It ain’t no fun/if the homies can’t have none. – Snoop Dogg

You know, there are a lot of people weighing in on this Amber Cole thing. But most of the conversation is about her, as is par for the course in our culture. The boys involved are still anonymous in the eyes of the world. For me, I always wonder why there aren’t open letters to these kids? There are tons to Amber Cole – people saying they could be her father, people saying STFU with all that victim-blaming and feminist-scapegoating madness – but no one seems interested in writing letters to the boys involved.

But hey, maybe it’s just me. I guess when one of your friends – along with a person who sexually assaulted you – ends up in jail for gang rape, you start thinking about things a bit differently.

After I wrote the Not Rape Epidemic, right after I submitted the essay, but before it was actually published, I ran into an old friend at my local library. I hadn’t seen this friend in a decade – indeed, I didn’t remember her name until I left the library. Yet somehow, we both happened to be in the same library, at the same time, on the same day, after not seeing each other for ten years. We say hey, make small talk.

And then she asks me: “Did you know T got out?”

We both were silent for a second. We hadn’t talked since before the incident. She didn’t know that I had been to that trial. She didn’t know I had seen the girl. And I had forgotten she was far closer to him than I was. When T and the other kids were sentenced, we calculated they would get out when we were in our 30s or 40s. We didn’t realize how the system works, and how a lot of people end up released early. T had been incarcerated from age 14 to about age 24.

“His sister called me,” my friend continued. “She asked me if I wanted to come to his his welcome home party.” She looked at me, stared hard so I could feel the weight of her pain.

“How am I supposed to look at him after he did something like that?”

Folks have been largely silent on the role of boys and men in all this. Who, exactly, taught this young kid that the right way to treat a girl who likes him is to ask her to perform a sex act in public? (If the rumors are to be believed, she was attempting to win his affection.) Who taught the boy with the camera that they could video record sex acts and upload them to the internet without consent of the principals? Who the hell is the third kid who is just watching? Why is he hanging around while this is happening? Is anyone concerned that the things these boys learned, either explicitly from their peers or implicitly from society? That these actions got two of them arrested? Started them down the pipeline for incarceration? May have them branded as a sexual offenders for the rest of their days?

Oh, but that’s cool right?

When Jimi Izrael writes:

I am Amber Cole’s father and this should go with saying: I am angry with those boys. But I knew those boys. Those boys were my friends. I grew up with those boys, hung out with those boys.

He writes that he is the other guy. But there are no other guys. My friend didn’t have problems with gathering female attention. He didn’t seem like the type to do something like a brutal gang rape ending in sodomy. And, if what I knew about his personality wasn’t completely wrong, he probably did not participate. But he was there. He watched. He did not help this girl, being beaten bloody by one of his friends. He didn’t stop the act. Maybe he tried to intervene, maybe he didn’t – I don’t know, he had already been tried and sentenced. But he was there. And he left with the other perpetrators. That’s why they have accessory charges.

And that’s why I don’t want to think about him, and that’s why my friend didn’t want to look him in the face. Because he was there and said nothing.

Our culture teaches boys that this is okay. That it is okay to use people. That you are expected to disregard a woman’s feelings, to do what you want with her, to find women who are pliable who you can mold, who will seek your favor and happily trade a few moments on her knees for her affection. Our society teaches boys that this is ok, that this is what you do with women. The onus is on women not to be used. Men do not hear “don’t be an abuser” in the same way men don’t hear “don’t be a rapist.” The onus is always on women keeping themselves safe, on women not putting themselves in positions to be attacked or exploited. And when something does happen, when teenagers being teenagers suddenly becomes a nation newsstory, everyone wants to talk about what the girl should have done to prevent herself from being in the situation.

Once again, we aren’t talking to the boys.

So if the boys don’t know what is wrong, or why what they did was wrong, they will never know. Because we don’t talk to boys in that way. We want them to muddle through on their own, we allow them to consume messages that say the path to proving your masculinity lies in dominance, in the subjugation of women for sexual means. Because that’s all this really is. A boy, thinking he could be seen as cool, if he could get this girl to do this thing while his friends watched. A girl, thinking she could win this boy, by doing this thing, not realizing this wasn’t a game she could ever win.

We talk about the school to prison pipeline. We don’t talk about this.

We don’t tell boys what they learned is wrong. So we shouldn’t be surprised if they repeat the behavior, if that behavior becomes habit. We tell them, in our actions and words, that this was okay. Because there’s little outrage directed at these boys. So if they draw the conclusion that “she shouldn’t have let me do it” instead of “that whole situation that I orchestrated was wrong, and I hurt someone else very badly, and I hurt myself,” we shouldn’t be surprised.

And if these boys then repeat that behavior, then we shouldn’t be surprised.

Because we are too busy lecturing Amber Cole. We don’t know what’s going on with these boys. And so, it is only a matter of time before the women who know them cannot bear to look at them either.

Lord. The original reference is from a song written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and performed mostly by John Lennon. At the time, Lennon and Ono justified their decision openly, using both the “my black friends said it was cool” defense as well as a more substantive critique based on ideas of “niggerization” – that nigger can be redefined to include anyone who is oppressed.

But can you appropriate a term like nigger if your body is not defined/terrorized/policed/brutalized/diminished by the word? Can we use it in a context that is supposed to belie gender solidarity, without explicitly being in racial solidarity?

I think not. And I am not alone.

The tension over the sign at SlutWalk NYC is the outgrowth of long term tensions in organizing. Aishah Shahidah Simmons writes:

I’ve been informed that one of the (Black) women SlutWalk NYC organizers asked the woman to take her placard down. She did. However, not before there were many photographs taken….

Now, my question is why did it take a Black woman organizer to ask her to take it down. What about ALL of the White women captured in this photograph. They didn’t find this sign offensive? Paraphrasing Sojourner Truth “Ain’t I A Woman (too!)?”
ERADICATING RACISM SHOULD NOT BE THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF PEOPLE OF COLOR.

How can so many White feminists be absolutely clear about the responsibility of ALL MEN TO END heterosexual violence perpetrated against women; and yet turn a blind eye to THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO END racism.

Is Sisterhood Global? This picture says NO! very loudly and very clearly.

The fact that this quote originates from a woman of color ~ Yoko Ono, really underscores the work that we, women of color, must do with each other to educate each other about our respective herstories. This photograph also underscores the imperative need for hardcore inter-racial dialogues amongst all of us in these complicated movements to address gender-based violence in all of our non-monolithic communities.

More importantly, these types of actions chip away at solidarity – nothing kills an idea of coming together faster than the realization that even in a space which is allegedly about your concerns, you are still a marginalized other.

As Aura Blogando wrote back in May:

Regardless of the fact that a scarce amount of women of color got international airtime on the BBC for the first time since SlutWalk was conceived several months ago, its organizers never reached out to women of color as equals to begin with; instead of making sure our voices participated in its visioning, we have been painted into a colored corner inside their white room. SlutWalk’s next turn, I’m quite sure, will be our tokenization. I imagine that women of color will be coddled by white SlutWalk organizers, eager to save (white)face, into carrying their frontline banners and parroting their messages at a stage near you. I’m hoping my sisters won’t fall for it; I know that I, for one, will stay home. This is not liberation – if anything, Slutwalk is an effective exercise in white supremacy.

There is no indication that SlutWalk will even strip the word “slut” from its hateful meaning. The n-word, for example, is still used to dehumanize black folks, regardless of how many black folks use it among themselves. Just moments before BART officer James Mehserle shot Oscar Grant to death in Oakland in 2009, video footage captured officers calling Grant a “bitch ass nigger.” It didn’t matter how many people claimed the n-word as theirs – it still marked the last hateful words Grant heard before a white officer violently killed him. Words are powerful – the connection between speech and thought is a strong one, and cannot be marched away to automatically give words new meaning. If I can’t trust SlutWalk’s white leadership to even reach out to women of color, how am I to trust that “reclaiming” the word will somehow benefit women? [...]

If SlutWalk has proven anything, it is that liberal white women are perfectly comfortable parading their privilege, absorbing every speck of airtime celebrating their audacity, and ignoring women of color. Despite decades of work from women of color on the margins to assert an equitable space, SlutWalk has grown into an international movement that has effectively silenced the voices of women of color and re-centered the conversation to consist of a topic by, of, and for white women only. More than 30 years ago, Gloria Anzaldúa wrote, “I write to record what others erase when I speak.” Unfortunately, SlutWalk’s leadership obliterated Anzaldúa’s voice, and the marvelous work she produced theorizing what it means to be a queer woman of color. They might do us all a favor now and stop erasing the rest of us for once.

I’ve heard quite a few stories about SlutWalk NYC, and its racial issues from women who were involved in some way or another. Sady Doyle, writing for In These Times, compellingly explains her feelings of exclusion from larger political conversations and the marginalization of issues that impact women. So I suppose that’s what makes it somewhat confusing when she ascribes this long arc of feminist history bending toward racism to the simple act of branding.

But let’s go back to the image illustrating the post above. Why this young white protestor thought this sign was a good idea, we may never know. But the idea that it’s fine to appropriate the term nigger without critical engagement of the word and what it represents to the women who are marching with you gives me pause. Perhaps it shouldn’t. Perhaps, after all these years of internal strife around racism and feminism, we should just look at this as par for the course? As Simmons asked above, what were all the other white women thinking? Did no one else wonder what that sign meant, in that context, positioned above that body?

Did anyone even care?

(Thanks to reader Samantha for the tip!)

I had a great Twitter conversation yesterday with @AndreaPlaid, @AnnaHolmes and @Amaditalks. We were talking about Julie Klausner’s recent post on Jezebel, “Don’t fear the dowager: a valentine to maturity.” Klausner’s post, lamenting the trend of grown women adopting childish personas, is sort of a companion to all the similar pieces about modern men living in a state of perpetual boyhood. She writes:

There’s so much ukulele playing now, it’s deafening. So much cotton candy, so many bunny rabbits and whoopie pies and craft fairs and kitten emphera, and grown women wearing converse sneakers with mini skirts. So many fucking birds.

Girls get tattoos that they will never be able to grow into. Women with master’s degrees who are searching for life partners, list “rainbows, Girl Scout cookies, and laughing a lot” under “interests, on their Match.com profiles. Read more…

The Klausner article generated a ton of push back on Jezebel. I suspect because the manic pixie dream girl persona is “in” right now and everyone wants to feel like they choose their own choices. In this case, that means that some women want to believe that their predilection for rompers and kittens and baby voices reflects their individual personalities and not some trend toward retro, non-threatening femaleness. But no one chooses their choices in a vacuum and certainly it means something that so many women seem to be finding this super-girlish, childish part of their personalities at the same time, while Katy Perry’s sex and candy persona is tearing up the charts and actual little girls are being bombarded with pink, purple, princesses, tulle and sparkles.

Zooey Deschanel is the poster girl for this sort of womanhood. Frankly, I find a 30-something woman with a website called Hello Giggles and a penchant for tweets about kittens a little off-putting, as I would a grown man with a website called Girls Have Cooties and a Twitter feed about Matchbox cars. But then we find creepy in a man the kind of childishness we fetishize in women.

I also find it worth noting that the persona that Klausner writes about is bound by class and race. The cult of domesticity defined idealized womanhood centuries ago–and that definition included both perpetual childhood and whiteness. The wide-eyed, girlish, take-care-of-me characters that Deschanel inhabits on film are not open to many women of color, particularly black women. We can be strong women, aggressive women, promiscuous women…we can do Bonet bohemian and Earth Mother (as Andrea pointed out), but never carefree and childish. Even black girls are too often viewed as worldly women and not innocents.

Also, the affectations of the manic pixie are read differently on black women. A streak of pink in the hair goes from quirky and youthful to “ghetto” on a black body. Thrift store clothing leads to a host of class assumptions.

Am I wrong about this? Is there a black Zooey? A manic pixie Latina? Is this a persona that women of color can inhabit?

Photo and image credits: What Tami Said

“Two things are important to me,” she says over a sushi supper in downtown Corvallis. “Justice and love, and both of them clicked for me in Islam.”

