The 2012 Campus Progress National Conference was graced with the early morning presence of the eccentric and vulgar poet, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai. The Chinese-Taiwanese-American shared a few of her political poems with the young, liberal crowd and while reciting pro-feminism poem “Real Women I Know,” Tsai encouraged weed-smoking and masturbation.
Her other poems included “Black, White, Whatever,” and “ Lilly’s Hands,” a poem about overseas contract workers.
Before reciting “Lilly’s Hands,” Kelly chided U.S. colleges, telling the crowd that “their schools were not doing their job,” because not many of them knew what an overseas contract worker was.
She dedicated one of the poems to feminists, admitting that feminists can be some of “the most women-hating people of all.” She said, “we get really frustrated at somebody who is wearing booty shorts and dressed up like a playboy bunny on Halloween or something.”
Throughout her poems, there were inflammatory statements about “real women” such as, “real women I know are in therapy and madly in love with our shrinks. Real women I know laugh in bed while smoking weed and eating girl scout cookies… post diagrams for our partners on how to give oral sex properly. And the joy of discovering masturbation.”
For a conference and speaker aimed to educate and rally activists about how to make a positive difference, the promotion of smoking weed for recreational use (currently illegal in the United States) and masturbation, seems to be a criminal and potentially unproductive path these young people.
