Mina and Gertrude
G: Mina boy Loy, boy Loy boy boy
M: Gert(Rude) Stein, already “fine” but who are you? Can you say? No woman shall stay if she play
G: Tips from lips of yours I’ll sip, sip from OUR carafe
M: A Demand
G: DeMANd An insult, a force, a for cOURse
M: A tile, a title title the, our, my
G: Fine I sign, fine to you is not mine I sign
This conversation playfully and wittily gets at the ways in which wordplay operated as a form of feminist subversion for both Stein and Loy. In what could too easily be dismissed as babble or nonsense, you brilliantly expose the MAN hidden in “demand,” the RUDE in “Gertrude,” and the potential for lesbian eroticism in “sip from lips”. French Feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray might call this a brilliant example of “ecriture feminine,” a distinctive style of feminine language that disrupts and defies patriarchal logic while enabling female intimacy and pleasure.