Fakhraie grew up in a family where religion was respected but not forced on her or her younger brother, Anayat, 24. Her father, born in Iran, did not practice his faith. Her mother, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, studied religion with another woman but didn’t attend services.

“I was raised as a white girl with a funny last name and a foreign dad,” she says. As an adolescent, she was “the black cloud” over her parents’ house. “I was sullen. I hated everything.” Today she says she and her family are close, but her brother, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, remembers her black cloud days.

“At Christmas, we’d be opening presents and she’d be sulking in the corner,” he says. “She didn’t want anyone to take pictures. ‘Do we have to do this?’ she’d complain. She embodied the quintessential teenager angst.”

“I was a ‘why’ person,” she says. “I always wanted to know why.” Why, for example, was her father so strict with her when it came to boys? An avid reader, she began reading about Persian culture, which led her to the subject of Islam. She kept on reading. When she got to college, she read Fatima Mernissi’s “The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam.”

It was a breakthrough moment for her.

“I could be a feminist and a Muslim,” she says. “I was a feminist before I knew what a feminist was.” Fakhraie’s mother was the family breadwinner and her dad was “Mr. Mom.” She remembers being upset that her mom came home from work and picked up household chores.

“It was like a double shift,” Fakhraie says. “Fairness has always been an integral issue with me.”

–Excerpted from Fatemeh Fakhraie: A Feminist Muslim Breaks Stereotypes

Photo Credit: Utne

A few weeks ago, Jonah Goldberg wrote an op-ed claiming that feminism’s work in the West is “mostly done” and that’s it’s time to take feminism “overseas” to Muslim women.

We disagree.

Diana: Where do you begin in tearing apart Jonah Goldberg’s “Talking feminism overseas?” I can almost see Gayatri Spivak shaking her head as she waves her finger back and forth, saying as she has before, “white men saving brown women from brown men.”  So much for novelty in the discourse surrounding “third world women.” Can someone please throw something new at us?!

Azra: I’ll admit, after reading Jonah Goldberg’s article, I had to read it again (unfortunately), as I considered the chance that it was an excellent piece of farce. If only that were the case …

Sara: Oh, please, Jonah. Feminism is hardly a completed project in the United States. Who hasn’t ratified CEDAW yet? Measuring access to rights by national boundaries is problematic for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the oasis of equality that Goldberg mentions is a myth, and really only applies to certain groups. The rights of women change according to socioeconomic factors and race.  Drawing empowerment or access to rights through national boundaries or groups pushes injustice into invisibility. Saying that the “work is done” is a flat-out insult to the work of modern American feminists.

Azra: Is feminism over in the United States? I think there are other women who have more eloquently addressed this assertion before. But I will say a few things: 2/7 LA Times Oped columnists are women. In 2011, 16.4% of US Congress members are women—irrespective of their political leanings. As for health outcomes, women are more susceptible to experiencing mental health conditions than men and are more likely to die of heart disease than men in the United States. The situation is even direr if you are a woman who also belongs to an oft-marginalized group—be it based on religion, sexual orientation, or race.

Fatemeh: And we haven’t even talked about the rates of violence against women in the U.S. Does he honestly think that feminism in the U.S. is just about getting a college degree and making as much money as a man? What about the endemic rates of domestic violence, rape, and harassment?!

Azra: Neglecting to look at how women in the United States are disadvantaged due to societal expectations seems to have become increasingly en vogue over the past few years.  As Americans look abroad to countries undergoing massive political change and conflict, some have condescendingly appointed themselves cultural experts of international gender relations—with a particular interest in Muslim women’s lives. It’s an excellent way to overlook social inequalities American women face here at home and instead look at an “other “ (and hence worse) social inequality faced by Muslim women.

Sara: I do not deny the lack of protection that many Muslim women abroad have, and how religion and culture are used to abuse the rights of women. The fight for equality is not the fight for an “enlightened outsider,” but rather based on giving the right tools to those who want to fight injustice in their communities. At the end of the day, what is most important is to protect the rights of individuals. What really matters is not what faith women practice, or outsourcing Western feminists to save “poor Muslim women,” but actually giving women the tools to fight for their own rights, as defined by themselves.

Diana: Goldberg’s narrow construction of Muslim women as segregated and subjugated through a few cited cases undermines the work that Muslim women overseas are doing for themselves. The reality he overlooks is that women’s equality is already a battle being fought in foreign lands by those women. This fight is so specific to these women that only they have the power to authoritatively negotiate matters of agency from within the framework of existing cultural, social and religious norms, which bear some value to these women, despite the constant scorn heaped on them.

Azra: I’m not sure why Mr. Goldberg doesn’t just come out and say that he means exporting his version of feminism to Muslim women abroad. Because in almost every paragraph following his declaration for exportation, I read some reference to how Muslim women needed to be saved from the specter of sex-crazed, violent Muslim men.

Fatemeh: As if all Muslim women “over there” are cowering in the shadows and waiting for someone to come save them. Ugh.

Diana: Goldberg, don’t tire us with clichéd rhetoric, stop recycling Laura Bush’s campaigns, and please stop stealing the oomph from “behind the veil.”

Azra: God forbid these women—no, ANY woman—be subject to Mr. Goldberg’s definition of feminism.

Aside from the fact that Ashley Judd has no clue about Hip-Hop as an art form and a culture, her comment shows an underlying prejudice towards black men. She says that Snoop and Diddy’s participation in YouthAIDS raised a red flag for her. If she knew anything about Hip-Hop or maybe even had a conversation with either one of these men, she’d know that neither condone rape or create violent music (at least not in the last decade), both are intelligent and savvy media moguls, and both are fathers (each has a least one daughter). So why wouldn’t they use their star power and influence to spread the message to young people, and especially the Hip-Hop community, about the importance of HIV/AIDS prevention? Shouldn’t they be lauded? If their music is so sexually irresponsible, isn’t it a good thing that they are talking about safe sex considering that HIV/AIDS transmission rates are so much higher among African-Americans?

I have looked closely at the feedback I have received about those two paragraphs, and absolutely see your points, and I fully capitulate to your rightness, and again humbly offer my heartfelt amends for not having been able to see the fault in my writing, and not having anticipated it would be painful for so many. Crucial words are missing that could have made a giant difference. It should have read: “Some hip-hop, and some rap, is abusive. Some of it is part of the contemporary soundtrack misogyny (which, of course, is multi-sonic). Some of it promotes the rape culture so pervasive in our world…..” Also, I, ideally, would have anticipated that some folks would see only representations of those two paragraphs, and not be familiar with the whole book, my work, and my message. I should have been clear in them that I include hip-hop and rap as part of a much larger problem. It is beyond unfortunate that I am talking about some, for example, of Snoop Dogs’ lyrics, an assumption has been spread I was talking about every single artist in both genres. That is false and distorted. Here, I am again aware that it would be impossible for me to get this “exactly right.” Some will find fault, no matter how careful I am, no matter what my intentions.

“Why don’t we [help] end rape culture instead of getting mad that we’re getting called out on it?”

Galapagos Art Space
16 Main Street
Brooklyn, NY

Ain’t I A Woman: Women of Color Speak On Activism
April 11th, 2011, 6PM – 12AM
Mixer 6PM ** Panel 7-9PM ** Party 9-12AM

Long after Sojourner Truth pondered the question – “Aint I A Woman?” we continue to face a white supremacist culture that undermines women of color, young women, undocumented immigrants, and the LGBTQ community. We’re convening this panel to ignite a discourse about the experiences of women of color in the feminist movement and beyond. On this night, six outstanding feminists and activists will go head-to-head to discuss race in the feminist movement today.

We know that the movements to eradicate racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and sexism are inextricably connected. We reject the silencing and subjugation of women of color and aim to create a safe and courageous space to raise our voices, confront tensions, celebrate our triumphs, create collective solutions and share our stories. Through this sharing, we can create a united front so that, instead of surviving through silence, there can be a dialogue on how to battle institutionalized oppression.

Speaking our truth is crucial to our survival. By gathering together and learning from our shared and individual tales of love and struggle, we will each emerge with new perspectives that will enable us to engender the change we envision for the world.

In the words of bell hooks, “There can be no feminist revolution without an end to racism, classism, ageism…”

Round One: Latoya Peterson, Founder of Racialicious
Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Journalist

Round Two: Lori Adelman, Program Associate at International Women’s Health Coalition
Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, Reproductive Rights Activist

Round Three: Jessie Daniels, PhD, Author and Sociology Professor at Hunter College
Anna Holmes, Jezebel Founding Editor

Music by DJ Lobotomy Copter throughout the night, http://on.fb.me/gRnBsN

**$10 Suggested Donation (but no one turned away for lack of funds)
**We encourage live tweeting during the event using the hastag, #AIAW

** For more info, contact Morgane at refusethesilence@gmail.com with the subject line: “Ain’t I A Woman”

Price: $10 to help us cover reservation costs, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

In 2007, women from the Movement of the Indigenous of the Republic took part in the annual 8th of March demonstration in support of women’s struggles. At that time, the American campaign against Iran had begun. We decided to march behind a banner that’s message was “No feminism without anti-imperialism”. We were all wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs and handing out flyers in support of three resistant Iraqi women taken prisoner by the Americans. When we arrived, the organizers of the official procession started chanting slogans in support of Iranian women. We found these slogans extremely shocking given the ideological offensive against Iran at that time. Why the Iranians, the Algerians and not the Palestinians and the Iraqis? Why such selective choices? To thwart these slogans, we decided to express our solidarity not with Third World women but rather with Western women. And so we chanted:

Solidarity with Swedish women!

Solidarity with Italian women!

Solidarity with German women!

Solidarity with English women!

Solidarity with French women!

Solidarity with American women!

Which meant: why should you, white women, have the privilege of solidarity? You are also battered, raped, you are also subject to men’s violence, you are also underpaid, despised, your bodies are also instrumentalized…

I can tell you that they looked at us as if we were from outer space. What we were saying seemed surreal, inconceivable. It was like the 4th dimension.  It wasn’t so much the fact that we reminded them of their situation as Western women that shocked them. It was more the fact that African and Arabo-Muslim women had dared symbolically subvert a relationship of domination and had established themselves as patrons. In other words, with this skillful rhetorical turn, we showed them that they de facto had a superior status to our own. We found their looks of disbelief quite entertaining.

Another example: After a solidarity trip to Palestine, a friend was telling me how the French women had asked the Palestinian women if they used birth control. According to my friend, the Palestinian women couldn’t understand such a question given how important the demographic issue is in Palestine. They were coming from a completely different perspective. For many Palestinian women, having children is an act of resistance against the ethnic cleansing policies of the Israeli state.

There you have two examples that illustrate our situation as racialized women, that help understand what is at stake and envisage a way to fight colonialist and Eurocentric feminism.

— Houria Bouteldja, spokeswoman for the PIR (La Indigènes de la République) speaking at the 4th International Congress of Islamic Feminism, in Madrid, 22 October 2010

(Hat Tip to Huimin)

Four more events coming up for me, and one for the fabulous Andrea Plaid.

Friday, March 25, 2011

6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Center for American Progress
1333 H St NW, 10th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20005
Featured Speakers

Amanda Terkel, Latoya Peterson, Amy Austin & Melinda Wittstock

Panelists Amy Austin, publisher of the Washington City Paper; Latoya Peterson, editor of Racialicious.com; Melinda Wittstock, Founder, CEO and Bureau Chief of Capitol News Connection; and Amanda Terkel, senior politics reporter at The Huffington Post will talk about some of the cutting-edge work in media and activism they are doing and discuss how to use new (and old) technology to help women craft new and different kinds of messages. The discussion will be followed by a happy hour at The Laughing Man Tavern:

Laughing Man Tavern
1306 G Street NW
Washington, DC 20005

The panel is part of WAM! It Yourself, a do-it-yourself decentralized version of the annual Women, Action & the Media (WAM!) conference.

Price: Free with RSVP!

