now unleashed its hounds and given them keys to American cities, a battalion of basement incels, aggrieved boys, and costumed men who shout and posture and chest thump while fondling their guns.
I imagine them locked in a room bright with fluorescent lighting, an endless loop of Indigo Girls and Taylor Swift crackling through a shitty Bluetooth speaker on a formica table, all while photos of green-haired women and brown-skinned bodega clerks flash in front of them, black Sharpie words across their faces.
Leftist-terrorist scum! Antifa Wine Mom! Fucking Bitch!
They stroke the erect AR-15s between their legs, faster and faster, until dark oil stains their fingers. Then, like a pack of junkyard dogs, they’re released, the taste of violence sharp on their tongues and the scent of uppity women in their noses.
This is it, boys, this is war.
My brain keeps reaching for the bridge to make sense of all of this. What are the words? How did we get from then to now, there to here? I’m whirring through the things I know, and the things I’ve learned, and trying to connect the two.
I can’t make anything fit. Or maybe everything fits, and that’s the problem.
When France was liberated at the end of WWII, more than 20,000 women were accused of “collaboration horizontale”. Many of them were women who lived on the margins of society. Many were sex workers, many were raped. Some traded compliance for food to keep their children alive.
A lot of them were simply women.
They were dragged to town squares in slips and chemises. There they stood in bras and girdles, held fast while tondeurs—men with clippers—shaved their heads.
All it took was a finger pointed, a whisper, an accusation. And let’s be honest, where women are concerned, that’s all it’s ever taken.
Did they feel emasculated by occupation, those men? Humiliated? Is that why they turned on their own women? Or was it just another day that ends in y?
In war, women are raped by the enemy, and then they’re often raped by the victor as well.
Some of the tondeurs were collaborators themselves, deflecting attention by accusing others. Among the thousands of women who were accused, there must have been plenty who had done nothing more than refuse the advances of Jaques from down the Rue.
Maybe she laughed at him, rebuffed his advances. Said non, merci. Je ne suis même pas fâché contre toi, mec.2
And now here Jaques was, with a mob, an accusation, and some clippers.
J’ai vu Goody Proctor avec le diable. Putain de salope.
At Fox News, a man said, “There’s a weird kind of smugness...in the way that some of these liberal white women interact with authority.”
That’s not a coded message; it’s a locomotive whistle warning.
You’re skating on thin ice, my father used to say.
Hey, White women? You’re skating on thin ice.
There are White women, especially the ones who drape themselves in stars, stripes, and blood red hats, who feel safe in some salt circle of White male protection.
I wonder if anyone’s told them it’s not protection as much as ownership, that it’s not protection as much as it’s staking a claim, it’s access to their bodies, labor, and obedience. I wonder if anyone’s explained that protection is always conditional.
Stay in your lane. Toe the line. Cower when expected, tremble when told. Comply, or you too will end up in the town square, head shaved. Or bleeding out on a Minneapolis street.
In MAGA America, if you don’t play along, you’ll quickly become the prey. Fucking bitch.
We are all Renee Good. Greenland is Renee Good.
They take what they want. A country on the tip of the Arctic, our labor, a body to plough and seed, a life.
The idea of ownership through forced compliance—of women, of Black bodies, of countries and peoples, it’s all rooted in the same system of White entitlement, White supremacy, patriarchy. It’s all the same.
It’s all the same.
Some women collaborate willingly—I’ve never claimed that all women make good choices. Some wear hoop earrings and ten-gallon hats that throw dark shadows on faces pumped full of Juvederm.
Those women think they’re redefining the outlines of the salt circle, emboldened by the assurance of protection. Maybe women in France did too. Maybe all those who point fingers at their neighbors do too—in Salem, Germany, or Minneapolis, it doesn’t matter. Maybe they gambled that compliance and collaboration would save them.
It never does. There is always someone happy enough to point a finger at a woman, that fucking bitch.
I saw Goody Noem with the devil.
Ok, that one might be true.
Renee Good.
Greenland.
Smug wine moms.
It’s all the same.
Burned, hanged, shorn, shot three times in the head. Invaded, colonized, pillaged, exploited.
It’s all the same.
Deep down, I believe that most women know that we’re only ever one comment, one laugh, one refusal removed from harm. Sometimes, it’s at the hands of people who claim to love us. Sometimes strangers. Sometimes, men with clippers in the town square, and other times, men with guns.
"Throwing away.”
I am not throwing away my shot.
Those were the words.
They came to me as soon as I opened my eyes.
Friends, it’s been a lot, I know. I don’t even know if this essay makes sense, but it’s all I’ve got left in the tank this week. Last week, I forgot to tell you that if you subscribe before the end of January, there’s 75% off the annual rate forever and ever, amen. It’s about the support more than anything, which is always appreciated. Forever and ever, amen. Stay safe. xx dmh
32,000 troops in New York Harbor
This is straight from Google Translate—there is every chance it’s wrong. And if you read this and speak French, please reach out with the correct translation!
I'm not throwing away my shot either, I finally realized what it is.
I know I'll die one day, as all of us will. I have no idea when that day will come. No one really does. So, until that day, I'm living out loud, speaking my truth. I don't mind being a fucking bitch, not at all, at least where the Proud Boys are concerned. Nothing I do (even if I tried to play their game) would make that label disappear. I'm good with it.
They can't shame me by shaving MY head. I did it to myself for over 20 years, joyfully.
Nasty woman, fucking bitch. Burned at the stake, shot in the head. Tim Walz says women are led into porta-potties by ice and there is screaming inside. I wake up each morning screaming inside. Breathe, touch, see, hear, smell and ground. Am I safe in this moment? Don’t spiral, don’t spin out. Keep it together somehow to have hope in overcoming. I go through my days in shock and offer kindness.