Responding to the mainstream feminist blogosphere on Feminism FOR REAL

Miss J Flipperwitch (ahem) is a straight, white, cis, abled, wealthy new yorker who thinks the world is hers. that everyone should bow to her obvious superiority. sadly she has a following of people exactly like her, white, in their twenties, moneyed, able, bearers of every kind of fucking privilege its possible to possess, and boy do they get pissy when you call; them on it.

It’s time for missy flipperwitch to step down, because feministe has become her blog, her voice, her attitude. i’m devastated that chally left, but i can see why. she didn’t tolerate ablism, racism or heterosexism and often had to rebuke commenters when miss jillyjill was up in the same thread mocking minorities and often behaving worse than her squealing little fangirls. it’s clear that feministe is a place for cisstraight, twenty-something, white, moneyed, able bodied and minded hipster-femininsts to talk about WOC, PWD, the poor, QUILTBAG folks, to talk over them, to invite MEN to give their views on my rights and my fucking body. fUCK THAT SHIT.

I’m sorry I can’t offer any feedback more intelligent than:

Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!!!

Jessica: much love to you. Im a reproductive justice organizer centered in and rooted in New Orleans (6 generations to be exact). I actually met you at the 2009 CLPP conference-we both attended a translating gender workshop and we were 1 of few women of color engaging the white supremacist dialogue. It was comforting to look over and see you calling out similar, problematic shit that I was. Namely, the racist undertones of most leftist dialogues about sexuality and gender. Since then, Ive significantly disengaged from conferences and spaces like that because of the toll in takes on local work that I am committed to doing. and, its oppressive to have to call people out, but Im also supposed to work with and next to you? Nah, thats ok-Imma do the liberatory work that is not and never was centered around Feminism with a “F”. but after this piece, and other pieces of yours Ive read on racialicious, Im remember its not an either/or and that it is possible to engage with Feminism, but on my terms.

THANK YOU for the work you do Jessica, I read the post at Feministe yesterday and it has been reeling in my head since then as such a blatant example of unwillingness to LISTEN to women outside of the mainstream that white feminism participates in maintaining. THANK YOU for you brilliance and fierceness.

Jessica – Thanks so much for the work that you do and for creating Feminism FOR REAL – a totally amazing resource.

Reading that book helped me understand the many ways that I was disillusioned with the feminism I learned in Women’s Studies and from academic texts and simultaneously gave me hope that another feminism is possible (and in fact already thriving if we are open to acknowledging it). Coming from a white settler background – the discussions on indigenous relationships to feminism in your book were revolutionary to me.

It causes me tremendous sadness to see the hesitance of mainstream feminism to engage with this important text – I can only hope after this discussion they run out of excuses and actually read the darn book.

Thank you again.

“I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on how we are so busy telling other people not to be oppressive to our communities that we have little energy left to deal with what’s going on inside of our own communities. I’m finished with doing the educating on how feminism needs to change – it’s been done. ”

Oh wow, I so feel you there. I am so done with trying to get white girls to feel/act/be the way I want them to feel/act/be, even though I know something is amiss! Maybe I’m cynical and way too jaded but I see more space dedicated to screaming at white girls who don’t get it, then about our own issues as women of color. I understand the anger, i understand the frustration. I just don’t expect any better from the mainstream feminist white girls, and i am tired of focusing on “getting” this particular group of white girls to change. I am so done. Thank you for voicing something that I didn’t have the words to vocalize before.

“And it’s no longer going to come at the physical, mental, and spiritual costs of me being frustrated, exasperated, and then empty – for what? My community needs me and we’ve paid the price for other people’s comforting disillusion with reality for far too long.”

Oh my, so much word.

does anyone know where Feminism For Real can be purchased in Toronto?

I love this post so much.

Also, I’m a bit interested that Latoya’s posts on the Feministe were all ignored by by Jill. She was able to respond to a lot of people, but never directly LP.

Word. Until yesterday, I thought we were friends. Ah well. *kanye shrug*

Jessica, you can publish with whoever you like.

This anti-amazon issue frustrates me because clearly you want this book to be *accessible* to as many people as possible, right?

There are big booksellers and there’s small booksellers. Selling the book on Amazon doesn’t mean you’ve “sold out.”

Anyway, will the book be available as an ebook? (ebooks are about 25% of book sales now….)

I have to say that as a white girl feminist who is young and still learning, I am so grateful to read this. I know that because I am white, I am very privileged, and the kind of feminism that I want to belong to is not the kind that gives bullshit excuses for not reading/promoting/discussing your book. I think you’re right on, and I, for one, am very glad you edited Feminism For Real and wrote this blog post, otherwise I probably would have never realized how problematic capital “f” feminism is, and how exclusive it is.

All I’m trying to say is that you taught me about this, and I am so thankful to that you did that, and believe me I will be seeking more information (first on the list: Feminism For Real!). I know it is frustrating, but I just want you to know you changed the way I think about feminism and I will definitely be spreading the word.

Read more carefully. In the comments, Jill acknowledged she got one email, dated Feb 14, from the book publisher. So email, at the very least, was sent. Twitter was utilized, as were book store based tours. And we intentionally launched on International Women’s Day, using that hashtag, for even more publicity. As Jessica notes in her response, it’s about way more than not getting an email.

Thank you. When I read that Feministe post and all those responses, there was so much steam coming out of my ears that I couldn’t see my keyboard.

