A Necessary Act Of Resistance: Why I Banned Someone From The Open Mic I’ve Been Hosting For More Than a Decade

By Richard Jeffrey Newman

I’ve been hosting the First Tuesdays reading series in Jackson Heights, NY since 2012. Since 2015, inspired by an event that a group of women poets in New York City organized to address “the reality of sexual violence, intimidation, and misogyny…in our poetry circles,” a vision statement I wrote has lived here on the series website:

First Tuesdays is an open mic/featured reader literary gathering where writers who wrestle with the issues of our day—from racism and sexual violence to climate change and economic inequality—can find an audience willing to embrace the risk and discomfort that come with sharing politically engaged, satirical, or otherwise edgy material; where those writers can coexist, in an atmosphere of mutual respect and camaraderie, with writers whose work is more traditional and conservative; where anyone who comes only to listen, even if they just happen to walk in off the street, can sit down with a cup of tea or glass of wine and feel not just welcomed, but challenged, engaged, comforted, seen, maybe even inspired.

At the heart of First Tuesdays, in other words, is an ongoing, proactive commitment to diversity and inclusivity, in both the kinds of literary work we welcome into our community and the people who come to share it. Nothing will erode that sense of community more surely, however, than the mistrust and hatred borne of sexism, racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, or any of the other far-too-many ways that human beings have learned to target each other for who they or what they believe. So I will state this plainly: Neither work nor behavior that bespeaks any of those “isms” or “phobias” is welcome at First Tuesdays, and I will, as host, confront and hold accountable anyone who brings either into our midst.

I did not give much thought when I wrote those words to what I would do if I ever had to enforce them, but then, in 2022, a white man I’ll call Patrick read during our open mic a light-verse broadside against President Joe Biden’s policies, one stanza of which suggested that things would be worse if Vice President Kamala Harris were president because she would “giggle and screw up the world.” Some of the women in the audience immediately called Patrick out for the sexism in that stanza, and when I got back to the microphone, I called him out as well, letting him know that sexism was not welcome at First Tuesdays. (The stanza in question, of course, was also racist, but those of us who called Patrick out focused in that moment on its sexism, and so that is my focus here.)

I tried to engage Patrick in discussion later that evening, and then by email over the next week or so, hoping I could help him see why his poem was so problematic. He kept doubling down, however, insisting that if I googled Kamala Harris giggling, I would understand that he was satirizing her actual behavior, not being sexist. (If you’re curious to know what Patrick was talking about, this Reuters Fact Check does a good job of explaining it.) When I pointed out that, even if satire was his intent, the stanza in question nonetheless relied on a sexist (and racist) canard, Patrick’s response made clear that he understood me to be enforcing the worst excesses of wokeness and that he would, if he returned to our open mic, drive that point home by continuing to read similarly problematic work.

I felt I had no choice. I told him that unless we could find at least some common ground, he was no longer welcome at the First Tuesdays open mic. “No problem,” he responded. “I…decided to stop slumming anyway. Many better places than yours[.]”

***

During our email exchange, Patrick admonished me for not having called out as uncivil the women who’d called him out. He also called me a bigot for having characterized his poem as sexist when I called him out from the mic. The irony is telling. Patrick was perfectly willing to reduce Kamala Harris in public to the stereotype of the incompetent, unintelligent, overly emotional woman who giggles because she is incapable of taking anything seriously—essentially calling her an idiot—but he could not handle being called an idiot by women responding negatively to that stereotype or being publicly criticized for his use of it by another man.

Nonetheless, I don’t blame Patrick for feeling ambushed. (He did not use that word, but it is what he meant.) While I have never thought of the First Tuesdays open mic as a public square, I’ve been to plenty of other venues over the years where that is exactly what the “open” in open mic seems to mean. So, to make sure no one mistakes for that square the kind of literary community First Tuesdays is, and to give fair warning to anyone who might be thinking of sharing work that would not be welcome, I made the decision to start each First Tuesdays meeting by reading the series vision statement and community guidelines out loud.

A few people to whom I’ve told this story, have wondered if banning Patrick wasn’t congruent with the worst of so-called cancel culture: punishing someone for giving voice to ideas that I (and others) found objectionable. It’s a question I take very seriously, since the last thing I want is for First Tuesdays to become an echo chamber. Sexism, however, is not merely a different idea worthy of discussion and debate. It is an ideology that uses sexual difference to create a hierarchy in which men are at the top and women are at the bottom, that sees this hierarchy as inherent in sexual difference, and that therefore, by definition, values men’s voices and points of view over women’s.

The sexism in Patrick’s poem, in other words, because it puts women in the position of having first to insist on their right to be heard on their own terms, is silencing, which is precisely antithetical to the democratizing, humanizing potential of literary gatherings like First Tuesdays. (A parallel analysis, of course, would apply to racism, antisemitism, or any of the other isms and phobias listed in the First Tuesdays statement.) Especially now, when so much of our public discourse is willfully constructed to turn our differences into dehumanizing talking points, protecting and nurturing that potential feels more and more like a necessary act of resistance. Reading the First Tuesdays vision statement at the start of every open mic, which I’ve now been doing for two years straight, is my small way of contributing to that effort.

It is a responsibility and an accountability I am happy to bear and the values it expresses are ones I am happy to take the heat for enforcing.

Richard Jeffrey Newman has published three books of poetry, T’shuvah (Fernwood Press 2023), Words for What Those Men Have Done (Guernica Editions 2017) and The Silence of Men (CavanKerry Press 2006), as well as three books of translation from classical Persian poetry, Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan, Selections from Saadi’s Bustan (Global Scholarly Publications 2004 & 2006) and The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahameh (Junction Press 2011). He curates the First Tuesdays reading series in Jackson Heights, NY, and is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College. His website is www.richardjnewman.com.