WAM lt Yourself Conference for
Feminist Media Makers
Saturday, March 26, 9AM – 5PM
Hive 55 (55 Broad St) in lower Manhattan

Sorry — this event is completely sold-out! But please join us for Friday’s Happy Hour (details above) and Sunday’s Brunch (details below), and follow us live on twitter: #wamnyc

Featured panels this year include:

* Feminist perspectives in progressive publications
* Social media for activism
* “Beats outside the box”—economy, immigration, labor, education
* Feminist blogging
* Pitching and getting published

Confirmed speakers: Amanda Marcotte (Pandagon/RH Reality Check), Irin Carmon (Jezebel), Jessica Bennett (Newsweek), Sarah Seltzer (Alternet), Emily May (Hollaback), Andrea Plaid (Racialicious), Janna Zinzi (Swirl PR), Julianne Escobedo Shepherd (Alternet), Kathryn Joyce (Religion Dispatches), Dana Goldstein, Bryce Covert (New Deal 2.0), Michelle Chen (ColorLines), Lauren Kelley (Alternet), Megan Carpentier (Raw Story), Jennifer LaFleur (ProPublica), Sarah Laskow (The Media Consortium), Jenn Pozner (Women in Media & News), Lori Adelman (Feministing), Jen Nedeau (Time Magazine), Deanna Zandt and more great speakers coming!

Follow this event live via Twitter at #wamnyc!

Price: Sold out, but come chill at brunch or happy hour, or follow Andrea on Twitter for the dish.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Herbst Theatre
San Francisco, California

6:00 PM

Confirmed young feminist speakers include:

Lena Chen is a sex and gender journalist and blogger (TheChicktionary.com, SexAndTheIvy.com), organizer of the 2010 Rethinking Virginity conference, and co-founder of Feminist Coming Out Day, a visibility campaign started at Harvard University and now active at 15 colleges in the U.S.

Shelby Knox is a feminist organizer, speaker and writer, and Director of Organizing, Women’s Rights, for Change.org. She became nationally known as the subject of the 2005 Sundance award-winning film The Education of Shelby Knox.

Miriam Perez is a writer, blogger and reproductive justice activist. She works with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and is an Editor at Feministing.com.

Latoya Peterson is a hip hop feminist, editor of Racialicious.com, and tech and gaming enthusiast. She eats pop culture for breakfast.

Moderated by Rose Aguilar, host of yourcallradio.org — KALW News.

Price: General Admission $29/ Students $15

As WHUT-TV prepares for our annual spring student seminars, it is my great pleasure to request your participation as one of our panelists in Careers in Media. This seminar is being planned for April 7th at 4pm.

The seminar will be open to students from Howard University’s School of Communications and WHUT’s own Students-In-Training from our internship and volunteer program. Our mission and objective is to prepare them in making practical decisions in their future professional endeavors by providing them with inside perspectives and insight from successful working professionals already in the field.

Price: Free for Howard Communication Students

Galapagos Art Space
16 Main Street
Brooklyn, NY

Ain’t I A Woman: Women of Color Speak On Activism
April 11th, 2011, 6PM – 12AM
Mixer 6PM ** Panel 7-9PM ** Party 9-12AM

Long after Sojourner Truth pondered the question – “Aint I A Woman?” we continue to face a white supremacist culture that undermines women of color, young women, undocumented immigrants, and the LGBTQ community. We’re convening this panel to ignite a discourse about the experiences of women of color in the feminist movement and beyond. On this night, six outstanding feminists and activists will go head-to-head to discuss race in the feminist movement today.

We know that the movements to eradicate racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and sexism are inextricably connected. We reject the silencing and subjugation of women of color and aim to create a safe and courageous space to raise our voices, confront tensions, celebrate our triumphs, create collective solutions and share our stories. Through this sharing, we can create a united front so that, instead of surviving through silence, there can be a dialogue on how to battle institutionalized oppression.

Speaking our truth is crucial to our survival. By gathering together and learning from our shared and individual tales of love and struggle, we will each emerge with new perspectives that will enable us to engender the change we envision for the world.

In the words of bell hooks, “There can be no feminist revolution without an end to racism, classism, ageism…”

Round One: Latoya Peterson, Founder of Racialicious
Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Journalist

Round Two: Lori Adelman, Program Associate at International Women’s Health Coalition
Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, Reproductive Rights Activist

Round Three: Jessie Daniels, PhD, Author and Sociology Professor at Hunter College
Anna Holmes, Jezebel Founding Editor

Music by DJ Lobotomy Copter throughout the night, http://on.fb.me/gRnBsN

**$10 Suggested Donation (but no one turned away for lack of funds)
**We encourage live tweeting during the event using the hastag, #AIAW

** For more info, contact Morgane at refusethesilence@gmail.com with the subject line: “Ain’t I A Woman”

Price: $10 to help us cover reservation costs, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Like, late night I’m on a first class flight
The only brother in sight the flight attendant catch fright
I sit down in my seat, 2C
She approach officially talkin about, “Excuse me”
Her lips curl up into a tight space
Cause she don’t believe that I’m in the right place
Showed her my boarding pass, and then she sort of gasped
All embarrassed put an extra lime on my water glass
An hour later here she comes by walkin past
“I hate to be a pest but my son would love your autograph”
(Wowwww.. Mr. Nigga I love you, I have all your albums!..) [...]

For us especially, us most especially
A Mr Nigga VIP jail cell just for me
“If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake”
Just got some shoe-polish, painted my face
They say they want you successful, but then they make it stressful
You start keepin pace, they start changin up the tempo

—”Mr. Nigga,” Mos Def featuring Q-Tip

Recently, I was invited to speak at a major feminist event.

It was for a cause I cared deeply about, and I would share the stage with some of the best recognized figures in feminism.

And yet…I hesitated.

Less than three years ago, I would have jumped at this opportunity, delighted to be invited, honored to be included, proud to make my contribution. But that was then.

Now, I read the email with a healthy dose of suspicion.  Why did they want to invite me? They mentioned receiving my name on referral from another marquee named feminist, which made me wonder why the referral was needed.  Did they really need more speakers at this late date? Or did they need to add some color to yet another stage that was sure to be full of white women?

I also instantly felt guilty.  Was I projecting? Over reacting? After all, this was a short notice event. Isn’t the cause more important than my waffling feelings about mainstream, movement oriented feminism? Why was I instantly suspicious of their intent? Can’t I give people the benefit of the doubt for once?

The emotional see-saw over my decisions to participate in feminist focused events has been my constant companion for close to a year or so now, but it took on a new dimension when Jessica Valenti decided to leave Feministing.  That night, I was at a cocktail meetup, when one of my friends grabbed my hand and asked if I heard the news.  I’m a lot more removed from the blogosphere at large these days (our transformation is all consuming at the moment) so I hadn’t seen or heard about the post.  My friend, who is another African American woman, told me to take a look as soon as I got home.  “Basically,” she said, “it was all about her this whole time -she got hers so fuck us!”

So Jessica Valenti’s official departure from Feministing (and Renee’s subsequent response) is why I was actually spurred to write this post, but the problem goes back far longer than just that.

Before we begin, I would like to separate the issue as it stands – representation in mainstream, funded, capital F Feminism, from Jessica Valenti.  It is a bit difficult to do this – after all, Jessica’s site boasts that she was tagged the “poster girl for third-wave feminism” by Salon. To become a symbol of a movement (intentionally or unintentionally) means to also absorb all of the baggage that comes along with being held up as the symbol. And oh, there is baggage.

First, the idea that the third wave has mastered inclusion problems is sadly mistaken, since many of us surfing this new wave still see the rehashing that happens time and time again of second wave and first wave problems. However, it is absolutely amazing how often we see the same problems repeat themselves time and time again – particularly in the blogosphere.

Second, the idea that any one of us can represent the many is inherently flawed. It doesn’t matter who we’re talking about – no one can fully represent the whole of who we are and our varied thoughts and feelings. The trouble is that our current system requires exactly that – certain groups, in order to access a seat at the table, a representative will be assigned. Some folks would call that an attempt at diversity – but it is a nefarious double bind for those of us who get the nod. To refuse to participate may mean that voice is never represented, that the voices are the underrepresented are once again unvoiced, unheard, and perhaps unknown. Unfortunately, absence can be interpreted as a reinforcement of the status quo – if women of color are not present, then the uniformed interpret this to mean we have nothing to say. Or, even worse, it is a reinforcement that critical feminist theorists of color do not exist.

However, to accept the position also means to be pressed into the token spot. To often be the only person versed in issues pertinent to women of color. To have to change what you want to say or do or talk or think about because someone else on the panel just said something so egregious (and something quietly accepted as truth) that you know have to challenge their fucked up worldview.

So, to that end I wanted to share some stories from my life being sporadically dropped into feminist circles and what I have observed there. My hope is that because I’ve accrued some (read: precious little) currency in mainstream circles, that people will seriously reflect on the feminist status quo and recognize the way in which this space encourages tokenization and exploitation.

A Ms. Nigga VIP Panel Spot, Just for me!

I get asked to be on a lot of panels. Normally, being on a panel is a great way to attend a kick ass conference for free. So when I was first starting out, was thrilled to jump on a panel. Exposure, great networking – what’s not to like?

Now, dozens of panels later, I read every panel invitation as if I were trying to break The Da Vinci code. That practice started when I was on a panel a few years back. I had been invited to sit on a panel about women and media, and I thought they asked me to come to represent the digital sector. And perhaps the organizers did. But one of my co-panelists decided she was going to talk about how women didn’t recognize how good we had it. Everytime a panelist or audience member brought up a barrier to women in the industry, she responded by talking about how many gains women had made.

Finally I spoke up. “You said things are so much better for women- but you are only talking about white women. Outside of Oprah, where’s our progress, on or off screen?”

Not only did this woman not answer my question, she acted as if I had called her a racist. For some reason, she felt the need to inform the room about how she attends vibrant multicultural celebrations in her hometown that “celebrate differences.”

Now, what the fuck did that have to do with me pointing out that she had erased the experiences of women of color in the entertainment industry in all of her responses? Nothing. But I don’t think she was responding to my question – she was responding to my tokenized presence in that environment. It was instant defense mode – “let me prove how not racist I am,” not “let’s examine the disparity that exists when one says women and really means white women.”

Earlier this year, I opted to join a feminist media luncheon. I accepted and planned out my statements – I really wanted to stress the opportunities in the new media space, and encourage the young women to branch out from standard “feminist” conversations and instead go into other types of spaces and apply feminist concepts to the general threads there.

And the beginning of the conversation went well. However the third panelist, who arrived a bit later, started changing the tone of the conversation. It isn’t that this speaker intentionally set out to minimize the experiences of anyone who isn’t in line with the mainstream version of feminism – but her second-wave swagger and broad sweeping statements had the same effect.

Then I found myself at a crossroads – do I start talking about what I intended to and let her statements go unchallenged? Or do I once again have to represent for folks who aren’t in the room, to people who would most likely repeat the mistakes of their fore-mothers because they never learned anything different?

So once again, I swallowed what I wanted to say and instead talked about race, class, and structural injustice.

I felt like I had to take the loss for the greater good of team POC.  Why? Because tokens are inherently disempowered, no matter how much we want things to be different. To not represent is equally as painful as the knowledge that I am silencing myself when I do so. But these are the terrible choices we are forced to endure when people are willing to accept tokens in lieu of equity.

The Price We All Pay

Occasionally, we’ve run pieces about the cost of racism on Racialicious, many cross posted from our friends at Resist Racism.  One of my favorites, “The Cost of Racism” talks about how white supremacy has convinced itself of its own correctness (emphasis mine):

White people are raised in an environment in which they are regularly assured of their superiority. Their experts are white, like them. And they often live in segregation, thus denying them the opportunity to be exposed to other viewpoints.

What happens in a culture of white supremacy? White people assume that they are the experts. Even in the absence of any history, education or knowledge.

The most blatant example of this is when a white person (typically a white man) is pontificating about a subject and is challenged when a person of color expresses an opinion.  The white person will assume that the person of color knows nothing about the subject and will strive to “correct” him or her.  I’ve had this happen when a white person who was not in my field was speaking with authority about something in my field.  They never assume that you might actually be knowledgeable on the subject, nor do they assume that you might have professional credentials.  (I’d also note that this is a very common experience on the part of people of color.  And I recently heard a anecdote about this happening to a writer of color with a white man who was discussing her book.  Only he didn’t know she had written it.)

