Honey(3)

“I’ll see you guys…later.” And she leaves, in the same rushed wind she arrived.

Yrsa swivels in her chair. “Do you think she’s finally started dating again?”

“I don’t think so.”

Yrsa swivels, thinks. “Maybe she’s pregnant.”

“She was worried about her, um, funding, I hope it’s not that. I’ll message her.” Skye already has her phone out. “Um, aren’t you meant to be in a lecture?”

“Ah shit.”



* * *





She hates them.

She tries to tell herself that she was them once, but it makes no difference. She hates the mix of boredom, doubt, arrogance that stares back at her. The blond flops of hair, Macs covered in stickers, non-discreet texters. She’s explaining—like not all lecturers here will—how the world actually works. Its structures, histories, revolutions, defeats. She’s teaching them the words of changemakers, which they regurgitate onto their laptops, not really hearing, not really listening. They’re scheming for their Firsts, or wondering if they belong here, or flicking Hinge.

Second and third year weedles out the ones who care, but for now she’s stuck with the runt of first years. She catches a yawn and wants to throw her pen at the perpetrator. You only get two lectures on black thought, fucking concentrate.

Next slide: an image of intersecting train tracks.

“Intersectionality. A buzzword I’m sure you’ve all heard. What does it mean?” Her voice carries easily in the lecture hall.

Students cough, look at their shoes, pretend to write. She picks a girl with a Princess Diana haircut.

“It’s about looking at how different issues intersect for a person. Like how class, and race, and gender intersect.”

“And do you know who popularized the term and why?” Yrsa likes to click a pen as she teaches.

Princess Di shakes her head.

“Intersectionality was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw.” She also likes to pace. “Crenshaw came across a case that was thrown out of court where a black woman believed herself to have been denied employment because of being a black woman. The company, the woman claimed, did not employ them. The judge, however, said that the company did employ African Americans and did employ women so it was not discriminating on the grounds of race or gender. What the law was, however, failing to appreciate was that this was a discrimination of both race and gender and the point at which they intersect.”

Yrsa changes her slides to a Venn diagram.

“Expanding this theory, Crenshaw came to see that within an academic framing, class would be studied, or race, or gender, but not the points of their intersection. And as a tip, your essays will be marked down if you don’t consider such intersections.”

She changes slides to the words “Say Her Name” but before she can continue she’s interrupted by a hand. A boy, wearing a dark green jacket, is keen to speak. She gestures for him to go ahead.

“I’ve just got one question,” he says too confidently. “My supervisor recently complained about the over-emphasis that’s placed on intersectionality. He said that unless you mention it you don’t get published. Just asking if you think the theory has gone too far?”

Yrsa nods—pretending to consider this—and sits on the desk opposite the boy. “What do you think?”

“Um.” He wasn’t expecting the question back; his hand taps his knee. “I see why it’s important, but I guess we could run the risk of, um, like being too PC in our academic work. It’s like you’re criticized for not thinking about everything. And maybe there’s a kind of policing of free discourse going on; too much sensitivity and that stops the good critical thinking.”

“What do you mean by ‘free discourse’?” Yrsa stops clicking her pen.

“Um, well, the ability to be able to debate things…freely, I guess.” He has no trouble speaking in front of so many people. “Free discourse is being able to make arguments even if they may offend people. It’s not being told what you can and can’t say.”

“Thank you.” Yrsa smiles. “This is an important point that—”

“Damien.”

“Damien has made.” She jumps off the desk, delighted.

Damien looks pleased with himself.

“Universities have become ‘too woke.’?” She throws her arms up. “Too ‘PC’; freedom of speech is in danger; what will become of academic rigor?” She paces, she loves this bit. “Put your hands up if you take Politics.” Most hands go up.

“Pol 1: ‘The Modern State and Its Alternatives,’?” Yrsa’s pacing. “Set texts: Hobbes, Weber, Hayek, Arendt, Madison, Robinson, Doyle, MacKinnon, Constant, Runciman, Schmitt, Marx. Well done, they squeezed Fanon and Gandhi on there but you do not have a single set text written by a woman of color. What do you reckon, Damien, has no woman of color had anything worthwhile to say about the modern state and its alternatives?”

Damien is looking at his Mac.

“That was a question for you.”

Damien is all but muttering. “No, they have.”

“So, my next question to you is, on this topic of free discourse, who might we say is finding it difficult to speak? Who might we say has always found it difficult to speak?”