This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Claudia Santos, is from A Woman in Progress by Barbara Marie Minney (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2024).
Content Warning: homophobia or transphobia
Masochistic Murmurs
—with excerpts from Julia Serano, Philip Miller and Molly Devon,
and The Holy Bible
My culture had its way with me
in ways that I will never understand,
my self-esteem ripped right out of me
now all that’s left is a submissive streak.
I turned to the rest of the world to
figure out who I was
what I was worth
a masochist who derives pleasure
by receiving pain
in a beautiful but twisted way
like the unnamed narrator in Venus in Furs.
Surrendering control of herself into
the hands of the dominant world
like a good little boy
obeying earthly masters with fear and trembling,
presenting my body as a living sacrifice.
Picking up on all of the not so-subliminal messages
like TV shows where father knows best
fairy tales where helpless girls
await a handsome prince
and cartoons where superman always saves Lois Lane.
Hospitals wrap baby girls in pink flannel blankets
and boys get blue ones
schoolyard taunts like “sissy” and “fairy” and “pussy”
all teach that feminine is synonymous with weakness.
Nobody needed to tell me that I
should be bound and flagellated for
wanting to be the lesser sex.
To satisfy her need
a natural female submissive recognizes
her earthborn inclinations.
Sexuality became a strange
combination of jealousy, self-loathing, and guilt
my brain concocting fantasies
right out of BDSM handbooks.
Mental library full of erotic cerebral cinema,
provocative images and language
gathered from imagined experiences
woven into the labyrinth of my sexuality.
Private parts responding to conditioning
coming face-to-face with my own misogyny
unlearning lessons that were etched into my psyche
before I ever set foot in school.
The attraction for the submissive is
freedom to let go,
removing the stumbling blocks
to experience pleasure,
no longer alone in a hostile universe.
Looking into my own eyes
finding endless strength
and inconsolable sadness
overcoming humiliation and abuse,
feeling shame for my desires
but having the courage
to pursue them anyway
appreciating how fucking empowering
it can be to be female,
a sign that I am finally beginning
to learn to love myself.
Barbara Marie Minney (she/her), a seventh generation Appalachian, is a transgender woman, award winning poet and writer, speaker, teaching artist, guest reader/editor, and quiet activist. Her poetry and essays have been extensively published and translated into Spanish. She is the author of four poetry collections: If There’s No Heaven, the winner of the 2020 Poetry Is Life Book Award and an Akron Beacon Journal Best Northeast Ohio Book in 2020; the Poetic Memoir Chapbook Challenge (2021); Dance Naked With God (2023); and A Woman in Progress, the winner of the 2024 American Fiction Award for Poetry Chapbook, an Eric Hoffer Da Vinci Eye Award Finalist, and a San Francisco Book Festival Runner-Up. Barbara is a retired attorney and lives in Tallmadge, Ohio, with her wife of over 44 years and a menagerie of stuffed animals. 