It does not cross their minds.  This is racism. [...]

When people are not regularly exposed to alternative viewpoints, and when other viewpoints are not carefully considered but instead immediately discounted, the end result is a people who lack the ability to think critically. Because they never learned to consider all the evidence.  They learned only who they need to listen to.

And it is this that we bump up against, time and time again.

Here’s another story.  I get an email from a writer who wants to quote me in a piece for an international newspaper about misogyny and hip-hop. This person stresses what a good opportunity for exposure this would be for me and my blog.  This person does not mention the extensive writing I’ve done on hip-hop, feminism, and everything in between.  This person did not appear to notice that I had already written extensively about the song and video in question.  Hell, this person didn’t appear to realize that I had already written extensively for the same international newspaper they were writing for, across a couple different sections.

So I ignored the email (which is easy for me to do, since I get about an email a minute most days).  But this person persisted, and emailed the person who referred me to ask for a proper introduction. In the magazine writing world, one of the first things you learn is that introductions are golden – here is a trusted person emailing someone you want to get in touch with saying “Hey, can you take the time to talk to this person?”  Why the initial offer was refused is beyond me.

But, the referral person sent me the whole email chain from this writer. And the writer’s initial email was to the referral, with a nice gushy line about their work and how they admired them, and would they please consider commenting. The referral noted she was not the best person to answer this question, and sent that person on to me.

The person who referred me is a white, well-known feminist that does NOT write about hip-hop. She’s a generalist, and she writes about a bit of everything.  Which brings me back to Resistance’s point above: why, if one is writing about hip hop and misogyny, would you go to a generalist, rather than an expert?

Why would you seek the opinion of someone who rarely, if ever writes about hip hop on a piece about hip hop? This person didn’t need to quote me as an expert.  They could have quoted Renina. Or any of the Crunk Feminists.  Or the R.N. Bradley, the Red Clay Scholar. Or any of the ladies at Clutch. Or Tricia Rose. Or Elizabeth Mendez Berry. Or Joan Morgan. Or Gwyndolyn Pough. Or look at men who identify as feminist or do feminist work – what about Byron Hurt who created a whole documentary on hip-hop and gender? What about Mark Anthony Neal? Need someone more well known? What about Melissa Harris-Perry?

Or, if this person is such a huge fan of mainstream feminism, why not reach out to the ladies at Feministing.com, the largest feminist hub in the blogosphere, and holler at Samhita, who is a hip hop head AND has the high profile position of Executive Editor? Why not Rose, who has also written extensively about hip-hop? And these are just the folks I can think of off the top of my head.

It’s the invisibility that burns. Amazing writing from all kinds of people is only a search box  away – yet, since we are not filed under “listen to,” we are ignored. And we are ignored in favor of people who will admit to not being experts on the topic or not having certain types of experiences.  This is when we start moving into erasure territory.  It isn’t that we are not out there, putting work into the public consciousness.  It’s that our words don’t count until they fall from the lips of a white girl.

I can only speak to my particular areas, which heavily focus on race and class.  But there are a lot of folks silenced because they don’t fit the profile La Lubu so helpfully outlines on Feministe:

“The feminist blogosphere is: young, but not too young (25-35); mostly white (and of northern european extraction); middle to upper-middle class; highly educated (always degreed, usually grad school or law degree); able-bodied and healthy; non-religious (but typically with a Protestant or Jewish background); childfree by choice (also not a caretaker of an elderly or disabled adult); body size from thin to very thin; cisgender; heterosexual; conventionally feminine/pretty; fashionable; not employed in a nontraditional (>25% female participation) workforce; native English speaking (family of origin usually native English speaking also); non-indigenous and several generations removed from immigrant ancestors; raised in a nuclear family (either intact or divorced—but not “unwed” or extended family); lives in a large metropolis; favors capitalism; unmarried/unpartnered (meaning: no formal or legal ties of responsibility to a partner); never incarcerated (no family incarcerated either); and has plenty of personal contact with people in positions of actual power (gets invited to policymaking meetings/summits).”

I hit a lot of these myself:  27 years old (started here when I was about 23 or 24), able bodied, childfree by choice, cisgender, heterosexual, native English speaking, large metropolis dwelling, neutral on capitalism, currently unmarried, never incarcerated, and recently, I discovered that I’ve been thrust into contact with a lot of people in positions of actual power.  But the other things, that I don’t fit?  They figure prominently into how others perceive me.

Much Ado About Book Deals

The term “book deal” has become short hand for a whole host of other things, most specifically how the words of some women are valued over others.  It’s also kind of seen as a low-level litmus test for “making it.”  If a person without a book deal criticized someone with a book deal, they would normally be tagged as “jealous,” angry that they don’t have one of these coveted agreements that vaults you into expert status. The other side of that criticism is more quiet, kind of a whisper, but it persists nonetheless: “If your writing was better, you would have a book deal too.”

So let’s talk about book deals, shall we?

I write in this space having contributed to two anthologies, multiple magazines, dozens of online outlets, and am about to pen my first foreward for a friend’s book about the Black Blogosphere. I am also delinquent in an academic chapter I owe to another friend about the Intersectional Internet. (If you’re reading, Doc Dre, I swear I’ll get it done, Jessica Yee as my 11th hour witness!)

The first time I was informed about the politics of book deals was 2008. The first time I was offered a book deal based on the Racialicious blog was also 2008 (and, to my knowledge, that offer still stands).  The first time I was introduced to a book agent was 2009, and the first time I was offered a personal book deal was 2010.

I still haven’t written a fucking book.

So, I say this to diffuse the she’s just jealous allegations by saying it outright – I could have a book deal, tomorrow, if I wanted and it would be on the shelves by winter. But I have not committed to a book yet.

This is partially due to (1) the politics surrounding book deals and (2) my complete and utter lack of interest in penning a memoir.

The latter reason should be fairly obvious to long time readers – I am very careful about revealing personal information about myself, and I would prefer to keep as much of my life as possible private.  Memoirs are super popular in the publishing world right now, so that’s what folks tend to push me toward.

The discussion of politics…well, let’s go back in time for a bit.

Back in 2008, I was a complete and total n00b, honored to attend my very first conference, Women, Action, and the Media.  It was the first time I had ever spoken on a panel before, so I was grateful to have Carmen steering the ship and Wendi Muse in the shotgun position.  Up until that point, we weren’t super involved in the feminist space – Carmen had been featured in Bitch Magazine and received a wave of (well-deserved) attention for her effortless discussion of race and gender issues.  Still, we were definitely the race kids invited to the gender party, so we didn’t really know what kind of space we stepped into.

And what I recall most about the time was how many friends we made.  Andi Ziesler and Lisa Jervis from Bitch Magazine introduced themselves – they proved to be great friends early on.  Bitch published my first (and favorite) magazine piece and Lisa Jervis floated my name in a lot of circles, which allowed me to rack out freelance credits later.  The most of the Feministing crew was there and they put on a fabulous dinner to promote their then new direction and site redesign.  I met tons of people, and everywhere, there was the feel of opportunity.  I remember being told, twice, to hit the after party after the evening’s official festivities close.  “Two people got book deals last year!” I was informed, though I appear to have forgotten who told me this.  No matter.

Since Carmen, Wendi, and I were also interested in caucusing with the Women of Color contingent at the conference (see this link), we ended up splitting our time between two events – the Feministing dinner and the QWOC and friends party, ultimately skipping the after party.  (This is a *really* abbreviated version of events, mind – I’m only telling the book deal centric bits of the story.)

That same day, Wendi and I had attended a pre-caucus lunch where we found out that a pretty awesome writer, Adele Nieves, had sat down with a publisher called Seal Press to pitch her idea for an anthology.  From what I can recall about the initial pitch, it was about bringing marginalized voices to the center of feminist discourse – a book on feminism without the usual suspects.  However, the person who sat down with her completely missed why such a book was needed, and informed Nieves that the book just wouldn’t sell without a brand name feminist, like Jessica Valenti.

So, then came the fallout. And much of the discussions afterward explained why the ideas of book deals became so central to a lot of these debates.

• There are issues of knowing the people involved, and friendship, and wanting to believe the best about your friend’s intentions. (See the comments for why that didn’t hold up.)
• Some issues, around the same time, about ideas, credit, plagiarism, and the co-opting the work of women of color (and with defensive response here)
• Other issues, around the same time, on women of color engaging in “negative discourse” (and drama around belatedly discovered racist images here)
• On the people being protected, and why it’s always the same old, same old
• Discussions on the unbearable whiteness of feminism
• Holly going hard on why “It’s a Jungle in Here Too” and her words, which prompted me to think along the same lines:

Just add my name to the list of those who are no longer sure if we can simply “take feminism back.” Or even if it’s worth it. It’s not like there aren’t other movements out there that actually respect women — that are led by women and folks of many other genders, that work to improve women’s lives. This exodus from single-issue politics has been happening for a long time. At the same time, I want to believe that change is possible. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. I know mistakes are made, and I know mistakes can be repaired — even mistakes that highlight what I believe is the single worst problem inside of “the feminist movement” today.

• And another Holly sentiment, quoted for truth:

Look, we all have a problem here in the feminist blogosphere. I hope that all of you bloggers will agree with me on this problem: some feminist bloggers have access to a bigger megaphone than others, and you have to be deluded to think that’s based on anything remotely resembling a meritocracy. I’m sorry — no matter how talented you are, how good a writer, how intellectually sharp and beautifully passionate, there are other things about you that play a very significant role in how you’re heard, who hears you, whether you get heard at all. That is the tough shit about the ugly world we live in — it’s not truly fair to anyone, because true fairness would be getting evaluated solely on your own merits. Nobody is — but of course, some people get the long end of the stick, and others the short end. Others are marginalized. If you don’t get that, please go read some racism 101 somewhere, okay?

(It’s interesting to note – I miss Holly’s work. She left the feminist blogosphere – like many women on the losing side of many of these battles -  to focus on other, real world based projects.)

It really isn’t fun to dredge up all the things that went on, particularly as I’d rather not think about it for too long, but it is necessarily to do so.  Because people forget.  Time went on, and this thing I remember so well as a pivotal turning point in the feminist blogosphere is history.  Digital dust. Which is why Irin at Jezebel had no idea why so many people could see where Renee was going with her piece – all this back story was forgotten.

So it’s not about the book deal. It’s about all the issues tied up in it – access to power, marketability,  the transmission of ideas challenges, (perceived and otherwise) to mainstream norms – all kinds of things.  I hang in a lot of mainstream spaces, and I have figured out the formula that unlocks things like book deals and radio appearances and television appearances and speaking gigs.  So please believe, I know the game.  And despite the fact that some of us are able to make it, the deck is stacked. Over on Jezebel, someone inquired about why Jessica received a lot of criticism for her work, and Carmen and I received much much less for similar work.  After explaining that the race space is dramatically underfunded and underexposed when compared to feminism, I said:

While I have been blessed and honored to have many of the same opportunities as many of my white, female contemporaries, ultimately I am not the face people think of when they think feminism. I could probably eke out a living there, but only as second or third string. The stars tend to fit a certain mold. That’s not a diss on Jessica (it’s really hard to talk about these things when you actually know folks) but it’s kind of like trying to get a job as an actress. Yes, you can do it if you aren’t conventionally attractive and you can even have a fun, character driven career. But you aren’t getting the best opportunities or top billing or top dollar. The conversations around book deals and such sounds like professional sour grapes, but it is actually folks protesting a system that don’t see my words as valuable as Jessicas – for a thousand and one reasons from marketing to societal structures.

The internet is littered with reasons why so many WOC opt out (of the blogosphere format anyway) – hell, the feminism tag on Racialicious should really be named “feminist drama.” I poached Thea Lim and Jessica Yee away from a feminist mag for this bullshit.

I hate that this is resting on the feet of Jessica, because this problem didn’t begin with her and won’t end with her. But I can understand feeling some rage at seeing that pattern play out yet again.

