Trijntje van de Wouw
On National Poetry Day 2022, sociology student Trijntje van de Wouw was elected as the new campus poet. Sometimes she incorporates an activist message into her poems, but there is always room for own interpretation. "I want to entertain and touch people with my poetry and spoken word. Questioning and explaining things, preferably making the listener think," says Van de Wouw. She writes about her own life: "I want to create recognition by making myself vulnerable in my writing."
Campus poem: Cz115 binnenshuis – Campus leven
Poetry by Trijntje van de Wouw
Genderfluid
I don't want breasts on Monday
and no beanies on Saturday
I want to be your girlfriend on Wednesday
And dance for you on Monday - night
I want to be your person on Thursday
Nails in my hips on Sunday
and be free on Tuesday
I want to flow
I kept my water for too long in this bath called: society
It had no more room for my roots; nor for what I seemed to be; nor wanted to be
It made me believe that being a woman
was just reality
You’re a woman, that’s just what you be,
and that is making you, once you shaved your legs and be not too loud;
God damn delicately
That I had to accept a hand on my buttocks out of good decency;
that I had to be feminine; that I should work harder for my legacy and that I should show them some skin, but not too much and not too voluntarily because then they would do bad things to me
My bath is now a sea
And if you want to swim in this you ask, and no is no
You see
My bath I now a sea
It flows and flows
sometimes I’m a woman
Sometimes I feel non-binary
You see
My bath is now a sea
Sometimes I feel just like then
When I was 7, flowing through swimming pools with a swimming trunk and a naked chest
When a girl looked at me and asked:
are you a boy or what else?
It was then that I realized I wasn't what they expect
That girls should not look like this; like me; like that
You see
My bath is now a sea
Since a few years is the new the old me
I am and I flow between genders and away from those genders
I thank the people before me who taught me about gender and the binary
Before I was ready
You see
My bath is now a sea
All I want to say is that this set me free
I flow on my path
You see
My bath is now a sea
The contemporary library
Get a coffee
Meet a friend
Finish the first chapter
Go to the toilet
Get a coffee
Meet more friends
Finish a few more chapters
Go to bed
A place where old legends live on the walls and through the books
Where digitalization is key - and sustainability takes root
Where we meet people at the coffee corner
And make mountains move
To Be Woman –International women’s day
To get to your victory
But not without the obstacles that make you feel the dirt under your feet, that make you crawl under itchy nets and jump over high fences
Not without sitting at dinner tables justifying why you can be a mom and work this hard, why you can be feminine and be this smart.
To get your victory.
And even then, women don’t crave wars out of power and pride; to play with their toxic swords.
Women have the war built from within; coming from hormones and menstruation pains; the struggle with internalized opinions, and fear for those who play with toxic swords.
To be woman
We feel war when we walk in the night with a key holding between our fingers, tight.
More literally we feel war when we fight for our rights.
To be woman
Do you know that feeling when you dream and you fall for no particular reason, you want to run, but something is keeping you from leaving.
You bump against glass ceilings, fall through pay gaps, stick to sticky floors and stand for closed doors.
You get a high position, no! you worked for it, not because of women’s quota, which is to correct discrimination, but because of the amount of stereotyping, you had to climb over first, before you could climb the actual mountain that is for all of us.
To be woman
Is to be part of a 1-hour tv show with 30-minute breaks, waiting for the next one to interrupt you.
To have a Christmas dinner with as appetizer the question if you have a boyfriend yet, as main dish when it’s time for you to have children, and the dessert will be a solid when are you going to marry - question.
I will say this now and I say this once: productive rights are far more different from the right to be reproductive, it’s not one and it’s not the other.
If they took women seriously decades ago there would be more knowledge than ever; there would be more knowledge about women. In school, they would teach you what consent is and what pleasure is, what history is, and what equality is.
Excuse me, but I had to name this first, so when we say, let’s celebrate the cultural, political, socio-economical, and last but not least academic achievements of women or non-binary people today; we know where they came from and that was a long way, so no! men don’t also need this day.