What I imagine it would be like to discuss black feminism and white feminism as if they were parallel universes in the multiverse, over a chilled glass of wine
© 2016 Cara Francis and Nicole Hill

Cara and Nicole sit across from each other, each with a glass of white wine. They clink glasses.

CARA: So-

NICOLE: So-

CARA: How is it being a woman on your planet?

NICOLE: Same time?

CARA: Sure.

NICOLE: A lot

BOTH: better than it used to be.

NICOLE: And…

BOTH: getting better at a glacial pace.

NICOLE: Which means we…

BOTH: might achieve gender parity by the time the glaciers melt.

CARA: Do you guys still practice virgin sacrifice?

NICOLE: We call them

BOTH: pop stars.

CARA: witch hunts?

NICOLE: Only on

BOTH: social media.

CARA: Hillary?

BOTH: Probably going to have to run against a literal circus clown/

BOTH: Because that’s how ridiculous Americans must think it is/

BOTH: to be asked to consider a woman president.

CARA: Women’s rights?

NICOLE: State’s rights.

CARA: Pink tax?

NICOLE: Black tax.

CARA: The girl next door?

NICOLE: The girl next to the girl next door.

CARA: working mother

NICOLE: working nanny

CARA: Do you have a

CARA: boyfriend? NICOLE: supervisor?

CARA: You’re actually kind of pretty…

NICOLE: for a black girl.

CARA: Never ask a woman to

CARA: Smile.  NICOLE: Step out of the car.

CARA: For every dollar a man earns, women earn

CARA: 77 cents. NICOLE: 63 cents.

NICOLE: For black women it’s 63 cents.

CARA turns up her wine and takes a drink.

NICOLE: But that’s just because the “man” in this statistic is white by default.

CARA: Totally.

CARA turns up her wine and drinks all of it.

NICOLE: And if the hypothesis of parallel universes is

BOTH: universes that are separated from each other by a single quantum event-

CARA: Then a greater pay disparity for black people is a quantum event?

NICOLE: Well it’s more of an alternate reality.

CARA: I hear you, sister.

She raises her glass alone.

CARA: I’m woke.

She clinks with NICOLE’s glass, which remains unraised.

CARA: I mean, I wrote this play.

NICOLE: And since feminism is white by default, black women’s voices are secondary.

CARA: You wrote this play.

NICOLE: Just this one line?

They take a beat to look at each other.

The both try to point to the same place at the same time.

They both try to point to the same place at the same time.

They do this until they succeed.

ALEX quietly enters behind them, drinking a beer. Cara points at him.

CARA: His part was written for an Asian woman but we don’t have any Asian women in our company. Or Hispanic women. Just white girls, black girls and a lot of white guys.

NICOLE smacks CARA’s hand down.

CARA retaliates.

NICOLE retaliates.

ALEX: I consider myself genderfluid.

CARA: Do men ever say to you “You look tired?”

NICOLE: Oh yeah.

ALL: That just means they like you.

CURTAIN