My entire piece for Jessica Yee’s Feminism for Real was based in this internal conflict, and unfortunately, I haven’t arrived at a solution within myself. The event I referenced at the beginning of the piece? I declined. Over the weekend I accepted two panel invitations. One read:

We love the voice and leadership you bring to the feminist movement, and we hope you will join us to have a dynamic, smart, and rollicking good conversation with Gloria Steinem, that will rock people’s socks and challenge the notion that feminism is just about white women above a certain age.

For their sake, I hope they understand what they just asked for.

—

Want to Keep Reading?

Lisa Factora-Borchers – Accepting Kyriarchy, Not Apologies

Latoya Peterson – The Or vs. The And – Women of Color and Mainstream Feminism

Mai’a – We Don’t Need Another Anti-Racism 101

TR: What role would you like the U.S. to play?

NS: I don’t expect the power or support or interference of anyone, of any government. We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism. Obama is a pragmatic person and thinking of the interests of his country; I understand this. But now he is confused: One minute he supports Mubarak, one minute he doesn’t; one moment he is afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood, the next he is not. Now I believe in the people of Egypt only, I depend on the people of Egypt only.

~~Excerpted from interview with Rebecca Walker at The Root. Read the rest here.

Image Credit: myhero.com

We’ve all heard about the continuous saga of human rights violations in Arizona, from legalizing racial profiling, to eliminating ethnic studies, to preventing anyone with an “accent” from teaching English (read: anyone who doesn’t sound like an old white man from the eastern/northern states since I’m pretty sure we ALL have accents) and this extremely racist, oppressive, colonial, and cultural genocide list goes on.

What’s been happening in Arizona is horrific on so many levels to so many people and communities – but it has really had me reflecting. When do certain issues get considered “feminist” and when do they not? And when do they require a real feminist response in action?

There have been several excellent female responses to the situation in Arizona by way of intersecting the impacts to women and children, sexuality, and even religion (read all of the amazing stuff the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health is posting here), yet so much of the mainstream media we’ve been hearing is of course way too predictably patriarchal in nature; people making excuses for enacting racist legislation, utilizing fear-based tactics to legitimize white supremacy to “protect” the women and children, etc., etc.

So here I am responding to it and asking you frankly: Does an issue have to have an identified or presenting woman involved to truly be considered feminist? When abortion rights are threatened, we’re out in the masses online and offline to protect them repeatedly, blog post after Facebook link, clinic defense after pro-choice club initiation, without question – and we certainly come together on it even if we disagree on tactics.

But what about when status, documentation, skin color, ethnicity, and culture are threatened? What’s our feminist response to this? And how much or to what degree are we going to mobilize and do something the same way we would if the usual suspects (like sexual/reproductive health) came into play? (And no, I don’t mean, “Oh look at this one blog post here on a feminist site about this” – I mean the same amount of feminist response that you would see on other issues. You know what I mean).

Or are we again going to leave this to the so-called “ethnic” groups to deal with?

Editor’s Note: Jessica originally wrote this piece for a feminist website, so she is addressing this to a feminist audience. – LDP

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that discussed the problem I feel feminism poses for a lot of women, among them black women.

An argument that played out this past weekend  in the “lady blogosphere”  offered a good example of the problem. It started last week when,  in  The Guardian, Womanist Musings‘ Renee Martin wrote a piece titled “I’m not a feminist (and there is no but).” Renee was responding to an article by Chloe Angyal, a writer for Feministing, in which Chloe argued that young women should boldly proclaim themselves as feminist. Renee’s post rejected what she describes as a “white feminist movement”, represented by  college “women’s studies” curricula and by blogs like Feministing, which do a poor job of representing women of color.

So far, so good – a friendly, if somewhat esoteric, disagreement between two women who both clearly care about the status of women. Things got really interesting when the mega-blog Jezebel picked up Renee’s article and criticized her for ignoring the women of color write for the publications she disparages.  The comment threads quickly devolved into an “us vs. them” with readers mostly divided along black and white racial lines. One commenter wrote what I felt before I even clicked the link to the Jezebel post: “My urge to comment swelled when I first read the post, and then I thought to myself, “Self, take cover and just wait for the shitstorm.”

And  a shitstorm it was.  If you have two hours or so, you should read the original articles and the comments.  For those who want the CliffNotes:  many white readers (they self-identified, I’m not assuming) accused Renee of ignorance, ingratitude, even racism and race-baiting.  A sample of comments:

“ Oh jeebus, the ‘womanist’ thing again? Almost as bad as ‘feminininsm’.”

“What I’m saying is that feminism is the belief that all women should have equal rights. And that is not a bad thing. If someone doesn’t want to be a part of it, screw them. If they chose to put a different name to it, I think they’re serving to break up a movement that is powerful in its size and noble in it’s cause.”

“It gets a little tiring to go about your life treating everyone the same (or so you think), and then be told you’re racist anyway, because you’re simply bolstering institutional racism. What’s a well-meaning person to do?”

“I don’t get it. As white women, we’re told we’ll “never understand” and that it’s futile and downright offensive to even try through our privilege colored glasses. Then, people get mad when we can’t consider the WOC’s perspective, when we’ve been directly told that we could never even begin to understand it so don’t even try…..There is no pleasing anyone, except to just sit here with a sign that says “White Person Punching Bag” and taking every hit anyone can throw at us. I know as a white person, I’m not allowed to feel frustrated regarding issues of POC, but I am.”

It wasn’t long before black readers stepped in to, as one commenter put it, “school” the white readers. To them, the vitriol directed at Renee by the (mostly white) readers of Jezebel just proved Renee’s point:

“Instead of forcing the term of feminist on women who feel racially oppressed by the label, mainstream feminism should work to correct the problems that lead many women to feel this way.”

“In the US, the social structure is created by white people and set up to benefit white people. I’m not saying that people are racist; rather that the structure of the country and its institutions and movements, including feminism, are imbued by systemic racism, or the idea that “white” is default and everything else is “other”

“It’s alienating as a feminist woman to have a White person accuse a non-White woman “kind of doing the same thing”, when the same thing is systematic racism. It’s alienating that White feminist women are aware of the double-consciousness of gender but oblivious to the double-consciousness of race. Non-White bloggers are hyper-aware that they are writing for White people, and all non-White people spend their lives working – consciously and unconsciously – to understand White people in order to get by in a culture that defines them as intrinsically an other….The content of these blogs may be diverse, but the discourse certainly isn’t. “

I’m going to have to come out on Renee’s side on this one.  The comments above illustrate why it can be difficult for women of color to feel like they truly belong in certain publications. Pointing out the fact that a few women of color write for mainstream feminist publications and therefore, these publications represent women of color, is like claiming you can’t be racist because you have some non-white friends. Renee’s point is not that voices of minority women never get featured in these publications. Instead, what matters is that the dominant discourse is a white one. For the record, I’d call myself a feminist and a womanist and sometimes neither – I’m not sure the labels are nearly as important as the values here.

The reaction to this post is one of the reasons I hate reading anything on race is mainstream publication.  When black women say that mainstream publications don’t represent us, it goes deeper than there not being enough pictures of or articles by women of color. It’s about the larger “ethos” of the publication – and yes, I know that may read like a vague cop-out. Let me put it this way: I sometimes read Glamour magazine, I even sometimes like it but I don’t feel like I am the “Glamour woman.”

Terrible social construct that it is, race does affect the way men and women of color see the world. It means that a black woman may sometimes wonder if she’s being passed over by a mate because of her race and an Asian woman may wonder if she’s being considered because of her race (see this and this).  When women of color try to explain the experiences that shape our views and get defensiveness back in return, we either retreat or bite back harshly – neither reaction bode well for talking our way to “post-racial” bliss.

In their defense, I understand that some of the white readers are also playing out frustration with the difficulty talking about race.  From the comments of the Jezebel post, it would apear that readers think Renee is accusing them, since they’re feminists, of being racists when she is actually attacking the construct of feminism. It’s the difference between saying white people are racists versus the construct of whiteness is racist.

Lest we think this is a solely American problem, a similar dynamic plays out when it comes to feminism in other countries. An article in the BBC last week discussed pending restrictions in France against wearing the niqab.  The story quotes Elizabeth Badinter who is described as “a leading femnist philosopher,” and who says the veil  “is totally contrary to the three principles of the French Republic” and violates the principles of equality:

“She who hides her face is in a position superior to mine… she sees me but she refuses to reciprocate.” A Muslim woman interviewed for the story has a very different take on the veil and the republic. To her, “liberty means freedom of conscience, of expression.”

Whether it’s restricting how Muslim women can express their faith in France or in insisting that black American women feel adequately represented by mainstream publications, a false choice is presented: accept the majority’s values and your “minority” status or continue living as separatists.  Identity is fluid – I’m always black, a woman, Nigerian, and American.  But at any given moment, I may identify more with one or more of those things.  Ultimately, if black women like Renee Martin chose not to identify with feminism, the truly freedom-enhancing and “feminist” thing to do is to leave them be or, at least, try to win them over.

As much potential as there is for female empowerment in hardcore rap through women rappers’ embrace of the erotic, given the restrictive conventions of the genre, which force female artists to straddle identities of heterosexist sexiness and simultaneous masculinity, its full potential is rarely ever realized. In Minaj’s embrace of Lil Kim’s pussy power politics, she is also inevitably embracing, regardless of her actual intent and/or acceptance of rejection of the label, a controversial and rather contradictory ideology of feminism. [...]

Implicit in Minaj’s Signification onto the male narrative is a strategic process of identity construction, relying primarily on the male narrative and male voice to help shape the hardcore female rapper’s public image. Essentially, by engaging in dialogue with the male narrative, Minaj is aligning herself with male rappers and creating her identity as one of (pseudo)masculinity, an asset valuable to her role as a hardcore female rapper. It is within this genre that femcees operate as performers of gender and are most harshly judged by an injurious rubric of masculinity. These women are forced to negotiate “androgynous” identities as visually feminine, yet rhetorically masculine artists. [...]
In hardcore female rap, femcees are constant performers of masculinity who, between their Signifyin(g) on male [sexual] discourse and (re) appropriating sexist and misogynistic language, negotiate a treacherous space where a thin line exists between the subversion of male dominance via gender performance and affirmation of its patriarchal norms. [...]

If Minaj were genuinely interested in ascribing true power to her role as a woman and rejecting female rappers’ traditional dependence on the male voice for expression and validation, she would have drawn parallels between herself and powerful public female figures to construct her version of the new-age around the way girl. Grammy-winning female rap legend Lauryn Hill does just that. In The Fugees’ “Ready or Not” she likens herself to Grammy-Award nominated singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist Nina Simone: “So while you imitatin’ Al Capone/I be Nina Simone and defecating on your microphone.” (The Score, 1996) Essentially, “Hill champions a notion of…hip hop that is not rooted in the Mafioso fantasy of the day, but that goes back to the risky aesthetic and political choices of [Nina Simone]…Hill’s lyrical phrase represents a legitimate critique of the hypermasculinity and phallocentrism that pervades hip hop – a critique that is clearly gendered in its intent.” (Neal 247) Plainly put, Hill is a rare exception to the rule(s) as defined within the patriarchy of Hip Hop.

Within Minaj’s musical repertoire, her constant Signification onto the male narrative symbolizes her dependence on the male voice as a means by which to construct her identity. [...] The female body is rarely a site of empowerment except when it is being objectified to define female strength through heterosexist sexiness, which, displayed for male satisfaction, creates little power for women. (Azikwe 354) Because female rappers’ values lies in their ability to perform masculinity as well as be sexually objectified, when a femcee is not performing the role of the sexually available coquette nor the female thug, her power and agency are non-existent.

— From “Step Your Pussy Up: Nicki Minaji and the Signifyin(g) Tropes of Hardcore Female Rap,” by Menda Francois (Senior Thesis)

I (Latoya) originally wanted to title this post: All The Women Are Still White, All The Blacks Are Still Men, But Some Of Us Are Tired of Being Brave and Want to Kick Someone’s Ass. But that was too long, and bad for SEO purposes. So here is the situation.

