Maria Diaz

I’ve never met a white writer who ever gets asked questions like, ‘Well, don’t you feel bad about the way you represent white people?’ Guys I’m not representing Dominicans, I’m representing one crazy set of like, what, 11 people? There’s like, what, 12 people in this book? There’s 10 million Dominicans, yo. I just happen to come from a family of crazy people and I think you should be allowed to write about crazy people.

In pop culture, girls who crush hopelessly on guys they can’t have are painted as just that – hopeless. Over and over again, we’re taught that girls who openly express sexual or romantic interest in guys who don’t want them are pitiable, stalkerish, desperate, crazy bitches. More often than not, they’re also portrayed as ugly – whether physically, emotionally or both – in order to further establish their undesirability as an objective fact. Both narratively and, as a consequence, in real life, men are given free reign to snub, abuse, mislead and talk down to such women: we’re raised to believe that female desire is unseemly, so that any consequent shaming is therefore deserved. There is no female-equivalent Friend Zone terminology because, in the language of our culture, a man’s romantic choices are considered sacrosanct and inviolable. If a girl has been told no, then she has only herself to blame for anything that happens next – but if a woman says no, then she must not really mean it. Or, if she does, she shouldn’t: the rejected man is a universally sympathetic figure, and everyone from moviegoers to platonic onlookers will scream at her to just give him a chance, as though her rejection must always be unfounded rather than based on the fact that he had a chance, and blew it. And even then, give him another one! The pathos of Single Nice Guys can only be eased by pity-sex with unwilling women that blossoms into romance!

It seems too obvious to even say, but smoking pot, skipping school, owning a screwdriver and writing on walls are not evidence of anything other than being in high school. They are certainly not capital crimes. And yet this anonymous witness and Martin’s supensions are being cited as key facts — as more important, than, say, the fact that Zimmerman had a gun, and Martin didn’t, or the fact that Zimmerman followed Martin, who was doing nothing wrong — by people who insist they’re only interested in “truth.

You know why “Girls (We Run The World)” flopped yet a song about a man putting a ring on your finger was a smash hit? Basic women would rather feel empowered by a man making her his possession than believing that women can do anything on their own. If it was called “Girls (We Phat ta’ Death)” that shit would have crushed the charts. Basic Bitches support basic concepts and aspire to be like that baldhead chick who fucks rappers. This is the world we live in.