The lame old “Wait, why are you calling ME out on this? I can’t embrace every single thing! I’m so busy that I’m spending time, energy and thousand words on explaining why I didn’t write a single paragraph about you guys!” dance reminds me why I generally avoid the feminist blogosphere.

Jessica, you are channeling your inner Audre Lorde. We should not be wasting our creative, physical and spiritual energies on people who want to just keep resetting the wheel or don’t really want to rock the boat. We also want to help our own communities!

I loved your’s and bfp’s comments on that thread. They cut through the drama and got to the point.

P.S Is it a shrug with your back to the camera? Those are the best kind.

I really love the mental image of your daughter flying out of the gap on top of a Mohawk mantle or something with a fierce look.

May us all leave the gap.

B, you’re missing the point. The objections to the post weren’t about the realities of marketing a book (which Jessica addresses way up top). It is about how this conversation keeps jumping and changing to shift blame onto different people for what is, in essence, a systemic failure.

The whole reason I commented over there in the first place was because I started seeing people infer “well, if Jill didn’t get an email, it means the book wasn’t marketed.” Which doesn’t make sense because we’ve had internal convos about the reception of the book, where Jess said the PR people from the press (what PR firm? What indie book publisher can hire one of those? Most authors don’t have enough from the advance left over to do a launch party, much less hire a firm) sent emails. Jill says she received one, but people are still running with – oh, nothing was done to promote the book. (Your first comment implied that no emails were sent, saying gmail is free – but emails where sent. Maybe not enough, but that initial contact was made.) And outlets did pick up on it, and Jessica has been having readings and tours interspersed throughout the last two months.

Now, contrast that with how many people on the thread say they just “LOVE” Jessica Yee and they read here frequently, and yet still missed the info – and then go back to the original thread and check how even Carmen, who left race blogging and checks in about once a week or so still saw it. My favorite authors don’t have to send me emails about what they are doing – I just check their spaces to see what’s happening. (Also, since when is Amazon the be-all end all of book selling? Particularly post LGBT ranking stripping boycott that happened, what two summers ago?)

The problem goes a bit deeper than that. And again, it wasn’t just Jill – it’s just that things that people say don’t match up with what they do on a broader scale. Jess talked about picking a small, union, press that respected her goals and visions and is getting hammered for not going with a US based larger pub who may not have matched her personal goals. And the conversation swung really hard toward “well, Jessica should have tried harder to get her book out there” when a great many of the spaces that deal with these issues did cover the book somehow. So it was the feminist blogopshere, specifically that didn’t respond, and that is strange – if people love Jess, and love Racialicious, and care about Indigenous women, and everyone is in agreement that these issues are important (TM) then what happened? It’s as Jess says in the piece:

If you didn’t get the e-mail about the book – no worries. I’m talking about why people aren’t more involved in supporting and promoting our work to begin with at places like Racialicious, the Native Youth Sexual Health Network, Muslimah Media Watch and more (all who posted more than once about the book’s existence) beyond when they want to check mark box that they had their mandatory being progressive dosage of people of color (which typically amounts to saying things like they are such huge fans of us but don’t actually read, buy, or promote without having to explicitly be told several times what we’re writing)?

It just doesn’t add up.

I’m afraid I’ll have to disagree. I don’t think anyone is owed promotion of their book and I don’t think that any perspective or story has the right to be covered by anyone. The right to be told – of course! The right to have others listen to/demand others listen to/question why others haven’t listened to the perspective of another individual or group – heck no! At least in the U.S., it’s a right to free speech, not a right to an audience (and certainly not a right to an audience who, in the absence of advance copies, would have to spend money to hear the speaker’s/speakers’ viewpoint(s).)

IMHO Ms. Yee/the publishing firm/the PR firm didn’t do their due diligence by multiple emails/calls (and being available within phone reception to MAKE the calls)/advance copies sent out to multitudes of interested reviewing parties and parties which one may wish to cover one’s book/parties who are then called out on why they hadn’t covered one’s book – at least not sufficient due diligence to then question why her work wasn’t covered.

tl/dr: no one’s entitled to a book review.

Another vote for an ebook version–I want to buy this book, and support the publisher, but I don’t want to pay 10 bucks extra to support UPS or whomever to ship it to me.

Dear B: THIS IS NOT ABOUT JESSICA YEE. IS THERE ANY POSSIBLE WAY FOR YOU TO GET THAT? THIS IS NOT ABOUT JESSICA YEE. THIS IS ABOUT THE SYSTEMS OF PRIVILEGE THAT GET CERTAIN THINGS PROMOTED “AUTOMATICALLY” WHILE OTHERS HAVE TO HUSTLE OR GET BLAMED FOR NOT HUSTLING ENOUGH. THIS IS ABOUT WHITE PRIVILEGE. I’M SURE YOU’LL DISAGREE – BUT LET ME SAY IT AGAIN: THIS.IS.NOT.ABOUT.JESSICA.YEE.

I’ve wanted to get my hands on Feminism for Real since I read about it here. I would absolutely love to read this book and discuss it on my blog but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere but here: http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/ourschools-ourselves/feminism-real. Others have asked and I’m really sorry if it’s been answered but are there plans for an ebook version? I can’t really afford to drop $25 on a single book though I’m going to see if I can ask the NYPL to order a copy.

I’m not sure about why Feministe didn’t mention Feminism FOR REAL, but I learned that mainstream feminist bloggers aren’t really reading Racialicious. They are just adding Racialicious to their blogroll to look progressive (which is still something, because I found Racialicious by clicking a blogroll link).