Last week, Newsweek published an in-depth piece of journalism, chronicling the uncomfortable relationship between women employees at the magazine in 1970, when a gender discrimination suit was filed (with Eleanor Holmes Norton representing the 46 women who filed) and three women employees 40 years later who discovered that they still weren’t quite equal. (The piece is titled “Are We There Yet?”) While the piece was lauded by journalists (for being self-critical) and by feminists (for taking a look at the uncomfortable picture), drama popped off when the Jezebel team pointed out the image of feminism in the Newsweek headline and photo felt a little too familiar.

The text below the image reads:

Things stay the same: This just-posted Newsweek story on “Why Young Women Need Feminism” is accompanied by photo of six women…all of them white. [Newsweek]

Predictably, drama ensued.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am still a contributor to Jezebel. However, I was off on other projects when this started breaking, and when the back and forth between the Newsweek reporters and the Jezebel editors began. And I would have been content to stay the hell out of it (I have enough stuff to write – that’s why this article is so late) but the writers decided to take it to the blogosphere. In their first post, they flamed Jezebel and said:

What bothers us most about their post, though, is that it’s important for feminists to stick together—especially when there’s not much discussion of the F word in the mainstream media at all. Tearing each other down for writing about feminism in a way that could attract young women—black, white, whatever—seems counterproductive. Especially in a personal essay written by, yes, a white woman, about her own, yes, personal experience.

By the way, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai has got your “black, white, whatever:”

Then came more Jeze-bashing.

But what piqued the antennae of Thea and I were the two posts that followed. On the Subject of Race and Feminism reveals this interesting tidbit:

We should also note—and this was one of many things that didn’t make it into the final piece—that the women of color at Newsweek didn’t sign onto the suit in 1970, for various reasons. That’s a whole other story that would be interesting to explore. It’s particularly interesting because after months of searching, with nobody willing to represent them, the white women who sued found themselves a fiery, pregnant black ACLU lawyer—now DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton—who told them to “take off their white gloves,” and went on to become the head of the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. To clear up any of the confusion, she’s the one pictured above, along with the all-white Newsweek organizers.

At the end of the post, the writers say:

Our colleague Raina Kelley, who frequently writes about race and feminism [add: and who has been an incredible supporter and ally of this piece from the very beginning], puts it like this: “I wish there was a fascinating history of black women at Newsweek, but there isn’t. And that’s because in 1970, black women were seen as mammies, not dollies, consigned to the kind of work where collars are washed, not given cute hued names … Our time would come just a bit later.”

Whatever your take—and we want to hear it here—the most important thing is that we’re talking about all these issues. Regarding Jezebel, we’re going to hand this particular fight off to Raina. Take it, lady!

The sign off immediately got under my skin, and after reading Raina Kelly’s statement…

You know what, it is useless to argue about history. This a struggle for equality, not a sorority. There are no prizes for “Most Feminist.”

How hard would it have been to deduce that the authors of this story were telling their own story and through that lens, the story of Newsweek and women? They are white women with similar backgrounds so to add race to the story would have been gratuitous and patronizing.

…I was about ready to fight.

I emailed Raina Kelley to get the direct scoop, and she was gracious enough to respond with a quick phone interview. She explained quite a few things from her perspective behind the scenes, noting: “Being friends with them…I think they genuinely did not believe they did anything wrong. And I don’t see [what they did wrong.]” I asked Raina about the race issue (and how the fact that the few black women working at Newsweek choose not the sign on to the suit looks to me as necessary for inclusion,) she responded: “I’m not 100% sure it would have been necessary – what they were trying to do was compare apples and apples. In this particular instance, I’m an orange.”

What Kelley means is that she felt the particular struggles of black women at Newsweek and white women at Newsweek were fundamentally different. She continues: “As a black woman, I don’t fit into the narrative that they shaped. It’s a different arc. I think people jumped before they really read the story.”

We went back and forth on this for a little while, with me bringing up the framing of the piece and photo (as a definitive statement on feminism) and Kelley bringing up the personal nature of the piece. When I asked about her being deployed as the friend of color, she was adamant about people understanding that in this particular situation, she’s backing the writers.

“I wouldn’t have allowed myself to be used [as a prop],” Kelley said. “I really believe in their story and the way that they told it.”

Kelley nails the crux of the story by explaining:

“We’re talking about a generation of middle class white girls that were promised the moon – and they didn’t get it. We did not full prepare them to deal with a world where they were second class citizens…no one older, or of a different color could have told this story.”

And that is true. But was that the only way the story could have been told? After chatting a bit with Thea, we still disagree, alternately cracking jokes and feeling those old feminist wounds open all over again.

Latoya: What did you think of the source article?

Thea: As I was reading it, I started feeling more and more annoyed.

Latoya: Me too. Imagine that…

Thea: And I wondered, am I annoyed because I have preconceived notions about this? And then I realised – no, I would’ve found this article annoying no matter what.

Latoya: I think it’s because we’re a bit beyond the type of feminism 101 piece that this presents as “Who knew there was still sexism?” Seriously, what the fuck.

Thea: Right, ha.  But it was more than that. After all, as the Newsweek 3 (and you yourself) said, it’s Newsweek, it’s not a radical feminist journal.  We don’t necessarily expect more than a 101 from them. So it took me a moment to figure out what my problem was.  But this is it: the writers do a good job of talking about how better their jobs are than they were for women at Newsweek back in the day, and the structural fight that happened to change that.  But they don’t recognise in their writing at all that part of their own success as contemporary women MUST have to do with their own race and class levels, their access to education etc.

So they are talking about sexism, trying to make a case for why we should care about sexism, talking about male privilege,  how it prevents them from feeling more at home and whole in their workplace…but they don’t talk about how their own privileges have led them to even have a position in that workplace in the first place.  I found it frustrating and dishonest.  Because they want to talk about inequality at Newsweek, but only the inequalities that they suffer. There is no consciousness of the fact that they are benefiting from inequality that others suffer.

Part of the central response from defenders of the Newsweek 3 is, why should they have to talk about race or class? They’re trying to talk about gender.  But the way I read it is that the Newsweek 3 are talking about gender only in so much as it is a structural barrier to success.  And how can you talk about one structural barrier without at least mentioning how the other ones work, or moreover, how barriers for others are advantages for you? It’s an incomplete analysis.  You can’t have one without the other.  You can’t talk truthfully and fully about structural barriers you face, if you don’t at least acknowledge the structural advantages that you have.

The argument the article posed felt a bit half-baked to me.  It was very much about giving credit to the 46 women in 1970 who worked to make Newsweek better (and rightly so).  But I needed these writers to say, you know what, because of the work of the women before us AND also because our culture rewards other things along with male privilege AND also because we worked hard, we work for this prestigious magazine that STILL could be better at dismantling inequalities.  To me that is the full argument.

Latoya: I agree. I spoke to Raina Kelley, who wrote the defense of the piece on their blog and while we disagree on most of what came up, I think she nailed it when she said that this was a deeply personal story. It’s about these three girls who were promised the moon and it didn’t arrive.

Thea: YES.  Which is fine, nothing wrong with writing a personal story.  But be honest about who you are.

Latoya: She said she couldn’t have told that story, which is true – but I also think it is because no one but a child of privilege would have the luxury of thinking these issues are over. As long as I can remember, this little black girl got the message loud and clear: shit is going to be racist, and there isn’t anything you can do about it, so suck it up and do your best, knowing the game is rigged.

Thea: I definitely got the “the world will be yours message!” from my white mama. Imagine how confused I was when it didn’t work out. But I digress.

Latoya: Ha – insert tragic Eurasian mulatto joke. You need an Imitation of Life film…

Thea: Tiny violins playing…

Latoya: I mean, I can understand some of Kelley’s argument. But the reaction of the Newsweek 3 – that to me what was most compelling. Before, I would have just skimmed/skipped over the article. But the idea that racial allegations are coming way out of left field…

Thea: RIGHT.   This is my issue with the article – and with much of non anti racist third wave feminism – it cannot admit that when it says “women” it means “white women.”  It is fine that you want to tell your own story, but please admit it is the story of a white woman.  That should not be such a shocking revelation, you know? Enough already. And the Newsweek 3 responded when Jezebel criticised their lack of race analysis: “we couldn’t talk about race because our readers don’t understand the intricacies of feminism.”  They said “Jezebel’s criticism came out of left field.”

Latoya: The exact quote is:

How is it that we’ve got the old guard championing the piece, and the young new wave—of which we’re a part—tries to discredit it with left-field accusations of racism?

Ahem.

We really need to make an LOLCatz submission:



Thea: Seriously: my jaw was on the floor.  What??? The fact that women have a race as well as a gender is an intricate notion of feminism, or out of left field? When I read that – the “left field” comment,  I actually felt real pain.  Which pisses me off! You’d think after being disappointed enough times by this kind of feminism, I’d developed any immunity to this kind of utter nonsense.

Latoya: You can’t be mixing the race and the feminism Thea. We learned that in feminism 101. That’s “race stuff” not feminism.

Thea: Hahaha. But, seriously, it really hurt me to hear that kind of “race is extra” argument, as you called.  The “race is extra” argument is still considered tenable in some circles of feminism.  Like OMFG.

Latoya: Yeah, reminds me of that slide from the gaming presentation for SXSW:



You know, I used to get mad when people would tell me “Feminism is for white girls” – but now, I completely understand. Even worse, the argument was extended to their blog – notice there wasn’t the time or ability to include women of color in the piece either as part of the retrospective or as a commentator, but I also found it strange they were able to magic someone out of the woodwork when it was pointed out that their piece was not inclusive.

Thea: Raina Kelley you mean?  Pulling out Raina Kelley was definitely a strange response.  Or just a terrible bad PR move, if nothing else.

Latoya: I have to admit, I was put off by Kelley’s online defense, which is more or less: You know what, it is useless to argue about history. This a struggle for equality, not a sorority. There are no prizes for “Most Feminist.”

Ah, no. This is the prize for “ensuring we aren’t alienating women of color YET AGAIN!”

Thea: Why wasn’t Kelley a part of the original piece? Isn’t she a woman?

Latoya: Kelley said that her support for the piece was mostly psychological but again, there is this distancing of race and feminism yet again, that appears to be considered sacrosanct.

Thea: Sacrosanct? Try delusional. We all have races and genders and class levels and levels of ability.  All of our identities contribute to our positions in society…Again, this is not a radical notion.

Latoya: They look at a lot of maybe’s in their response about race and feminism, because it’s totally important – just not important enough to put in the piece.

Thea: Right.

Latoya: And even in their half-assed mea culpa they point out issues that no one will rectify “We didn’t think about the racial makeup of our remaining sources—and maybe we should have.”
Perhaps, but clearly, it was not that important. They also bring up a major detail: black women declined to participate in the original suit. There are all these gaps, but these are not seen as gaps. They conclude it’s something to explore another time – but when? Why wasn’t it a part of the story package? If you don’t want to mention it in white girl land, fine, but shit, could we get a sidebar?

Thea: HA! Can we put “But shit, could we get a sidebar?” on a t-shirt? RIGHT. But again, for me it’s not about the race of their sources, It’s about the racelessness of their analysis. You know, they didn’t even have to include women of colour in the piece. They just needed to recognise what their own race was in the piece.

Latoya: The race of the sources is important to me and here’s why: People of color are always divorced from discussions unless we are talking about race. We are not seen as experts in history, but experts in (insert ethnic history). We are not experts on sexism we are experts on race and occasionally racialized sexism. But our voices are always considered some strange, non mainstream other. That marginalization extends to who is seen as an expert source. It is not an accident that I generally link to other women/POC experts whenever I write anything, especially if it’s a mainstream publication.

Thea: That’s a really good point.

Latoya: And, if they could reach out to someone who was not involved, like Rachel Simmons (who wrote a book they quote) and cite studies like the Catalyst one I covered for Jez a couple months back, why couldn’t they reach out to women who are experts in other fields? Where is Gwen Ifill’s perspective as a woman of color who has been excluded from newsrooms as well?

Thea: I think it comes back to that psychic split.  The inability to admit that they are not talking about women but white women. The reason why I didn’t care for them to diversify the races of their sources was because my thought on seeing that line in the Newsweek 3′s response to the race criticism — “we didn’t think about the racial makeup of our sources”  — was that from here on in they will talk to a token person of colour, who may or may not have an anti-racist point of view.

Latoya: From what they said, I agree. And again, I felt like that was how Raina Kelley was used.

Thea: Did you get a sense of how Kelley felt about being deployed?

Latoya: She says she volunteered to speak up for them because she believed in the piece, not out of loyalty or anything else. However, as an observer, I was totally put off by their “We are so not racist, we got a black friend” play.

Thea: It just seems like a big no-no.  And “Raina will deal with your race questions from now on.”  I really was stunned when I read that.

Latoya: Seriously – it was like we were playing anti-racist bingo. And this goes back to the dynamic we discussed in an earlier convo – the idea that we need to avoid the appearance of racism, rather than stop committing racist actions. (And I am preparing for the deluge of white women’s tears at that statement.)

Thea: Right.  Which I think comes from folks being shamed at a young age for expressing racist views, but not for having them.

Thea: The “tears of white women” leads to my last point.  I have to run, but I just wanted to say this.

This piece from a blog called Authentic Organisations by CV Harquail criticises the anti-racist criticism of the of the Newsweek 3, and the Newsweek 3 actually posted this quote from Harquail on their blog, which really put me off:

You’d think that feminists around the blogosphere would have rallied to the cause of the Newsweek 3. After all, advocacy requires courage, and courage requires social support. What you’ll find, instead, is a conversation about how the women and their advocacy is not good enough. You’ll read that these three women –white women, college-educated women, physically able women, English as first language women – can’t possibly represent “feminism”.

Harquail (who wrote the piece) is basically saying: the Newsweek 3 worked hard and were courageous, can’t we at least commend them for that?

Latoya: So, in sum, STFU and get in line, you ungrateful darkies?

Thea: Genuine LOL! I think part of why reading about this whole Newsweek 3 debacle was personally painful for me, is because it mirrored my own experiences of trying to talk to non anti racist feminists about why race matters.  It was a battle I lost and I no longer comfortably label myself a “feminist.” The word just has too much racist baggage for me.  The sentiment “hey, we worked really hard, and now all you want to do is pile on” is basically exactly what the feminist orgs I worked with said, when I criticised their race politics.

Latoya: Yup. That’s why my feminism is hip-hop flavored.

Thea: (And can I just sidebar that the women of colour at my organisation did exactly what the Newsweek 3 reported the 46 women of Newsweek doing in 1970 in response to sexism: we met in secret to try and validate each others’ distress. That is just how hostile the environment was. )

Latoya: Never even caring how much these thoughtless actions alienate women with brown skin and racialized gender politcs who may want our struggles acknowledged too. The question is always framed as what about their hard work – What about us? We work so hard, can’t we get a mention?

Thea: Right.  The argument is always, we work so hard, can’t we get a break? But you know, I understand this feeling. I feel that way myself sometimes, to be honest, whenever I get a load of harsh criticism. How can I not? Everyone at Racialicious has a full time job, if not two, on top of their Racialicious work.  We are seriously killing ourselves here. And when commenters tell me (often in floods) that I did a shitastic job, after I have worked my ass off on an article that I didn’t even have time to write in the first place, it is super frustrating.

Latoya: And the Racialicious crew, better than anyone, knows all about falling short of our activist goals. Shit, we don’t even have race all the way on lock, and when you add in the other anti-oppression stuff…

Thea: Right, that’s why it sucks.  It’s not the inaccurate, just-doesn’t-get-what-I’m-saying responses that sting.  It’s the one’s that are on the money that hurt. But you know what? When I have a bad comment day, I go into the bathroom and I have a cry and I get all my self-loathing out of the way. But. Then I come back, and I try and figure out how to amend what I messed up.

Latoya: Yeah – the comeuppance part always sucks, but if you handle it right, you come away with a new perspective and new friends.

Thea: Right? Because people criticising you, that’s work for those people.  They’re taking time to criticise you because they care about the cause. Jezebel and Girldrive etc take the time to criticise Newsweek not because they are jealous bitches, but because this is how the movement grows.

Latoya: The only other option is just staying ignorant in a small, diminished world.

Thea: And this is why feminism isn’t growing.

Latoya: We aren’t in the feminism of the past any more – things have changed…

Thea: But feminism  keeps hitting its head against the same wall.

Latoya: Exactly.

Thea: Because the power players can’t admit that not all women are white,  or they can’t admit that they are white But seriously – what is that reviled phrase? – “put on your big girl panties already.”

Latoya: Ha! Panty up!

(This song is begging for an anti-racist feminist remix. Just sayin’…)

Thea: You did half the work, now do the other half.  And no, I am not going to say you did a good job, until you finish the job, because otherwise I am not a good ally to your cause.

Latoya: Maybe they are honestly afraid their thunder will be stolen if they acknowledge the existence of others.

Thea: Well that’s what it’s about, I think, partly. The “let’s not divide the movement” defense.  But, newsflash! You have a race! It affects your life just as your gender does!

Latoya: The movement been divided.

Thea: Mmmmhmmmm.

Latoya: The only way to end those divisions is to start airing out the laundry.

For most of my life, I’ve acted the part of the fiery feminist activist. At age 10 (before I even knew “feminist” as a word) my surprisingly cogent defense of biblical Eve moved my evangelical father into surrendering his argument that women are the root of all evil. At age 16 (when I only knew “feminist” as a term of derision) I scandalized my Filipino teachers by conducting an (albeit amateurish) study charting gender discrimination within Republic Central high schools. And by age 19 (when I proudly donned my first signature “this is what a feminist looks like” t-shirt) my transformation seemed complete. In those enlightened times, I was fond of telling people, “You’re probably a feminist — you just don’t know it yet.”

So thrilled was I to have found a word — an ideology, a movement! — which embodied my long-standing belief system that I didn’t realize until much later the foolishness of such a proclamation; feminism isn’t, after all, defined by one’s inherent, unarticulated views on gender (however progressive those may be), but is rather a conscious, political choice one makes after considering and asserting those views.

These days, a much more educated, experienced, and cynical Me teeters on the fence. Some days, I hear feminism derided by an ignoramus with a beer and the beast inside rears its rosy head in indignation. Other days, my oft-broken heart smarts at the memory of old friends and activists whose feminist ideals didn’t stand in the way of their marginalizing a person of color, or objectifying another woman, or even downplaying the sexual assault of a friend. Most of the time, my commitment to social justice advocacy doesn’t feel as though it requires a label so I have the room to vacillate.

However, my indecision piques about every six months.

Every six months, you see — almost by the minute hand — a media storm about “the death of feminism” inexplicably erupts. Ten months out of the year, feminism is a dormant issue, old hat, a moot point, insignificant in both the grand scheme of world news and the narrow sights of newsmakers. But every six months, respectable news magazines and mainstream newspapers alike dedicate valuable column inches to 1) redundant and irrelevant assertions that feminism is, in fact, dead and 2) rebuttals that, in 2000 pretty words, re-tell the “forgotten” history of feminism while claiming that feminism is still thriving — if nowhere else than online. Sometimes the catalyst is a particularly well-timed article, while other times it’s a Hillary Clinton sound byte. This month, it’s a combination of Sarah Palin fever and the recent release of women-themed books by Gail Collins, and Leslie Sanchez.

The agitators are different each round, but the debate is always the same and so, accordingly, is my response: mild enthusiasm at a subject that interests me, with a zesty pinch of irritation at the tediousness of this cycle. But both sentiments are quickly overshadowed by disappointment, because, in almost every case, this tiresome debate about the death of feminism is a debate between white women (and the occasional white man) who are defining feminism according to their own experience. I suppose there isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with writing about one’s own experience (I do it all the time), but the problem is that when these circular debates roll around, that unacknowledged white feminist experience becomes the only visible feminist experience.

Among these dozens of mediocre articles, a few have stood out because of their beautiful composition and thoughtful arguments…but even those few leave me wanting something more, prolonging my indecision rather than resolving it. Last spring, my favorite “Is feminism dead?” piece was an American Prospect article called “The End of the Women’s Movement” which argued very eloquently that there will not, and ought not, be a singular women’s movement in this country today because such a movement could not adequately represent the growing diversity of communities, beliefs, and women in this country. Great point. Except that the point is built on the notion that a time actually existed when a singular women’s movement did adequately represent the diversity of women in this country — and that’s simply not true.

One of American feminism’s greatest failures is the exclusion of women of color, of poor women, of women without privilege. To paraphrase bell hooks, who do you think took care of the middle class white woman’s children when she became too empowered to just be a housewife? 2009 isn’t the first time our country has entertained a vast diversity of communities, beliefs, and women — there has always been diversity here, though the smiling white faces at the forefront of the last U.S. women’s movement might have us believe otherwise. Asserting the present need for diversity within feminism without recalling the marked exclusion of women of color from past feminist waves isn’t a step forward so much as a whitewashing of feminist history. And that makes me wonder where I fit within this paradigm.

Fast-forward to this month, and I’m both fawning over and wincing at the beautifully-composed New Yorker piece written by Ariel Levy (of whom I am a huge fan), which argues that identity politics gets in the way of real progress because it is primarily concerned with representation:

[Identity politics are] a version of the old spoils system: align yourself with other members of a group — Irish, Italian, women, or whatever — and try to get a bigger slice of the resources that are being allocated.

Such a narrow view of “identity politics” fails to consider the critical role they play in engaging people of color in feminist (or any other kind of) activism, and assumes that “representation” is a relatively straight-forward idea. For many second and third generation citizens, for example, representation isn’t as simple as sex and skin color, but entails the confrontation of colonial histories and racial and cultural hierarchies that have followed us across generations.

I know many second and third generation Filipina Americans who retain a colonial mentality with regard to our mother country that prevents them from undertaking Filipina-specific feminist work — despite the admittedly profound need for such work. Melinda L. De Jesus addresses this in the preface to her book, Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, discussing the ways in which “a heritage of dual colonization…coupled with American cultural imperialism, has left an indelible mark on the Filipino American psyche,” causing them to regard their cultural heritage as inherently inferior to that of the United States. She reflects on some of the experiences that informed her own colonization experience as a second generation Filipina American:

The arrogant white feminist professor chiding me that I shouldn’t “ghettoize” myself and my academic training by “just doing Asian American Studies.” My parents telling me that “Filipinos had no culture before the Spanish came.” […] I learn to forget that my parents have accents, that they speak a language I don’t know — a language they did not teach me. I learn than it’s better to be “here” than “back home,” that bad stuff happened during “the war.” And because my parents have so many dreams for my American future, I learn to distance myself from my history. When asked, I say, “My parents are from the Philippines, but I was born here.” So this is the American dream — living in the perpetual present, moving through life without a past, swallowed whole, invisible, but unable to deny the lingering ache of absence…

De Jesus’s experience is not unique among second and third generation Filipina Americans in the Diaspora; many of the contributors to Pinay Power describe similar feelings of inferiority, alienation, and invisibility, which prevented them from connecting to, and activating around, their heritage. One contributor argues that the only antidote to the “alienation of the colonized self” is a reclamation of the ethnic self, while another asserts that “the project of decolonization hinges on identity politics.”

Diasporic Filipinas with their erased histories and dual alienation, ought to engage in identity politics to the extent that doing so can help them place themselves within a social, political, historical, and cultural context that reconnects them with their heritage while attuning them to the oppression they experience as a marginalized community in the United States.

….But where is that in the mainstream feminism represented in the media — or even in our women’s studies classes where we learn about women in popular culture and body image while remaining ignorant of the transnational issues that are shaping the whole wide world? Southeast Asia is chock full of feminist scholars and activists who are still agitating at the front lines even as the articles we read in our favorite publications tell us that contemporary feminist work=blogging.

And so I remain on the fence — heartened, definitely, by the work of those transnational activists who call themselves feminists even in the face of their under-representation — but daunted, nevertheless, by the feminism I read about here, in U.S. papers and see on the American screen.

I am an African-American man. I am a heterosexual man. I am a middle-class man. These three statements are the basis for my social justice work and advocacy, but each carries its own hazard for working on social justice. While many will assume my position as a Black man in America makes me sensitive to “minority statuses”, in reality, over the past 10 years I’ve learned nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, in many ways, my status as Black man in America has the potential to undercut my work of engaging the pursuit of equality of opportunity, equality of outcome and the right to self-determination for all people. I am both privileged and disadvantaged. I have identities that I celebrate, identities I conceal, and all these decisions matter for my view on the world and what I choose to fight for and against.

I didn’t really begin to grapple with my privilege as a Black man until I was a student in Beverly Guy-Sheftall’s class on Black Feminism at Spelman College. I can remember rebutting each point she made about the Million Man March (MMM) as an extension of patriarchy, heteronormativity, and an attempt to further embed misogyny. Besides being a slew of words I didn’t fully understand, I could not understand why she fixated on all the “negatives” of the March. In the class, she essentially argued the MMM because of the patriarchy, etc. she could not support it and thus thought it held little value. By the time I landed in her class I was a senior at Morehouse and certainly had come to believe the MMM was one of the most transformative events I’d ever personally experienced and I refused to have the event mischaracterized.

I paraphrase, but I told her, “Yes, it does ask men to come back into the family, but it doesn’t always mean that have to be at the head. I know some talked about being at the head of the household, but not everyone believed that. We didn’t invite sisters because it was our time as Black men to redefine our commitment to the Black family and Black community.” I wanted to her to see the value of the event beyond her points. She let me finish and sagely replied, “It must be a nice privilege to tell someone to overlook the oppressive elements of a program, because it was helpful to you.” My face fell, my mouth shut, and I  sat sheepishly quiet. My head spun between realization, frustration, and confusion. For the next few classes, I sat quietly and tried to figure out how I had not “seen it coming.” I realized that the lesson I had learned on the athletic field so many times applied to social justice work, “sometimes you got to get the wind knocked out of you to bring you back to earth.”Guy-Sheftall had pointed out what I’d seen done some many times but by those who came from outside of a community to do social justice work in my community. Someone(s) coming from the outside, declaring themselves an ally and expert and overlooking the view of those who were subject to the oppression in favor of their own perspective.

The blind spots I exhibited in my conversation with Dr. Guy-Sheftall were not limited to the Million Man March and helped me to begin to grapple with other blind spots in areas of class, gender, race, sexuality, ability, and the list goes on. While I often stand with my brothers and sisters in justice struggles, I have to equally recognize when I’m standing in front of them rather than by their side of behind them. Unfortunately too few of us who are committed to social justice do this. Over the past few months I’ve had a number of conversations on my standpoint around social justice on twitter, but 140 characters of social media is too short to begin to do it justice (pun intended). About a year and half ago, I was speaking with a friend who identifies as a Black feminist and we were discussing Black feminism and the role of men. I told her I did not identify as a feminist for a number of reasons: first, I respected that many feminists had argued men could not be feminist because of our inability to completely overcome our gender privilege and stop our contribution to oppression. Second, many of the men that I’ve known who publicly identified as feminist behind closed doors used it to their advantage to carry out the same practices we critiqued as patriarchal and misogynist. Third, men who identify as feminist tended to treat it as an ascribed and static status, which meant that brothers often suggested because they could quote bell hooks or had participated in enough campaigns, circles, or conversations they had arrived at plateau, to which others must ascend. The third reason is the most crucial, we spend far too much time labeling our ideologies and activism and treating them as perfected statuses. In reality, a commitment to social justice work is constantly tested, re-evaluated, and iterative. Too often we stand on and assign labels (e.g. conscious, feminist, anti-racist, etc.) rather than doing the work that these labels imply and expanding these from labels to ideologies and actions which effectively expands their reach.

I tend to prefer to be known as an ally when working against oppression but still oppressing. To me, being an ally is about much more than advocacy on behalf of a group or interests that may not, on their face, appear to be your own. Being an ally is about a commitment to social justice grounded in an understanding of one’s self. To me, the most important element to allyhood is the ability requirement of reflexivity. First, we must interrogate our own privilege and power. Second, an ally must listen carefully to the conditions and needs of the group or individuals they are attempting to align with and define his or her work from there. Third, we must become comfortable with outsider status. It’s perfectly fine to not have full ownership of a struggle, in fact no one expects you to be a perfect proxy, but you are expected to hold your own. Fourth, we must be comfortable with being wrong and getting pushed to rethink our beliefs. Being committed to a thing does not mean you see all sides of it. We must be open to being challenged for the better. From this point, an ally can begin the work of advocating and more importantly supporting the efforts of others and themselves. If you believe in social justice work, you realize that being an ally to a cause that you don’t see “directly” affecting your life is still intimately tied to other interlocking forms of oppression. As bell hooks eloquently said:

“Feminism is not simple a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that women have equal rights with men; It is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels- sex, race, class, to name a few – and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self- development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion and material desires.”

The reality is that the forms of oppression are related so working on them simultaneously is necessary. Of course there are issues that I have a greater commitment to, as do all of us, but through mutual support our power grows exponentially.There is no perfect formula for being an ally but those are things that I think of when engaging social justice work.

So when Afghanistan was the country of the moment leading up to the September 11th attacks and America’s subsequent response, I recall feeling angry every time I saw a woman in a burqa on television. My gut response was one tempered by the typical Western media approach to more conservative aspects of Islam. “Why must these women wear something covering every inch of their bodies, while men are left to dress according to their very whim?” I tried to put myself in these women’s shoes, knowing I would be incredibly angry if I went from wearing clothing I chose on my own to being forced to adhere to a new government policy that dictated my very move, even down to my personal style.I would feel trapped, limited, removed, alienated. I would feel separated from my former self, as I use my clothing and style to reflect my personality and my mood. Most of all, I would feel different, and ultimately inferior to the male peers with whom I was once, more or less, visually equal.

Yet now, as the burqa has resurfaced again in the Western media, my opinion has changed.

While looking for classroom discussion topics yesterday on CNN.com, I came across a piece on Nicolas Sarcozy’s recent statement on the use of the burqa in France.

“The problem of the burka is not a religious problem. This is an issue of a woman’s freedom and dignity. This is not a religious symbol. It is a sign of subservience; it is a sign of lowering. I want to say solemnly, the burka is not welcome in France.”

Reading this quotation alone sent a flood of opinions through my brain, one of them being “this is utter crap.” Clearly, the use of the burqa as mandated by law is not exactly fair to women, but to set a limitation on its use, especially in public spaces, is just as bad, if not worse.

With Iran in the news, our focus on the role of religion in conjunction with the government has been renewed, but has France’s supposed secular state opened up a new problem, perhaps one that demonstrates it is equally as dangerous to swing the opposite direction?

France,  a prime example of secular statehood, is looking to cloak anti-Islamic rhetoric in the fabric of women’s rights. Though Sarkozy claims that his inquiry into whether or not a ban on the burqa runs counter to France’s constitution is being conducted for the sake of protecting women and not based on the question of religion, he is doing quite the opposite. Of course his inquiry has to do with religion. To be more specific, not only does it unfairly and disportionately target the French Muslim community (um, do you see anyone else wearing burqas?), but it also, in an ironic twist, targets women by limiting women’s freedom of expression (again, um, know any men wearing burqas?)

So while I understand and sympathize with the reasoning behind Sarkozy’s proposal, that being to ensure women’s equality, I completely disagree with the way he is going about attempting this grand charge. He is exhibiting behavior that is the perfect example of what the women of so many marginalized communities often complain: 1) he is attempting to fight their struggles for them and 2) he is galvanizing a small issue in a minority sect of a larger community. He is using an attempt to protect women’s rights as a means of limiting them.

Within this attempt, Sarkozy is also acting to push a bigger issue. His real hidden agenda relates to protecting the French, and further, European identity, in the wake of rapid immigration from former European colonies. He is employing the burqa issue as a symbol, a metaphor for a greater “problem.” The general public is not as blind as he may think. And while some Muslims, including those active in French government, support this inquiry, their motives may be for protection and self-preservation more than anything else. Afterall, if you have a small thorn in your side, a splinter in the widespread acceptance of Muslim communities by way of a small, more conservative, and thus perceived as more radical Muslim minority sect, your community’s attempt to assimilate is going to be thwarted. By alienating the women within the population who choose, for whatever reason (one that is rightfully theirs and one the public should respect), to wear the burqa, one can distract the focus on Muslims to a focus on specific Muslims, the “other” Muslims who are different from “us,” the more assimilated, moderate, visually non-threatening to the European Identity types.

So sure, I would not want to wear a burqa, nor would Mr. Sarkozy, but that, as we all know, is completely irrelevant. It’s a distraction from the heart of the issue, which is xenophobic, anti-Muslim rhetoric to protect the European Identity as it crumbles to ashes. In a country where any religious clothing (down to a simple Star of David or crucifix necklace) has been outlawed from use in public schools and government jobs since 2004 and where even surveying the religious diversity of the nation is not allowed on a government level, this inquiry and potential future legislation is taking things too far. What a woman chooses to do in a public place, but on her watch, in her private time, even if that means adhering to something Sarkozy and his government may find objectionable and an affront to women’s rights, is her business. And no matter her ethnic, racial, geographic, or religious background, it needs to stay that way.

I am an immigrant woman of the Two-Thirds World, who is living with the One-Third World.

I first came across Esteva and Prakash’s concept of the One Third/Two Thirds World via Chandra Mohanty’s Feminism Without Borders. The concepts recognize the transnational nature of capital, and how policies instituted by people in the One-Third World (middle and upper classes in the North and elites in the South) destabilize the lives of those in the Two-Thirds World, comprised by majority of the world’s population.

And most of the time, those of us in the One-Third World remain unaware of how our actions, well-meaning or otherwise, generate and perpetuate poverty and hardship.

For example, many of us in the One-Third World rarely reflect on our patterns of consumption, on how overconsumption contributes to substandard working conditions in Export Processing Zones around the world. If you’ve ever bought clothes from Nike, the Gap, or purchased products from Walmart and Target, for example, please take a minute to consider why your purchases seem so “affordable.” Ditto with that $2 bottle of wine from Trader Joe’s.

If you want to help those in poverty, take some more time to consider the consequences of top-down assistance programs that are instituted without any input or consultation from the communities themselves. This includes turning a critical eye on programs that present capacity-building and microcredit as solutions to poverty, rather than stopgap measures to systemic problems that are exacerbated by globalization. This means actually listening to the people in communities when they say that they need healthcare and education programs instead of yet another start-up handicraft business.

On a more macro level, Gayatri Spivak challenges us to work on developing a transnational consciousness. She addresses feminists specifically, but the message holds for anyone committed to social justice,

Feminists with a transnational consciousness would also be aware that the very civil structure here that they seek to shore up for gender justice can continue to participate in providing alibis for the operation of the major and definitive transnational activity, the financialization of the globe, and thus the suppression of the possibility of decolonization—the establishment and consolidation of a civil society there, the only means for an efficient and continuing calculus of gender justice everywhere.

(Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, emphasis hers)

Because no, it’s not enough that you feel good about giving a few dollars in microloans to those poor needy people or that you buy Fair Trade coffee. The very reason for this year’s Blog Action Day is that poverty continues, despite programs already in place, despite the well-meaning actions of otherwise good people.

Those of us privileged to live our lives as part of the One-Third World are in a position to develop our transnational consciousness, to reflect on how our patterns of overconsumption, our ways of doing business, the different ways that we seek to fulfill our wants and desires, affect other lives. On how our tacit support for neoliberalism and economic structures built on inequality has engendered poverty in the Two-Thirds World.

On how to act, to be allies to transnational movements working on poverty and social justice.

Many of us are in the One-Third World. But by being critical of our choices, by striving to develop our transnational consciousness, we can live in solidarity with those in the Two-Thirds World.

It’s a platform, on which we can begin to address poverty in profound and truly life-changing ways.